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Why Munich Will Stick With Linux
Jason Hibbets writes: "There are many solved problems in open source. Groupware is not one of them," Georg Greve, co-founder and CEO of Kolab System starts off his post highlighting recent features of the latest release of the Kolab groupware project. He calls out a few newly elected politicians that don't like the current set-up, but says that thousands of users don't have the same experience. "Until today, the city of Munich is using the same stand-alone calendaring and email systems it had used when it was still fully operating on Windows. Updating these systems had a lower priority than the migration to LiMux then. But an upgrade is underway now. And, the solution they chose is agnostic to the desktop platform and will service LiMux and Windows alike. The primary difference made by another migration would likely be due to the perils that come with any migration, such as additional costs and delays. In other words: The very problem used to criticize the LiMux desktop is already being solved."
They should teach these people how to install linux on their home computers too. It's less confusing to have one os (all linux) than two (linux in the office, windows at home). Maybe even give them a free linux laptop for the home. They can afford that because of the license fee savings for not using windows.
no, I don't have a sig
There is actually one problem with opensource and that is that your organization will be attacked by proprietary companies that are freaking out. But this problem can be turned into an asset. The idea is to identify the ways that the proprietary companies manage to insinuate themselves and eliminate those paths. So if an organization suddenly finds a few of their IT people cheerleading some company like Microsoft, then there should be a thorough investigation as to how they have been turned, was it "free" training? Was it some new head of IT who needs to be removed?
Then these tactics need to be published so that other organizations can watch for these fifth column attempts and whatnot.
Often with these situations the company will have salesmen who have commissions well in excess of 1%. So if they can lie, cheat, bribe, or blackmail their way into a organization-wide sale then they could be looking at commissions well into the millions.
And this is where Open Source generally has a huge weakness; no sleazy salesmen. But that is also where it is very attractive. Most heads of organizations hate how much time they have to waste fending off sleazy salesmen doing underhanded attempts to end run them. Either through the ground floor (converting some IT people) or going over their heads through a board of directors. And never mind those situations where one company will insist that in order to do business with them that they are a "Microsoft Shop" only. So they will do something like insist on work orders be placed through an outlook only system or some stupid sharepoint crap.
If I were in charge of something like the city of Munich I would put out a memo that says, "If you talk to a large software vendor then your continued employment is unlikely."
Whereas I appreciate the beauty of OpenSource, I am yet to find a compelling MS Access equivalent in the Linux world. Yes, I know about Kexi, MariaDB, OpenOffice Base and the like.
But let's face it: There's nothing in the Linux world that can compare to MS Access. Nothing! I am not just trolling. I have developed hundreds small scale MS Access implementations for many clients.
VB, even with its quirks, does well. I would like a front-end, in which business logic can be programmed. Logic placed right there on the form...Logic and parameters that can be passed to the DB engine. Nothing friendly exists in Lunix, or should I say, "I haven't found one yet." Am I wrong?