Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Does your Employer have an OSS Policy?
osjedi submitted this tidbit for your toughts: "I have heard from a few people that the companies they work for have issued a statements to the IT departments stating that they are forbiden to utilize any open source software. Obviously this is short-sighted. I would be interested to know from fellow Slashdoters what stance (if any) their employer has taken regarding the use of OSS. I would like to compile a list of the companies forbiding the use of OSS. It would be fun to create a "Open Source Users" stock index, and a coresponding "Open Source Refusers" index." It would be interesting to know which companies actively promote Open Source as these might be good places for those OSS Coders who are currently looking for day jobs. What do you all think?
The company I work for does have a policy but not that open source can't be used. They don't like the words freeware, but this is mainly because of support. If there is a freeware solution out there that is supported by someone, i.e. redhat. then it would not be a problem to use it. Our policy hinges on being able to support the software that we use it really doens't have anything to do with open source per say.
Trillium Digital systems uses OSS for almost all development. But we have a policy that whaevere code is written by the employee is part Trillium IP.
Hey Rob,
Can you disable time reporting for postings done by Anonymous cowards. It would be possible for employers to find out out who has posted a cetain post if they look at the anonymous coward posting time and then at the time in their http logs.
CP
Disclaimer: these opinions are my own, and are not indicitive of those of my employer.
:)
I work at Ericsson US (our design center is based in Richardson TX) and they are just beginning to understand the benefits of Linux. I installed it on my workstation, and use it here and there to get stuff done. We are split between NT and Solaris (with the NT people pusing it slowly but surely to replace Solaris), so I can't really use it for everything.
The main problem is, many people (my group included) see Linux only as a cheap way to breathe life into older hardware. While we all know that Linux can run reasonably well on older machines, we also know that it just rocks on modern stuff. However, our design center is of the belief that if we want to run Linux, lets do it on some old hardware so we can save money. They aren't really looking at Linux as an alternative to other solutions with the same hardware; rather, they are looking at Linux as a way to put off buying new hardware.
I see this as a problem in the community at large; many times we emphasize the ability of Linux to use legacy stuff. Perhaps we should put more emphasis on just how awesome Linux is on modern stuff.
On a side note, I am definitely glad that my employer sees Linux as useful. Count Ericsson among the Enlightened
I work for Hummingbird Communications. About a year ago we needed product CDs that worked on *nix and Win32 for our JuMP product. After looking around I decided Mkisofs was the tool for the job. Although initially skeptical (they had the legal dept. check into it), the managers OK'd its use. Now we use it for all our thin client CDs. We also now run Linux on a number of machines here in R&D.
So, as far as practical outworkings go, the policy seems to be: If it works use it.
-
Alot of people in the Unix world don't see to understand that for Fortune 1000 companies especially. Adding a new platform to the mix after years of standardization is a huge decision. Their are several other factors to be considered. The biggest one a CIO wants is accountability. Who is accountable for bugs in the OS. Traditionally it has been a IBM or a Sun. With the "Open Source" movement that whole parigram is changed.
Cheers,
WFE
===========
"I would like to compile a list of the companies forbiding the use of OSS. It would be fun to create a "Open Source Users" stock index, and a coresponding "Open Source Refusers" index."
Ah yes black listing. Rarely popular, but as nearly as effective as boycotting in bringing about change. (The list of companies that embrace OSS would be a welcome document for many people, such as investors and job seekers.)
Mandos
A lot of companies are scared of OSS for a legitimate reason: They need a vendor to answer for any problems.
First, I don't believe in this, so don't hurt me. I'm just trying to get you into their head so you can understand a non-OSS policy that doesn't need a religious foundation.
For OSS: You can change the code yourself (or audit it) when there are problems without waiting on the vendor.
Big company: Then we have to train people to know the code. And we feel obligated to audit the code to gaurantee some hacker (sic) didn't put a back door into it. Training is expensive.
For OSS: Outsource your OSS support to a third party company. In other words, get a Linux support company to support your linux boxes.
Big company: If they didn't write the software, how can they know it well enough to fix it? Linux support companies are too small to handle our large accounts.
The company I'm currently working at kind of treat their vendors like black boxes. They send money and out pops a product. They aren't equipped (logistically and mentally) to dig into the code. I'm not saying that you have to dig into code to run Linux, but if something happens, a big company is not going to be content sending email to the package maintaner.
The building I work in has more SUN guys (100 or so) crawling around supporting our SUN boxes than RedHat has employees, I think. So, I think the large company mixing with a small company thing is a legitimate argument.
That said, having a strict non-OSS policy is stupid. That just falls into the "don't limit your options" category. My company has a come aways in the last couple years. Perl (gasp!) is being used and I know of a Linux box and someone hacking with MySQL. I see these as cracks in the non-OSS policy and instead of leaving the company, I'm staying to widen these cracks.
Well, I'm the Network Administrator of a Medium Sized ISP, and speaking for all of here, we LOVE open source. It's great, I can't see how anyone could not like free stuff.
[Is Greek the Professional Language of Lawn Mowers?]
Correct me if I'm seriously misunderstanding this, but I don't see how buying commercial software gives companies someone to sue if something goes wrong. Most commercial software (say, NT) comes with a EULA that denies the licensee a right to sue. (OSS licenses also generally come with a clause stating that they are distributed WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY and without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.) Sure, you can buy support contracts for commercial software, but you can also buy support contracts for OSS.
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
I'm posting this as anonymous, not because I want to, but because I feel I have to.
Last year we went from UNIX and VMS to NT. All workstations were removed from our desks. They were usally Sun SPARCstation LXs, 10s, or 20s or SGI Personal Iris 4D/30(/35), Indigos, Indys, or Indigo2s depending on the dept. and the job you did. The SGIs were generally used in the mechanical engineering departments and the Suns in the electronics engineering departments. Now everyone is stuck using Windows98 with crummy design tools. This cost a fortune... trust me. The place is horridly unstable and we have problems all the time. I'm on the system administration team and let me tell you it's a nightmare. We replaced 3 VAX 6000s,7 Sun 630MPs, and a Challenge S with NT. That in itself is disgusting. We are forbidden from using any OSS. They claim it's unreliable and unstable and there's no one to sue which is basically what my supervisor told me. The place is Unix free now. The management claimed they needed a "solution" to the aging computer equipment we had here... so they in their infinite wisdom *cough* went totally microsoft.
The part that really jerks my chain today is that when they got rid of the old equipment they had it crushed and shredded. No one was allowed to have any of it. Knowing what happened to all those workstations and servers is sickening. I don't know why did it either. Selfish assholes.
Here's some general commentary after reading most of the posts that have appeared so far.
/= "anti-Linux", or at least not necessarily. At the big scale it makes perfect sense for a company to limit the variety of systems its support staff has to deal with.
"No Linux"
Also, the entire phenomenon doesn't (necessarily) have anything to do with Linux and/or OSS. I once worked for a hugemongous company where the computing was mostly split between one mainframe per site vs. many departmental VAXen at the site. There was a never-terminating feud between them what wanted to get rid of the mainframes and them what wanted to get rid of the VAXen. (Among the support staff it was mostly a matter of friendly badgering, but among management it was apparently a matter of making and breaking careers.) The policy swung back and forth every few years, apparently as a function of who was retiring and who was moving up to fill the void.
To elaborate on what another poster said: corporate bureaucracy is a pyramid. Five people want to move into that single slot above them. If you do what all the others do, you've got 1/5 chance of success. If you do something different, you can avoid the luck of the 1/5 chance, and rise or fall depending on how your decision works out. This undoubtedly accounted for a certain number of managers who pushed their company to all-NT, and will undoubtedly account for a certain number of managers who will push their company to all-Linux. In other words, sometimes it's a matter of internal politics rather than of technology.
Never underestimate the power of salesmen bearing expense accounts. I've seen some incredibly stupid decisions made by people under salesmen's thumbs.
The license worries may be based on lack of knowledge, but they aren't entirely unreasonable for all that. The Software Pwhatever Association has companies terrified about getting keelhauled over unlicensed software. (Irony is, the SPA behaves rather like pirates when they do catch an offender.) The only solution here is educating decision makers about the GPL and other OSS licenses. This should happen automatically as they start seeing their peers in other companies adopt OSS, but it would be nice to get a favorable precedent-setting court case or two behind us. (IANAL, but the good thing is, apparently, that the more companies start using OSS, the less likely it is that a court will strike the GPL down as a quirky, unsupportable document. The fact that Fortune 100 companies are buying in to it more or less gives it a Common Law status. Also, if big companies rely on OSS, it will be easier to raise money for any defense funding that may be needed in the future.)
A number of posters have indicated that their management has swallowed the FUD hook, line, and sinker. This is another problem that should evaporate as more and more companies publicly acknowlege using OSS. How will the PHB reconcile "hacker's toy" with "Boeing uses it to design airplanes" ? (I'm sure the true PHB will pop his head into the Management Zone, but lots of other bosses will undoubtedly snap out of it.)
BTW, thanks to everyone who has posted. This discussion has been a really interesting peak behind the curtains.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I work for Terre Haute Medlab as their assistant systems administrator. What that translates out to is I get 7$ an hour for doing work I'd be getting 100-200$ an hour for consulting, but I am still in college and people don't respect your skills without the pretty little degree on your resume, no matter if you've been programming your whole life. But enough with the rant.
:)
When I got there, the system was a mix of mainly novell servers to keep their network up, a new (AIX) unix box (its really annoying, I've never seen such a minimalistic unix install), a few old ones and an NT box or 2 in a back corner.
My boss knows nothing about unix, so that gives me a nice part. He tossed me an old 95 workstation, said to do whatever I want with it (at this point, I walk in the next day with cheapbytes cds and do a full RH6.0 install). Overall he seems to be impressed with it. I'm working towards getting a full linux server going while I'm there (if a need for one comes up, that is). Basicly, if the company has no bad preconceptions of OSS (I.e., if they're not a M$ propaganda junkie), and administration doesn't intervene, it should be accepted well.
- Rei
Some of the networking utilities in Windows were ported from BSD
c he:ftp.arl.mil/~mike/ping.html) the author of ping writes "The folks at Berkeley eagerly took back my kernel modifications and the PING source code, and it's been a standard part of Berkeley UNIX ever since. Since it's free, it has been ported to many systems since then, including Microsoft Windows95 and WindowsNT."
eg at ftp://ftp.arl.mil/~mike/ping.html (I didn't get a response from there just now, but it's cached at http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:281918&dq=ca
My company has a policy: I get to use open source. Hey, I even get to write open source software *while I work*. Of course, as a coder, that's really great!
_Deirdre
My now former employer (Friday was my last day, I start the new job the 27th.) had a *VERY* anti-GPL anti-BSD anti-redistribution policy. Linux was great, because it was cheap and they could make modifications to it and such.
But the policy also stood that as soon as it entered the building, it wasn't allowed to leave it in any form whatsoever. In short, they wanted to change the license on everything to 'This is ours, you can't even look at it.' When I gently explained to them on Monday when I gave notice that I would be copying many patches and modifications that I made to floppy disk, they were livid. "YOU CAN'T DO THAT! NO NO NO! YOU'RE NOT ALLOWED TO TOUCH ANY LINUX THAT CAME FROM HERE!! ANYTHING!!!"
Now, pardon me if I'm wrong here, but I'd say that's overstepping their bounds a good bit, considering the fact that with their approval, I burned a Debian 2.1r2 CD for home so I could upgrade my system more easily than 'apt-get update; apt-get dist-upgrade'. (I'm on 56k.) Seems to me they're basically saying "we're nullifying all licenses and replacing them with our own." They told me I wasn't permitted to use software that I had brought in from home ever again, stuff that was licensed under the GPL and developed outside the company/state/COUNTRY. I politely told them that I wished them luck in enforcing that, but that would not be happening. Non-competition agreements are illegal. (they wanted me to sign a 4 year non-competition agreement.) Now they want me to obey verbal orders that effective immediately, I'm not allowed to work period because they have a copy of this software package? HA!
Needless to say, I took it all with me. Both the software I developed at home, and the software that they used. And if they want to try and sue me, I say go right the fuck ahead. The case would be thrown out of court in a heartbeat. Just because they own a copy of something doesn't mean they own the copyright and licensing rights.
Of course, the people there were so incredibly stupid, I'm amazed they know what a virus is; they spread Melissa all over the place on a weekly basis; they spread macro viruses in every direction with every email. They barely knew how to double click.
And that was the technical staff. I show them a bash prompt and they ask me what's wrong with the server, and when will it be back up. And these morons want to do a nation-wide network with ciscos and descends and other items not suited for the task at hand. Not to mention running every NT machine they have on a single license for client, and a single license for workstation. There's three NT applications in the whole company that are legally licensed. And NT isn't one of 'em. And they think it's perfectly fine. Gods.
Leaving those people was the best move I ever made. Anyone who thinks that just because it's in their building, they own the entirety of it, no matter what it is, shouldn't even be allowed to hire employees. Gods.
I'm posting this anonymously simply because I want to see my last two paychecks. They owe me something to the tune of $1500. And something tells me I'm probably going to have to take them to court to get it.
I work for a medium size engineering firm, Smiths Industries Aerospace in Grand Rapids, MI.
We develop Flight Management Systems for various types of aircraft (if it's bigger than a Cessna, odds are the pilot isn't really flying the plane, after all). We've been a VAX/VMS shop for a long time, and we still do a fair amount of devel on that platform, but with the decline in PC prices and the increase in PC power, we've been searching for a new approach.
Of course, the powers that be decided the future was in a Microsoft solution, but a number of us lowly engineer types were too revolted not to try and find something else. Solaris was the first choice, but since we write the majority of our code in Ada (no comments from the peanut gallery), we were limited in our choice of compilers between one by Rational and one by VADS. Well, neither of these produce very good code on the PowerPC considering how expensive they are.
Too hasten to the point, someone had the bright idea of trying a GCC cross-compiler with NYU's Ada front end, GNAT. You wouldn't believe how much better code it produces (30% - 50% better) on our benchmarks. Now we're looking at a linux based development environment to go with it.
I just goes to show how sneaky you have to be to get management to even try open source stuff sometimes. First you let them spend a pile of money on a poor solution, then you step in and replace it with a vastly better solution for -- what was that price again? -- oh, yes, for FREE. The suits are usually in such hot water at the time, they can't do anything about it anyway.
All right so I said more than I had too, but it's a kind of interesting story, isn't it?
wsh
>if jackasses could fly this place would be an airport...
What's already in the Indigo's case is better than any PC you could put in there.
MBNA, our second largest credit card company here in the US strictly forbids anything that is not provided from a manufacturer with a specific support contract.
:)
:)
They're so strict that they have even banned perl because Sun/HP do not "officially" support it. Of course everyone in the UNIX department uses perl anyways
This is probably confidential info actually, but they turned me down for a job, so I don't care
My bosses now consider Linux an officially supported production platform. It took a little bit of doing, but when I quietly replaced an NT server with my Linux workstation for proxy services our helpdesk stopped receiving proxy trouble calls. (The only feedback I received was that the proxy server had apparently "settled down.") After a couple of weeks of this I was told to put the NT server back "for the time being." After 2 days of problems with the NT proxy, I was asked to put my workstation back in as the enterprise proxy until I could wipe the NT server clean and install Linux onto it.
This small "test" showed the higher-ups that Linux was capable, and that we were capable of supporting it. Because of the success with this, Linux is an officially supported platform here. We are preparing to put up a news server running Linux. We have a test Linux machine with Oracle installed which we hope to devote time to shortly. And I'm playing with some of the CD writing software for Linux on another machine so that anyone in my area that needs to burn CDs can do so. I'll probably have a document scanning machine in place within 6 months also.
Hope this provides you with a little encouragement.
This ban is rarely heeded.
My opinion on this is intentionally not stated.
--
As I am in academia, where researchers will buy their own computers and do whatever they like with them, we do have a bit of Linux in our department. However, the computing staff frowns upon it for the departmental servers.
They say that "Linux is too insecure" because "Anybody can find holes in it by looking at the source, you gotta download new patches every week!" I did try to explain to one of the guys, using the analogy of cell phones. There are 2 ways to secure cell phone transmissions. One is to encrypt them. The other, more common one, is to make FM receivers on certain bands illegal! This despite the fact that any skilled person can make a radio, and plenty of old TV's still out there receive these signals just fine. All you do is send some poor kid to jail every now and then for being curious. He agreed that mathematically secure is the best security of all, but still said that obscurity is the best that they can do - nobody can catch all the bugs! Too much work! So our departmental servers will run on IRIX for quite some time.
By the way, these people are pretty BOFH-ish. Six months I've been BEGGING them to get this one program I need on the departmental server working again. They won't do it. The libraries aren't installed right, and I don't have privileges to mess with anything. Isn't this the sort of thing that the microcomputer revolution was supposed to end forever? Screw you gaaahss, I'm going home.
If you read the shrink-wrap license on any MicroSquish products, they guarantee NOTHING in great big capital letters.
When (notice I don't say "if") their product fails and costs you money, you have NO recourse against MicroSquish.
Historically, MicroSquish's policy w/r/t bug reports (including security holes) is to deny the problem, blame it on someone else, claim that the administrator isn't using it right, and then finally sell you the bug fix in a bundle with 500 or so new bugs and call it an upgrade.
Compare this to Open Source software like Linux or Perl: The developers read the newsgroups and mailing lists, and bugs are reported and typically fixed within a week of the initial report.
Unlike the anonymous herds of children mangling code in Redmond, OSS developers care about what they do, because they know that their reputation is at stake.
As soon as Linux has a GUI and development environment that measure up to NeXTSTEP, I'll drop Macintosh and MicroSoft once and for all.
-jcr
We often spend alot of time discussing the vendor side of this equation and what he or she has to win or lose in the high stakes game of corporate software.
But what of the corparate software buyer, what does he or she have to lose turning to open solutions ?? Isn't the software cheaper... better.
Well I guess I'd miss the wining, dining and junkets to that little conference in the Caribbean. Never under-estimate the power of a few rounds of golf at Pebble Beach.
The answer is we of the open world need to add something... like 'Open Perks'!
Made in the Dark
First there was need, then specification, then a pair of tickets to the the Cetics game...
mitd -- Made in the Dark
"One good thing about spam... You don't gotta answer it"
I've noticed my big boss generally dislikes linux and just about everything non-micro$oft, which for me really sucks since *I'M* usually the one that ends up having to deal with all the problems that come around because of it. (ie: when it crashes, it's not the boss that's fixing it...) My particular beef is with NT and SQL Server 7.0. I could write several pages on the problems I encounter.
:)
He even installed MS Proxy server/client instead of a good old run-of-the-mill gateway. In fact, he REMOVED our gateway to do this. Of course, it offers NO MORE FUNCTIONALITY than an IP masquerading gateway. Of course, Micro$oft didn't bother writing a client for anything non-windows, so all the linux boxes have no net access. Yup.
Although, recently he's been softening up... I think it's partially due to my badgering and partically due to positive press. So my suggestion to you for losing clueless OSS policies based on M$ FUD is:
-print up positive article, post them where people will read them.
-exthol the virtues of linux, with figures to back it up.
-calculate your overtime fixing stuff that breaks because it's a crummy product, add it to your real-world cost. That's a biggie.
The result of this is we're keeping the damn MS proxy server, but we're also installing a gateway. Linux is also installed on one of our main server boxes. It's getting better
Our I.T. department is a different story. The less they know about what we do and how we do it, the happier everyone is. Asking them about OSS would be like waking up a dragon to inquire if it wanted its claws painted a nice pastel pink. The answer might well be yes, but do you really want to know that badly?
If the whole "no OSS" thing were about support, then that'd have to mean "no MS software" as well. Because I haven't seen anything approaching a usable level of support from MS w/o paying unreal amounts of money.
I work for a government contractor, and the security rules at the government facility where I work state that software must be purchased... I have been trying to change this - it is stupid!!
Thankfully, calmer heads prevailed. It was pointed out that this was more of an administration issue than anything else. Some otherwise PHB-like people seemed to back this up and no policies were forthcoming.
Of course, this did bring up the issue about how "safe" a Linux installation was for the average office worker. I've talked to other folks within the local IT community and some discussion towards an "approved, managed" Linux installation was done. I would much prefer this direction than the PHB-spawned alternatives.
If any Microsoft employees are reading this, tell us what the policy is over there. I am curious to know what they think of using OSS software, especially Linux, or BSD. What would happen if you brought your own laptop into work and it had Linux on it, and you were caught?
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
Posting anonymously for obvious reasons.
I work for a subsidiary of a large blue software company. We are crazy about Linux. We release products for it. However, one has to be VERY careful legally about source code.
Using an open-source solution as part of a shipping product can be a dangerous thing, as we have no guarantee where the code came from, whether it violates patents, or whether it was blatantly stolen from someone else. By shipping it, we would open ourselves up to potential lawsuits if the above scenaria were true, and for those who scoff at that, trust me, our parent is a very big target with very deep pockets; there are those who would try.
The other potential problem is tainting of developers; if we develop a closed-source program but I've looked at the source for a comparable open-source program, I'm jeopardizing the legality of our project.
In light of the points mentioned above, our particular company has a very specific software acquisition policy whereby the legal team will approve specific downloads, especially those relating to our line of work.
Please don't get me wrong; I live for open source software and have contributed to oss projects during my free life (before IP kicked in). However, labeling companies as lame or bad because they have a legal and financial responsibility to be careful in a potentially dangerous area is just foolishness. So many were quick to jump all over this topic, and those same people obviously have no idea what kind of issues actually surround software acquisition and use in the real world.
OSS seems to be fine here. The tools group and thus the developers use it all the time. In fact an official Beowulf cluster has been built by the R&D people.
Now if only I can get a PC on my desk and clandestinly install Linux there so I don't have to use that damn NCD Xterm. (If that's what all NC/Thin-clients are like, they can suck my ass.)
(Damn and if this get moderated up, I'd finally get that +1 bonus)
It Sucks! A couple of years back I did work for a Very Large Company in the power industry and they absolutely refused to let us use anything that was OSS/ freeware/ shareware/ orwhatever. But there they didn't have much of a clue (one reason among many I left). You could get away with using almost whatever you wanted as long as it wasn't an alternate os. The phrase "any idiot can run NT and usually does" most definitely fit there. Nothing seemed to ever work properly.
Oops, sorry, wrong web page.... :-)
Anyway, I have the opposite problem. Some braindead staff that give *ME* shit for suggesting the use of certain OSS packages and OSes. There's one of them who is a real Microsoft flunky let me tell you. He's going to pop a cork when I suggest we start support Star Office soon! We regularly get into arguments over *NIX versus NT.
Anyway, we do (and have since the beginning of IT time) used OSS software heavily. One thing I love about it is often not mentioned, and it's not the saving of cash. As a college, we get some insanely low pricing from Microsoft through their Select 4.0 program, like Office Pro (not upgrade) for less than $50, so license costs aren't as big of a deal with us as if it cost us a few hundred a pop.
But I don't care about the money for desktop software. It's billed to someone else's budget. What keeps me up at night is the difficulty in keeping accurate track of installed software with restrictive commercial licenses which make management of licenses a real hassle, let alone the legal liability issues for ME as the big guy if those ass holes at SPA come knocking at the door. Funny how corporate officers of companies are never criminally liable for actions of their companies but *I* have to be criminally liable if some idiot sneaks an install of some commercial package onto their office PC. But I'm ranting...
So, best of "free" software (not just OSS) is that I can just install it as needed where needed and not worry about keeping strict track of who has it and who paid for it.
But, back on topic, the idea of an OSS user register is great, but is not going to be easy to compile. As we've seen from previous posts, most people post AC and won't name names.
As for *my* employer, you can certainly figure it out with a click or two, else you're a total idiot!
(And no, I am not speaking for my employer in this forum....)
Unisys has stated that they have a policy of not using OSS.
You can look at us at www.FlyingCroc.com
Just a hint, if you apply for one of the "Technology" jobs, you have a better chance if your resume is in plain ASCII :)
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
Dear Slashdot,
Before encouraging the creation of an OSS blacklist and/or OSS enemies list, make sure the information you have is correct. No company would prevent the use of OSS software is non-development departments unless they produced software of simlar function internally.
GPL software has and should be prohibited when proprietary software is being developed. There are a few lazy programmers in every company and the co-mingling of GPL source and proprietary source is not in a company's best interest.
I work for a multinational corp. who's main office is somewhere in Europe (I can't say name/what we do). We were a seperate co. until we were bought out. The main office has had a non-OSS policy since their inception. However, well before we were bought Linux was (& still is) our man developement platform, handle(s) our internet gateway/mail/routing. We also have many clients on Linux that we put there and some of our clients are experimenting w/ it as to rid their bottom line of high cost hardware such as Sun, DEC, and AIX. We still use it to this day and I've been sent to foriegn country sub-offices of our U.S. office to install and troubleshoot Linux at these sites. My main concern now is a "pointy hair up top" is pushing M$ NT big time (of course he is from the main office). I know for a fact that Linux will not simply "go away" considering it is already firmly implanted in our U.S. office using Samba/routing/ppp dialup thanks to the pursuit of an alternative by our staff. (keep in mind, not everyone is convinced at our co. - they're still brainwashed regardless of the crashes/headaches suffered.) Every day I see the skill sets of Linux people becoming very highly demanded. Prior to obtaining this job I had never seen Unix/Linux, I had M$ stamped on my forehead. I'm very glad I was "turned on, and dropped out". My next employer will find Linux just as if not more needed.
FedEx's CIO issued a "no Open Source" pronouncement some time back, which was followed by a brief flurry of managers insisting Linux be removed from various administrators' desktops. When it was pointed out that actually removing Open Source entirely would cost many billions of dollars and essentially shut down all operations for months or years, the policy was just sort of quietly ignored. Now Linux exists in test implementations, and one of the largest projects in the company is switching from tar to RPM for software distributions. The CIO hasn't said another word about the subject since, and there is no reference to it visible anywhere on the corporate intranet.
This is a quite disturbing idea, but is also quite easy to solve -- in concept, at least. Compile a blacklist of anti-OSS/Linux companies. Give the list a prominent position on Slashdot. Mail the list around to opt-in participants on a weekly basis. Encourage mirroring and reposting of the list. I'm sure open source developers would be willing to participate -- Apache, PHP.net, OReilly.com, Perl.com.
What this will do is prevent talented inviduals from applying to the blacklisted companies. This scares the heck out of recruiters. They ability to attract new talent is based largely on how well the environment will suit their needs. And something this drastic would certainly attract mainstream media attention in fairly short order.
Perhaps even Microsoft-only shops (no Solaris, Mac, Apache etc) would get dinged even more.
But there would be some things to consider:
1) Need to verify and rate the claims of anti-OSS situations. Moderators would be a must. Abuse of power could potentially be a problem.
2) Make it clear that this is a positive thing. Explain how companies can take advantage of the benefits of open source, and get themselves un-blacklisted at the same time.
3) Make it clear that you don't have to use
4) Possibly inform/advocate OSS software that has commercial software qualities -- support contracts, shrinkwrapped packages, established support sites, sample code. Anything to ease the transition.
I would be willing to lead this charge. If anyone is interested, contact me. Maybe we can start a list to discuss our options.
Finally, I wonder how many of these companies are using open source software and don't realize it? If they're using Apache, Perl, Sendmail -- they're at least part of the way there, right?
More statements on company sites noting the use of open source software couldn't hurt, either, could it?
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
I lost a big consulting gig with a company with a DP budget around $200 million because I was using gcc (according to the manager who cut me off). He said that we couldn't use non-commercial tools because they weren't supported. I told him that he could find a support contract for gcc if he wanted too, and that the code was the same code he had just bought a commercial version of for $9,000 for his unix box. But he said that "We have to have standards", and I had violated them by selecting gcc, and I was out. But it was just hindsight butt-covering, an excuse to get rid of someone who knew what was going on. He didn't object when I told him I was going to use gcc, he only objected after his guy spent 2 months trying to port my ISO standard C++ that ran under Win 3.1 (DOS box) and Windows 32 with the exact same source to anything from the commercial vendors that would run under Win 3.1 and Win32. They couldn't make it happen, and that made the corporate standard tools look bad, so I was the bad guy for picking a compiler with good support for ISO C++ and STL and good portability. And the only brush he could find to tar me with was 'unsupported free software'. I should have thought to ask him about the six guys sitting around me who were writing his mission-critical web site in Perl, but I didn't. I went home, raised my rates 50%, and had another gig within a week, delivering working code using OSS tools. As long as everything works, and the client is happy, OSS is fine. When a manager finds out that he has to get rid of the knowledgeable to cover-up his management mistakes, OSS is as good a sin as any.
Sorry if this is not very organised, it just a bunch a toughs I have put together in a somewhat random order.. And sorry for my english too, its not my native language...
During the summer, I work for a company that does a Web based service, and believe it or not, before I was hired, they were 100% Win95/NT. The guy I replaced was a totally clueless programmer/consultant (with a university degree, but not a true computer geek), not even a PHB. Last november I bet with him that within 6 months, most large OEMS would be offering Linux, he though I was joking (he said something like: "I'm even ready to extend your delay to 5 years"). This guy's dream is to become a MCSE..... Hopefully my boss is not as clueless, even if he is mostly a Macromedia Director programmer (even if he also as a university degree in CS) so we kind of agree that the NT system wont stay there for long, but they dont even have to money to buy machines for new employes, so we havent switched to a better OS yet). There site has so much M$Video, Director and Flash, all that combined using javascript that you need a 4.X browser on a p200+ to look at it (They said everyone had at least that, they werent interested in the others, maybe that's why they still owe me money from august...). And the reason they give not to move to Unix (except that ColdFusion for Linux is not already here) is that they use M$ Video and they dont even use the video server, it's all streamed through the Web Server.... It's kind of ridiculous... To be fair with them, they had no problem with me using Emacs and Perl (I managed to convince them that's its the only reasonable way to do log analysis on NT, I'm not gonna do it with batch script)..
The server is a crash Ppro200 with NT4 server and Allaire ColdFusion. And the database they use is Access97. This may seem completely crazy but it did work. It is indeed quite easy to crash, and their security really sucked, I had the spend a least one day during the first week many it somewhat secure (before we went into beta testing). But they know it wont scale. And now they have a problem, a potential HUGE customer wants to be able to run the thing on their own server, Solaris+Oracle. Well, their is a ColdFusion for Sparc Solaris, but it's based on Wind/U (by Bristol, the company that lost its anti-trust trial against M$).
ColdFusion seems at first to be a nice system, but they are tons of hidden bugs, like the built-in POP client is completely bugged. And their support sucks.. I'd advise anyone who think of using it to use PHP instead. I'm not building another app for another organisation using PHP and it's so much easier.
A programmer in a small IT business
----
NT, the choice of a retarded generation
Uh-oh. Better ditch that Unix system. Chances are it uses GCC. Further chances are that it uses Apache if it's a web server.
Hey! There's always NT and IIS.
I look at the thread, and the subject appears
to be why would a company have a "no OSS" policy?
However, the thread quickly degenerated into
"I use Perl and it works, NT sucks, blah blah blah"
There were a few posts that mentioned what is the probable reason (IMHO) for the no OSS policy. A no OSS policy means that you have to get approval to install software. This lets legal check the license and avoid any problems where someone installs something that is not freeware in a corporate setting (Applixware anyone?).
BTW, the subject was a poke at those who quickly
took this thread off topic. Why not post some relevant comments about how to create a business case to get OSS software approved?
Do anal-retentive people hyphenate 'anal retentive'?
When you're supporting hundreds of desktops you don't want them installing -any- unathorised software. You setup an SOE and you want your users sticking to it. IE5 and Win98 are just as forbidden as Mozilla and Linux. But when you're the people who have to do the supporting it's the best tool for the job. Perl, gcc, fvwm, linux, *bsd, apache, ssh, samba, squid - if open source provides the goods we use them. The tools OSS provides for admins are just too good and too numerious to ignore. Actually we don't have a (strict) policy against installing unsupported software (unlicensed software is another matter) but if your machine needs work done the first thing we'll do is reinstall the SOE.
... with eskimo chains i tatto my brain all the way...
Ok, this could be the fact that it's saturday and I've had a couple of beers. Or it could just be that I feel like getting something off my chest and this is at least a slightly related place to vent it.
(I really should post this anon but..)
OSS can't make it mainstream because it just dosen't make enough work for people. With 98 and NT on the desktop and for servers you're practically guaranteed that your tech and MIS guys are going to have something to do every hour that they're willing to contribuite. With OSS they just sit there and live the dream of a future with less work. Unless they're good enough and motivated enough to hack on the software and improve it.
One of the companies I've worked for has been running an SGI (not quite OSS but they're coming around) since 94 and a linux box since 93. The only time either of them have been rebooted (other than kernel upgrades..and that linux was still running a pre 2.0 kernel last time I checked) was when they had to be physically moved from one room to another! On the other hand at the proding of the marketing manager MIS tested the viability of moving the website from that SGI to an NT server.
The NT server required constant babysitting. Several reboots a day because it would hang, and nothing but broken promises when it comes to the ease of developing web based applications. The day I tought the admin of that machine how to program in perl for the SGI he practically unplugged the NT machine and started filling out the return forms! He coulden't belive how much simpler it was. Of course he came from a tradional CS background rooted heavily in Unix.
Then again even the desktop designer who came from a Mac background and was a diehard GUI fan admitted it was easier than working with ASP on the NT machine.
Ok, I'm rambling and not making sense anymore (or so I'm guessing) so I'll cut it short. Bye bye karma for this one.
--- Juggle juggle@hitesman.com
I just started working for a large (publicly traded) ISP in the silly-con valley. They are mostly an NT shop with lots of Solaris. Their main applications run on Oracle/Solaris servers and some of their smaller apps run on NT, including file and print. As it is an ISP, every engineer has an Ultra on his desk running Solaris. Their current policy disallows any use of Linux as Linux is currently unsupported and they're afraid of people installing it and leaving it wide open for crack attempts. On the other hand, on my first day at this organization a Sun Ultra10 landed on my desk that was fully loaded with gcc, perl, blackbox WM, The Gimp, and a variety of assorted libraries. I've since installed bash and some other stuff. I'm pretty sure that all of the other engineer's workstations have as much or more OSS as well. The main reason that they choose not to allow Linux is that one or two user's unsupported machines have been cracked in the past and used as a jumping off point for other attacks. A part of my responsibility in the organization is helping them develop IT policies, I plan to lobby to not only allow Linux on the network, but to provide support for it as well. I don't expect to encounter much resistance provided security is improved to the point where the PHBs feel comfortable about it. It's pretty ironic that they do feel comfortable with NT though.
The company I work for just released a memo stating that we cannot use any "shareware" for production services. I do not choose to take this as concerning my use of Linux, since Linux is not "shareware". However, I think thats what they intended the memo to include.
My company doesn't have an OSS policy, all third party software is treated equally. In particular, we couldn't survive without gcc.
...and sit back while the lights go out. Even the PHBs will wake up when the web site suddenly vanishes.
I am the CEO for a fortune 500 company, so you can understand why I am posting anonymously. In our shops we use nothing but proven, trustworthy Ataris and Amigas for mission critical operations. And the secretaries use spiffy Apple I's. Our company's official policy on free software is "we do not use hacked-up-the-night-before-while-high-on-speed free software." Personally, I do not want the Company's servers hacked into due to the huge, gaping security holes in linux. Plus, the Mindcraft battery of tests once and for all PROVED the inferiority of linux. I am deeply disturbed by the recent trend of companies moving their operations to low quality linux and other "free" crap. When a company releases that it is switching to Welfare Unix, we all know it is in an unstoppable swan dive to Chapter 11.
I use a personal "cheat sheat" for selecting my ISP.
Rule 1. Must use an open source operating system [preferably Linux thow BSD works really well just hard to find an ISP that uses it]
Rule 2. Small ISP.. It's a support issue... Usually Linux/Unix questions get forwarded to a SysAdm on a small ISP and go unanswered on a larg ISP. At least thats my limited experence.
I would recomend NOT doing busness with a company that forbids open source. Now if a busness allows open source and dosn't use any OSS thats ok as long as the people responsable for picking the best solution are allowed to pick the best solution reguardless of hype and fud.
Simply put the consummer shouldn't pay for the short sightedness of a manager who really shouldn't be interfearing with the jobs of the people who accually know what is or isn't reliable.
This reminds me of other situations where an expert is told how to do his/her job by someone who dosn't really know that job.
Anyway I think it's a good idea to get busnesses to sign some sort of agreement saying they will NOT ban open source software and avoid companys known to ban open source software.
I don't actually exist.
Our press release is here, and we have an additional page of background information here.
Eric
--
"Free your code...and the rest will follow."
Be who you are...and be it in style!
I work at an Internet banking company with a technically strong and extremely clueful development team. We use open source software in as many roles as possible, and mandate its use in any security-critical role unless no suitable open source product is available.
The reason's not hard to guess: We must assure ourselves that anything we use, we can examine from source to determine security risks. We've been known to submit bugfixes to Perl, NetBSD, etc.
To hell with crackpot theories of avoiding liability -- we're trying to avoid getting hacked in the first place.
--
Some keywords for the NSA in the Lord of the Rings universe: One Ring bind find Sauron quest Nazgul freedom
i interred at boeing this summer, in a software writing department. although mostly people used windows and all, i believe most of the web stuff was oss (apache, perl). as far as i could tell the rule was 'whatever you need to get the job done (to beat lockheed martin)'.
Speaking as an employer, and as part of a company that shipped Windows-based products, we probably do what a lot of small companies do - use Free software extensively internally but ship products containing nothing but proprietary code (as that's where the money is)
The point is, companies that do use free software should recognise their debt to the Free software community and contribute back to it. Human nature being what it is, though, I suspect a lot of companies will just take take take and not Do the Right Thing and give the appropriate amount back to the community. We do what we can, because we don't want to live in a world dominated by BSOD's (I hate to think how much of my life has been wasted because of Microsofts policy of shipping shoddy code).
Also as an employer, when we're hiring coders (which we always are, so mail if you're interested) we'd take people with C and Linux over someone with C++ and MFC anyway....
All your ghosts are just false positives.
A vast amount of users use windows at home or in their past jobs. They almost invariably believe that they would prefer to be using Windows. One major reason is becouse they feel that they can 'control' windows. With its fonts and screen colors. Whereas Unix is 'unfreindly'.(We all know this should be falshood if the admin is worth his salt)
Some of these companies that use Unix primarily, both as servers and workstations, select there IT members based upon there abilties. But they also decide whether these would be IT's would 'give the party line' (Unix) or whether the prospective employe think the company should do something diferent. Like Netware or NT, in which case they are not hired.
I see this as evidence that the people in control wish thier technical crew to preach the party line no matter what it might might be.
Becouse Unix is, at the moment, on the defensive this means this is very important to Unix biased IT departments.
In the future, I believe that it may well be the NT biased departments that may well be on the defensive and holding tooth and nail to thier NT boxes and banishing anyone who speaks heresy.
Or maybe that is what we are already seeing......
I am an IS dude for a rather large commuter airline, attatched to one of The Big Ones. Our major beefs/beeves with our current flight-tracking software vendor are:
a) They want to increase their monthly fee for tech support from (US Dollars) $6,000.00 to $7,000.00 per month
b) When we do call tech support, they are 99.9% certain to *not* be able to help us. We generally end up educating them, instead of the opposite.
c) They want us to "advance" to NT
d) I want to find an alternative....these people have just plain pissed me off. What little help we can get is rude, inadequate, and generally incompetent. Example: They want us to shell out $20,000 (yes, twenty grand) for a freaking "test" network for their next and "Y2K" version of their software, in addition to their usual monthly fee.
e) the company in question is DRB, aka Bornemann, aka David R Bornemann and their URL is http://www.drba.com/
f) if you can help me find an alternative, post the URL, Please! There are obvious reasons why I cannot post my addy.
Anyway, we have an opening for a full time developer. If you're in the Boston area and you have have experience with Java, SQL, and Unix/Linux and an interest in statistics email me with the URL to your resume.
-----
Free P2P Backup, Windows & Linux
I work for a large Government agency and it's pretty obvious some high ups are getting kickbacks from Microsoft to institute a NT only policy. We spend about $5 million a year on licence fees.
Our company is still evaluating RedHat Linux, but we got bit so bad it's not even funny.
I'm sure many people remember the situation where RedHat 5.2 was based on glibc2.0 (an unstable release(!) of glibc)
Well, our company spent a significant amount of time and money having some proprietary libs ported against RH5.2
As you can guess, between the time the port started and we got the libs, RH 6.0 came out, based on glibc2.1
Apparently, shared libraries built against glibc 2.0 will not run with executables built against glibc2.1
We are still trying to recover from this. Our vendor is somewhat against linux now, several higher level people have been giving me the cold shoulder -- it's going to take awhile until I can build up enough "trust equity" to make another linux push.
Linux is a MAJOR moving target, and the only way vendors can make prorietary s/w constantly run on Linux is via the Netscape/Corel XWP/Staroffice model -- statically linked.
Which is somewhat undesirable for shrink-wrapped software, and completely unusable for proprietary link libraries.
I have heard there are a set of "compat" libraries available that might make our eval systems work, I might have a chance to try them monday.
oh yeah, the other bummer is 4/6 s/w engineers that I have given Linux to have given up on it, unable to successfully install RedHat Linux 6.0
This terrifies me, since I have never given it a thought -- problems with the X server? big deal, work it out. Get over it.
But there is some kind of strange thing out there, so many people are afraid of Linux. I don't fear it, but it is nowhere near as "release stable" as the other *nix solutions.
It's a stinkin mess.
company would have a policy *against* OSS. I'm
used to having an official policy that we'd
always use OSS options whenever feasible.
But I've only worked in web-related start-ups, and
under those circumstances you have some special
development priorities:
partially because business directions change
so quickly, so tools better be modifiable.
first prototype, and then on to the release.
You'd better not be waiting for that vendor
to fix that bug; you only have 48 hours left.
doesn't do what you want; the lack of licensing
costs makes it cheaper to try out a few.
license is better. Development costs typically
swamp this, but every bit helps.
Of course, these rules also tend to guide us to
use other rapid-development tools like Java and
Perl. When development time and development costs
dominate, these things are vital.
Also, if you're planning on releasing your mods
and original software when you write it, it makes
re-usability between projects easier. Let's face
it: start-ups don't have a 100% success rate.
If you can easily make your next attempt more
likely to succeed, it can be great in the long run.
As I'm less familiar with other domains of
business, I won't speculate on OSS importance
there. But it's great when you're small and fast.
I've been at Microsoft for almost 5 years now, and I've never seen anyone take an anti-OSS stance. You use the best tool for the job. Since my fingers were trained to use emacs before coming here, I still use GNU emacs (there's a good NT port of it).
The group I work in (in Research) consists of almost all former Unix people. Some people still have a free unix box of one sort or another, but most just run NT because (as long as you're not a zealot) it can run all your unix stuff just fine. I can't think of a unix tool I want that isn't available for NT. And contrary to slashdot FUD, NT 4.0 hasn't crashed on me since I installed it... several years ago. (I'll admit 3.51 crashed on me once or twice)
The one thing we were told, however, was not to look at the mozilla code after Netscape freed it (we can run Mozilla if we really want to - yeah, right, like we would - but we can't look at the source). This is because the lawyers are worried about Netscape suing us or something. I can understand this policy.
Oh, and the usual disclaimer: this post is entirely my own personal opinion, I don't speak for Microsoft.
When I started at my present job the network admin above me decided to use Linux instead of NT for a firewall solution. He personally knew very little about Linux but got his brother to setup a Linux-based firewall on a 486-100 with 16 megs of RAM. That was how OSS began its infiltration into our IT dept. where NT was already entrenched. Since then I've upgraded the firewall and it runs firewall, Web, Squid, primary DNS, transparent proxy, and internal routing for our entire network. I've cannibalized retired Pentiums that either served as old user machines or Netware servers and brought them back into service as a RADIUS client/RAS dialup, MySQL server, a "multimedia" machine that permits remote access to the CD burner, scanner, and PCMCIA flash memory cards, and a development machine being used by several programmers for a new development project. We recently purchased a new Linux server to be our VPN server using a commercial VPN server solution and are leasing 3 more large servers which will be running Linux for Web and development. Though NT is entrenched for file and print serving , PeopleSoft, and Exchange is being used for e-mail, Linux has made tremendous in-roads and it certainly isn't "banned." The company is feeling the sting of a huge IT investment over the last 3 years (after many years of putting very little money into IT) and I'm sure they support whatever solution works well and saves money.
ADN totally uses open source.
Open Source is all over Worldgate, FreeBSD and Linux on workstations, and whole messes of FreeBSD boxen scared around the globe. My question for a manager forbidding the use of Open Source software entirely would be 'does this mean I can't use yahoo or google?'
I have only fired one programmer. That dumbass was so against the idea of me moving our main server from Solaris X86 to Linux. He was just jumping up and down. I mean the guy was almost in tears. I was shocked. What the f&$^? I was only considering switching OSes not about to kill him. I guess he was just so scared of Linux, having never used it and not knowing what he'd have to live with and administer. A month later I fired him. The guy was just no good.
Its good to be the boss.
If employees can't utilize any OSS software, then
find any use of OSS software by the organisation
(either internally or externally) and disable it:
Bind, sendmail, apache, squid etc.
Bean counter: why did my email bounce?
IT person: your mail would have been accepted
by an OSS product, which we are not allowed
to utilize.
Bean counter: why can't I surf the web anymore?
IT person: all of your hostname -> IP lookups
were being served by an OSS product, which we
are not allosed to utilize. Sorry.
Wait 7 days. Policy will change.
Needless to say, anyone looking to escape from the terror of an anti-OSS environment is welcome to apply for a job :-)
Rich
A number of OSS projects have spawned from the company. One of them is CONS, a wonderful replacement for make that we use internally for many of our projects. Another one is the Net::SNMP Perl module.
Please note the license terms for these packages. They have the usual "use at your own risk" licenses.
In Nokia, we are already using Linux internally
in many places. In addition, we are developing
a Linux policy for workstations. This means
that either Information Management or local
Unix support would support and upgrade
Linux machines, and they are considered the
same as other Unix workstations. The same
applies to servers, which are considered the same
as Solaris/HP-UX/AIX/whatever Unix servers.
We are also using Cobalt Raq servers
(an embedded rack-mountable server running
MIPS-Linux).
Maybe we're ahead of Nortel Networks (our
competitor), at least in some respect;-) (pun intended)
--
Anonymous Coward
It sounds to me like some propaganda people at M$ have been busy feeding fud to the suits at these companies. Telling them lies about how linux is unstable or untested or insecure, whatever. The typicaly BS that you'd expect from Redmond. Unfortunately suits are typically clueless except when it comes to pushing paper, so they don't know any better. They don't understand that Microsoft has a lot to lose and therefore every reason to lie. Not that Microsoft would need much of a reason anyway. If your work won't let you use the best tools for the job, start sending your resume around. When you leave, let them know the reason. It might not change anything at that company, but at least you'll have your self respect.
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
In October, I'm going to work for Vovida, which not only uses open-source software but makes it, exclusively. If you're interested in Linux telephony, you should check them out.
Beer recipe: free! #Source
Cold pints: $2 #Product
I work for a company that sells database software. The client software almost invariably runs on Win32 (limited exception: the web-based stuff, running on IIS, supports Netscape on the Mac). While management is exceedingly rah-rah Microsoft, that opinion is not widely shared throughout the ranks (where people actually have to work with Microsoft's rubbish). The database servers are almost exclusively Unix (some VMS, and NT is generally recognized as a toy server OS for these purposes), so there are quite a few Unix sysadmins in house, besides which many of the NT admins run Linux at home. We have several Linux boxen scattered around, mostly where management won't find them, and it's my understanding that some of our customers are using Linux in certain applications involving our software.
Recently we released a product written in Perl and designed to run on the database servers. During a presentation, one of the Unix admins said that part of the difficulty of getting customers to use this software was that some customers had policies against the use of OSS. I asked whether these customers used sendmail or BIND. They acknowledged the irony of this situation (i.e. they started laughing), and one of them noted that the problem in one case was that our code requires Perl 5, and some of them were still running administrative scripts written in Perl 4, which they didn't want to risk breaking by upgrading. This makes slightly more sense, but I still get the impression that some of our customers don't quite get it. I think in some cases it still boils down to the illusion of having someone to sue.
I work at Wal-Mart's IS department, and while I've heard that we have a no-OSS policy, I just participated in a recently sanctioned Perl standards meeting. I think the situation will change significantly in 10-15 years, when the first large group of Linux-using college students reaches senior decision-making positions. A lot of my friends at work either use Linux or want to get started using it. It may take a while, but we will achieve World Domination(tm)! In that time, Linux will only get better. All the current wishlist features (journaling, hot-swappable devices, big memory, etc) will be implemented then and it will be hard to make a case for NOT using Linux in mission-critical servers...
The company I work for uses OSS software (Linux, PERL, Samba, etc.) as the company standard for servers, as well as laptop OS for the coders (Most of us would have loaded Linux anywayz ;) They recognize the power and felxibility (not to mention low cost) of using OSS software.
that uses Unix boxen (commercial and Linux) extensively, the company uses mostly
Monoposoft Windoze.
I recently proposed to the IT Director that we put Linux servers in at all of :-).)
the presently Windoze-only sites for file and print sharing and for email
servers. I explained that this would be relatively inexpensive and that, in my
experience, the servers would be fast and reliable. I also illustrated how I
could easily remotely administer the servers. Even from home or on the road.
Including software updates. Without reboots in the vast majority of cases.
(That one really got his attention
Then I showed how, if the WAN link to a particular site went down, I could dial
in to the server on the far side--allowing me to take a look at the problem
from both sides. And if the down-time was projected to be long, could easily
reconfigure the mail servers at both ends to use UUCP to get the mail flowing
again. I easily got permission to "trial" the solution at one site, to start.
Then when, as the result of Yet Another Windoze Problem, he recently grumbled :-) and :-).
about PeeCee down-time and hassles, I asked him "Do you really want to know how
to seriously reduce our IS costs?" He gave me kind of a side-ways look
asked, "Yeaaahhh??" "Get rid of the damn Windoze PeeCees all over the place!",
sez I. Reaction? Let me put it this way: he did not immediately dismiss the
notion out-of-hand
Why is all the above credible to management? At the site with extensive Unix
use the vast majority of support calls are Windoze PeeCee related. In
comparison: better than 50% (conservative estimate) of the users are using Unix
full- or part-time. And all of the truly complex, intensive work is done on
the Unix boxes. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see the light. And my
IT Director is one pretty sharp dude. One not averse to "thinking outside the
box."
Needless to say: at the site where Unix is used extensively, quite a number of
open source tools are used on a daily basis.
My feeling is that any manager that blindly commits to any particular solution,
regardless of the evidence, is not doing his or her job. IME, this is
particularly a problem with the Windoze Everywhere mindset: it ignores reality
in favor of dogma. Luckily for me, it would appear that my management is not
hopelessly mired in such narrow-minded thinking.
Well, it could certianly kick its ass when
it came to seeing who could swap the motherboard,
powersupply, and disks fastest. 60 seconds vs.
"you've got you case open!"
And if we want to remove the hard disk, and
toss our systems down a flight of stairs (or maybe just push it off a tabletop) and then put the disk back in and see which one will boot, I'd put my money on the indigo there as well.
cliff
The alternative to limited government is unlimited government.
I own a Linux consulting company, so of course I run on open source software wherever possible. My last employer was a Windows-only shop when I started. When I left, they had a dozen Linux boxes running mission-critical apps. They didn't care what I used to get things done; they just appreciated the fact that it was cheap and stable. My current clients also don't much care what's running on their SMB server; they just like the fact that it never crashes and they saved $400 (Canadian) on an NT server license. I cater to small businesses, so they tend to be cost-conscious and more open-minded than large organizations.
My high school forbids OSS! Our hired computer "whiz" thinks that OSS is a low quality excuse for shareware.. I also might add that he does not know his ass from his elbow.. EX: I was helping him for pay during the summer.. he ran up to me in some what of a panic.. "what happend to the windows floder? it's not there! I can't find it! but windows is runng!" Me- "What are you talking about? I hid them so people won't mess with it.. "what does hiding mean?" Also we have massive deployment of windows 98.. and if he had it his way windows 98 would be our server.. Thank god for 3rd parties... I would give his email out so you could flame this dick... But I would probably be traced! and kicked out of school for 5 days...
For a company with all of 4 programmers as a side part of the business it doesn't do bad. As a development team we are free to use open source projects and contribute/submit to them as we feel it will benefit the company. The thing we use/contribute to the most is the YSLs (www.ysl.org) but we are constantly looking into new projects.
I've managed to "subversively" introduce linux in a number of odd capacities, without opposition (because he doesn't know what he's talking about).
My advice is this: if you can think of some service your company can use, that they aren't using because of whatever reason, look at what linux can do for you. then just install it.
I happen to be a little lucky in this regard since we have a lot of older machines laying about (well, we did), and I have a lot of decision making power (see regarding clueless boss).
support gun control: take guns from cops
Besides having stuff back out into the OSS stream?
You give a much worse solution - a _small_, _inexperienced_ company (IPO'd just now) will solve _everyone's_ problems, if only they'd move to Linux. Thanks alot, I'd rather stick with that big black box (Sun/IBM/whatever's working right now). Remember - the right tool for each job, and if Solaris is working for them right now, why should the organization move to another platform (and shift their support paradigm ever so slightly)? Just to feed some movement that isn't really generating any revenue for them? Don't kid yourself; the "savings" in moving to Linux will easily be swallowed in the costs of adapting it (not to say retraining all those admins, downtime due to misadministration etc.).
It truly disgusts me to read this. I'd just leave at the first opportunity - there's no shortage of work for Unix sysadmins, anywhere.
(Unless, that is, you want to continue working in a "Unix free" environment, in which case stop bitching).
Here's a good writeup of a world without free software.
This is a very big issue for software development houses - using OSS code is risky, unless you're using a very "well known" source (e.g. the basic GNU libs, and stuff like the core Perl); otherwise, you can't be sure until it's been checked (which is a time- and money-consuming operation).
From what we're hearing in this thread most companies will allow OSS to be used. Is this what is meant by "actively promote Open Source"?
It seems like there are several overlapping types of "active promotion" that would be possible.
An organization tolerates the use of OSS. From what we're hearing, this is most organizations.
An organization actively encourages OSS to be used. Such an organization would have a statement of policy which encourages and fosters OSS use and development. This would be similar to what the Clinton Administration has just announced (This link is the Slashdot story that references a story in Federal Times Online, the "topstory.html" link at Federal Times Online that it refers to has changed and this story doesn't seem to be referenced in their on-line archives. Is this story still on-line anywhere? I couldn't connect to whitehouse.gov this morning to check there).
An organization not only encourages OSS, but releases software that they have developed as Open Source, or perhaps unencumbered Freeware that could be re-released as Open Source when modified by the Open Source Community. There are many examples of companies like this, IBM, SGI and Cygnus come to mind immediately, but there are certainly a lot of others. There are many issues related to almost-Open Source releases, software essentially Free-to-use and modify, but you don't have the same license on the modified software that you had on the original. This is the model with Sun/Star Office/SCSL. I'm not sure if this is "active promotion" of OSS, but it's in some ways supportive of the goals of OSS.
Organizations that release only Open Source. These are relatively rare. The Linux distribution vendors (RedHat, SuSe, et al) are examples. The FSF is the archetype.
If you wanted to promote OSS through investment funds or boycotts, you would have a lot of different things to consider.
Some seem to believe that OSS is not only the most socially conscientious, but also the best business model. The idea is that a company that releases only OSS is going to be the best able to support it and will be the best able to take advantage of any community modifications that are made. Such a company gets the best software to sell, and has to keep sharp in it's support and updates or it can be overtaken by others with the same business model. At this time, this would be a somewhat speculative investment, I think, as it's largely untested as a business model.
I note Cygnus seemed to have has as their original business model to only support OSS, but lately they have been making Closed Source releases. This may be saying that Cygnus has determined that supporting OSS only is not a good business model, or it may just have been due to insecurity in Cygnus' management with the business model. I'd sure like to hear something from "the Open Source leader" (which is what Cygnus calls themselves) about this. Of course, if Cygnus learned this through market research, they may not be willing to share their analysis with potential competitors.
A different case can be made for investing in only those companies that allow or even actively encourage the use and release of OSS. This is a risk-adverse investment policy based on the observation that if an organization is unwilling to take advantage of the great store of value in OSS, then they will not compete as well.
Similarly, an OSS coder may have a difficult time finding employment at the "purist" OSS supporting organizations - those that only develop OSS software - the FSF and Linux distribution vendors only have so many jobs available, after all. Perhaps in the future, there will be more such options. Today, such a coder may wish to set their standard at no "OSS forbidding companies" (of course), or somewhere between this and the "pure" OSS supporting organization.
This brings up another potential competitive advantage to a "pure" OSS supporting organization. They might have more qualified applicants.
Where I work, deja.com, the developers *have* to use a lot of OSS software to do their job. Our production machines are mostly running Linux which naturally makes it the target platform for development. Of course many of us have NT desktops but I personally don't use it for anything but MS Internet Exploit^H^Hrer, working mostly in XEmacs (on a NT X server it's pretty nice.)
I work at a midsized manufacturing company, and the general IS policy is, if we don't have source, let's see if we can write it. One of the bigest requirements to the new MRP systems we are shoping for is that we get source license (i wish there was an OSS MRP system) we think we have found the closest to perfect MRP system. My boss (CFO) is so happy now that we can simply install staroffice all over the company.. he likes StarCalc better than excel 97.
I'm posting this as anonymous... because I have to. Not to mention it's offtopic.
I know of this company that ever since high school we've been taking equipment out of their dumpster. They didn't like it one bit. The dumpster was locked but there were ways in but you couldn't get monitors out. Naturally this got old so we literally ripped the steel top off. 3/16" steel... ripped. We took photos of the stuff inside before removing it. Unless they shape up, I will send them to the EPA, and various environmental groups. Disposing of perfectly good monitors like this is not only wrong, it's also illegal due to the high lead content. There's no reason why they can't sell this stuff or give it away.
Of course, we're rather unique in that our workstations are Linux and our main servers are Linux (there's a database server running SCO Unix, but it's being phased out at the end of the fiscal year when we switch accounting software). Well, my own workstation dual-boots Linux and FreeBSD, but hey, somebody has to do it :-).
-Eric
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
You may not under any circumstances copy, modify or distribute (internally or externally) any portion of Linux, including the operating system, development tools and libraries."
You may not view any Linux source code except in accordance with Corporate Instruction IPL130.
Contributing to Linux. The requirements in this paragraph regarding contributions to Linux apply no matter where or when at work or after hours--such contributions are created.
You may not contribute any code to the FSF using their standard forms, including "assign.changes," "disclaim.changes," "assign.future," "disclaim.future," "disclaim.changes.manual" and "assign.changes.manual."
As stated in item 1 above, you may not copy, modify or distribute Linux code. Accordingly, you cannot contribute, license or otherwise provide any modified or unmodified Linux code (including bug fixes) to anyone.
You may report bugs, recommend improvements, or provide other such feedback to the Linux development community provided you have your manager?s approval.
Hydro-Quebec, in Montreal, Canada doesn't want any OSS in their HP or Solaris boxes...
That's the bosses point of view, what they don't know is that their major applications, batch jobs, uses gzip, gawk, etc.. full of utilities that were hidden, because, there is no commercial equivalent.
They prefer paying 28K$ for NetDynamics, which crashes every few hour and is slow as hell, instead of using PHP ou Perl...
What a dump...
An frustrated Employee
I know from personal experience that a LOT of software from what is probably the largest network hardware and software provider on the Internet (I'll give you a hint, their logo is a bridge in San Francisco) is OSS. CiscoWorks2000 includes Perl, TCL/Tk, Apache, and several other free applications. And what about things like sendmail and named that are inherently derived from OSS sources (sendmail, bind, etc)? Despite the changes that Sun/SGI/Compaq/etc make, are those to be considered verboten as well?
What about a system using the offical version of RedHat Linux that was purchased for $50-100? Is this considered commercial because it was paid for, or is it considered OSS?
I'm thankful I work for a company (a fairly large CLEC located in the midwest) who doesn't have any such policy. And if they tried to implement one, the network infrastructure would be down in a matter of minutes. Shut off the DNS servers, they're running Linux and BIND8. Shut down the web servers, a good chunk of them are using Apache. Shut down the email servers, because last I checked both sendmail and qmail were OSS. Any companies that do this have got to be just WANTING to shoot themselves in the foot, both technically and economically.
Especially when someone's removed from day-to-day operations, the easiest thing is to make the "safe" decision, even if that means going with an inferior product. As long as there are corporate vice-presidents, decisions will be based on (1) "will this keep me out of trouble?" and (2) "if I get into trouble, can I say that I did the industry-standard thing?" For such people, the open-source/free software world is really scary.
And realize that even a clueful adiminstrator will have to justify his decision to a less-clued superior: "Why are you advocating this open-source thing? We've always used (fill in the blank). Don't they make anything that will work?" Now imagine the conversation a couple of levels up.
My company has an NT only policy, our CEO regards himself as an 'NT guru' and says our company is commited to using NT due to its 'excellence'...gack....
I wanted to buy a server for our little branch 8 man office where i work which was going to be Debian, but no i had to get NT4 as its 'company' policy to only use quality products and services with guarantees.........
Needless to say I was overruled and severly told off (read if you want to move we wont stop you and forget pay rises) that a free low quality OSS had no place in our company........We dont get backups done consistantly as the closed source software dies every month or so, and takes an expensive techie to come in, ponce about leave after 3 hours as its 'now fixed' and charge us $200 for the priveledge..when it packs up again its another call out.
We did also needed to purchase a firewall and isdn modem, since the CEO didnt want to spend any more money on our little office (read his profit bonus payout would suffer) i sneaked in a REd Hat box....9 months on the only failure (its a 5 year old 'discarded' pentium machine) has been the teleco's isdn hardware failing for which naturally the free low quality OSS got the blame, that idea got sorted out in their minds real quick
If companies are that stupid about OSS then they are going to go to the wall. In times of tight margins less spent on maintenance & overheads means the company stays profitable or at least in business its their choice.
Thing
Please, I mean, c'mon...you can astroturf better than this...
RedHat 6.0 is *easy* to install, and X is no problem with it.
By comparison, try installing Solaris, and see how long it takes you before it's actually *usable*. Keep in mind that Solaris' hardware support is significantly more limited than Linux'.
Let's say your business hinges on a piece of software.. lets make it Apache... to make it work (luckily it's OSS) you have to patch it to do something it wasn't designed to do. You decide to save space on the server because you're running out of it and delete the modified source. Of course, you know what you did and can do it again if you need to.. No big deal. Well, a month later you decide that this great job offer somewhere else is too good to pass up and you move on. Three months later a new version of Apache comes out and the company tries to upgrade to it.. (there was a security problem in the old version or something... they just need to upgrade...) They upgrade and it doesn't work.. Why? "What did we do to make it work before?" they ask. Well, they have to start from square one and develop the patch for it all over again. On the other hand, if you had not had the source, you wouldn't have patched it, you'd just have made a program outside of it to handle the special feature that you required. When the new version comes out, it's backwards compatible with what the original Apache group made before. If you start patching kernels and doing special stuff, the company starts to hinge around the people that know what's been changed, how it was changed, and why. With the high turnover in Techies, companies are leery about putting that much responsibility on an employee that could just up and walk out without so much as 'goodbye'.
Thoughts?
-- dijit
tobkin@tobkin.com
I know that a few years ago, Motorola wouldn't touch OSS.
We have no such policy, at least, not with regards to IT software. The suggestions as to what software to use come FROM the IT dept, they are not given to it.
Well, thats all good and fine and all, but there is only one problem with that, just because its OSS, does not mean you are actually going to be using the source. If a company uses proprietary software they are not going to be able to modify the source code, so a company may use OSS with out modifying it as well, or have a policy of using OSS but not developing for it, or make a list of requirements (documenting things etc) if they do modify OSS software. Really its not a good enough excuse to totaly exclude it. And actually I do not see any type of reason for totaly banning OSS that does not include ignorance, disorganation or other issues with in the company itself. If that is short sighted then explain why.
so, one conversation with the IT manager (a clueful individual, but usually regarded as a single bright spot in a ocean of cluelessness) and we got a decision that it was worth a week of my time adapting VNC to fit, as compared to paying $BIGNUM for software that didn't. We now have VNC on all machines, and I am experimenting (with the knowledge and approval of the Suited Ones) with a Linux/Samba server for something they would have insisted on NT for a few months back. I am chalking this one up as a Win :+)
-=DaveHowe=-
The head of our IT department thought OSS was SHAREWARE. And I work for a fortune 100 company!
I work for a division of a telecommunications hardware company. gcc (very popular for embedded development), gdb, CVS, lots of Perl gluing local tools together. Supported desktops include NT, Intel Solaris, Sparc Solaris, and Linux.
Works just fine for us.