Really? And I was under the distinct impression tha t Microsoft had a soul and would attempt to keep products that were insecure and didn't protect my privacy off their software stack....
Oh wait... They wouldn't have anything to ship if that were the case. Anyone who would believe Microsoft wouldn't ship something merely for security purposes obviously lives in fantasy land.
I think you need to change the analogy to perhaps put it in slightly better perspective.
Say you purchased a car from Foo Motor Company in 2000. In 2001, they release a "recall" for a brake spring that is faulty. In this recall it states that the part failure may result in the serious malfunction of the braking system and could render the brakes useless. All parts and labor are covered on the repair, just take to your nearest dealer.
For whatever reason (probably because you are busy) you never take the vehicle to the dealer and have the work done. Then in 2002 you are cruising down the road and a small child runs in front of your car. You slam on the brakes and NOTHING. They just don't work. You smoosh the kid.
Is Foo Motor Company at fault? After all they did warn you and provide a method to fix the problem.
Currently people are on Office 97. In testing several existing applications that use Office 97 on Windows XP there are compatiability problems. It is possible they are MS Access only. I am not sure. We have 15,000 employees.
FWIW I am not making any excuses. I work in software applications group. I can't stand XP or W2K so what they pick has no net effect on me. My groups applications run on any platform as we refused to use Windows desktops for development.:)
Right on track, however, I don't think it's the licensing cost that kills it, at least not for big business. That is correct. All sufficiently large businesses took it in the rear end a few years ago and were forced to enter into "Enterprise" agreements.
As part of that lovely shackle set we were given the "right" to use any supported operating system we watned. So for us to use W2K or XP is NO cost difference.
What kills it is the litterally millions of dollars in man hours that it takes to certify all of your applications
Change management in and of its self is expensive. Our company did not convert people to XP because there were lots of hardware issues with XP and because it would require user retraining. As to move to Windows XP required a move to Office 2003 for things to work right. MAJOR change there.
Now that said starting last month we are moving everyone to Windows XP. You know why? Remote Desktop. We have a large mobile workforce starting to crop up and management didn't like VNC and friends so is moving groups to XP for the remote desktop. Also, they feel forced to as W2K won't be supported soon. It is rather sad actually.
Just to be fair Gates has probably seen more than 280 Billion come through his bank account. So he gave away 28 Billion. Yes this is sizeable. Huge, in fact, but it is 10% of his worth.
Go to any self respecting church in the United States and you will find 30 to 40% of their membership giving more than 10% of their income. Just because their $7,000 contribution doesn't compare to Bill's 28Billion I would argue it hurts them a lot more to give their 10%.
When Bill gives up 90% of his fortune and lives on 10% then we can discuss how humanitarian he is. Until then I write it off as guilt money.
I think the point is that if you have an project you could set up with affero to accept donations on its behalf. Thus, you are looking at this the wrong way. This is a tool for ALL free software projects, not just the EFF and FSF.
This type of question is the type of thing the GNU Business Network hopes to help spolight more. You can a rough proposal of the GBN here. (i.e. Not what companies use Free Software, but what companies support Free Software.
I will make some sweeping generalizations, but here is my take. I work for a company that has over 10,000 employees multiple sites and a 2 billion revenue stream of which a large portion is fed back into IT.
I also do a lot of work for the free software foundation and know many people in the GNU\Linux camp.
with that preface this is the real world I can tell you about. In our organization our HEAD NT gurus are pulling down nearly six figures. The people under them around 45k. They all have no degrees and MCSE certification.
For the most part they are competent on keeping things up and running(amazing in NT). However they know nothing about programming (script or otherwise) their knowledge is that only of NT and TCP/IP.
I know several admins of Solaris/GNU/Linux. I will say that the people I know not only know their OS but also are forced to fully know NT (they never cop out, its not *nix I wont deal with it), but amazingly, they are ALL compentent programmers. Not only bash, but most even perl, php, C or C++. When I say compentent I mean better than most of our windows programmers. Add to that most have Computer Science degrees.
Out of this group the avg salary is under $55k. So if you ask me, its not about just salary its what you get. This is not meant to knock NT admins I have met SEVERAL very good ones.
However when you get a unix admin you usually are getting much more than what you get in a windows admin. I believe its the *nix philosphy. One can not admin unix without learning the tools. Learning the tools makes you have to understand internals and programming. NT doesnt force that on you.
Some say that is what makes *nix bad, some say its what makes it good. I agree witht he latter, I would rather have the mechanic working on my car understands how it runs than simply install parts at random under the advice of the dealer. : )
As for GNU\Linux sucking without support contract. HAHAHAHAHAHA. Being "corporate" I have a Dell Laptop that SUPPORTS GNU\Linux. EVERY problem I have had, I called Dell support and spent two hours on the phone, only to get a we dont get it. In each case 20 minutes on the net or IRC not only solved my problem, but made me understand WHY!
So support is relative my friend. Having it packaged and paid for doesnt make it better. Support or software.;-)
I think one should note that he did not say Gnome is BETTER than KDE. He simply said he would be supporting the Gnome team.
Competition is good for EVERYONE. Now that both desktops are FREE it really levels the playing field. As people not willing to sacrafice their freedom before would not even consider KDE competition regardless of technical merit. Now they no longer have an excuse to not evaluate KDE.
I think with bonobo and some of the other stuff going on with Gnome and the talks to KDE about sharing the merged/shared code base will grow more and more.
We are doing something similar for FSF. We have a few hundred people on the list that are interested and several core coders. One company actually helping fund development. So there is a need. http://www.gnue.org
Are you really sure that it won't hurt to get this cheaper?
There is ALWAYS some sort of trade off. You buy a cheaper car you maybe getting a less safe or less performing car.
Now I am not saying cheaper isn't better. In some cases it very well is. I like the idea of paying less for something I have been buying more of lately. However, I don't like the idea that now domain squatters will be even more prevalent. It is already almost impossible to find decent domain names and most that are taken aren't even being used.
Oh well. I suppose I would rather see the industry (computer) grow and everyone have their own domain etc.. than to see it stagnate.
It will be interesting to see if several developers actually jump into the project and make a successful open source story.
Or if it ends up like netscape where not many developers really jumped in to help out.
I think most OpenSource programmers really don't want to give their time to propel the profits of a company, but usually we dont get to play with their toys.:)
I tend to agree that arrogance is one of the primary hold ups in the Linux/Unix communities. When a new user comes to the community and asks a simple question, the get flamed and are told to rtfm!
We often forget that when someone is new that they often do not know the sources of where to get the information or they are so overwhelmed that they are just looking for guidance.
If the information is so common, would it not be easier to answer the question and the give a gentle (Information like this is easily located in the manual available at http://www.whatever.com).
However, I think that the Linux/Unix communities are starting to get better. A good rule of thumb is if you are trying to win a user base it is prudent to keep the flameflower off.
Slashdot Mirror
Make it four. We got one for Christmas the year they came out. We had the math co-processor, the memory expansion and a whopping 70mb hard drive.
Really? And I was under the distinct impression tha t Microsoft had a soul and would attempt to keep products that were insecure and didn't protect my privacy off their software stack....
Oh wait... They wouldn't have anything to ship if that were the case. Anyone who would believe Microsoft wouldn't ship something merely for security purposes obviously lives in fantasy land.
I think you need to change the analogy to perhaps put it in slightly better perspective.
Say you purchased a car from Foo Motor Company in 2000. In 2001, they release a "recall" for a brake spring that is faulty. In this recall it states that the part failure may result in the serious malfunction of the braking system and could render the brakes useless. All parts and labor are covered on the repair, just take to your nearest dealer.
For whatever reason (probably because you are busy) you never take the vehicle to the dealer and have the work done. Then in 2002 you are cruising down the road and a small child runs in front of your car. You slam on the brakes and NOTHING. They just don't work. You smoosh the kid.
Is Foo Motor Company at fault? After all they did warn you and provide a method to fix the problem.
Currently people are on Office 97. In testing several existing applications that use Office 97 on Windows XP there are compatiability problems. It is possible they are MS Access only. I am not sure. We have 15,000 employees.
:)
FWIW I am not making any excuses. I work in software applications group. I can't stand XP or W2K so what they pick has no net effect on me. My groups applications run on any platform as we refused to use Windows desktops for development.
Right on track, however, I don't think it's the licensing cost that kills it, at least not for big business.
That is correct. All sufficiently large businesses took it in the rear end a few years ago and were forced to enter into "Enterprise" agreements.
As part of that lovely shackle set we were given the "right" to use any supported operating system we watned. So for us to use W2K or XP is NO cost difference.
What kills it is the litterally millions of dollars in man hours that it takes to certify all of your applications
Change management in and of its self is expensive. Our company did not convert people to XP because there were lots of hardware issues with XP and because it would require user retraining. As to move to Windows XP required a move to Office 2003 for things to work right. MAJOR change there.
Now that said starting last month we are moving everyone to Windows XP. You know why? Remote Desktop. We have a large mobile workforce starting to crop up and management didn't like VNC and friends so is moving groups to XP for the remote desktop. Also, they feel forced to as W2K won't be supported soon. It is rather sad actually.
Just to be fair Gates has probably seen more than 280 Billion come through his bank account. So he gave away 28 Billion. Yes this is sizeable. Huge, in fact, but it is 10% of his worth.
Go to any self respecting church in the United States and you will find 30 to 40% of their membership giving more than 10% of their income. Just because their $7,000 contribution doesn't compare to Bill's 28Billion I would argue it hurts them a lot more to give their 10%.
When Bill gives up 90% of his fortune and lives on 10% then we can discuss how humanitarian he is. Until then I write it off as guilt money.
I think the point is that if you have an project you could set up with affero to accept donations on its behalf. Thus, you are looking at this the wrong way. This is a tool for ALL free software projects, not just the EFF and FSF.
This type of question is the type of thing the GNU Business Network hopes to help spolight more. You can a rough proposal of the GBN here. (i.e. Not what companies use Free Software, but what companies support Free Software.
I also do a lot of work for the free software foundation and know many people in the GNU\Linux camp.
with that preface this is the real world I can tell you about. In our organization our HEAD NT gurus are pulling down nearly six figures. The people under them around 45k. They all have no degrees and MCSE certification.
For the most part they are competent on keeping things up and running(amazing in NT). However they know nothing about programming (script or otherwise) their knowledge is that only of NT and TCP/IP.
I know several admins of Solaris/GNU/Linux. I will say that the people I know not only know their OS but also are forced to fully know NT (they never cop out, its not *nix I wont deal with it), but amazingly, they are ALL compentent programmers. Not only bash, but most even perl, php, C or C++. When I say compentent I mean better than most of our windows programmers. Add to that most have Computer Science degrees.
Out of this group the avg salary is under $55k. So if you ask me, its not about just salary its what you get. This is not meant to knock NT admins I have met SEVERAL very good ones.
However when you get a unix admin you usually are getting much more than what you get in a windows admin. I believe its the *nix philosphy. One can not admin unix without learning the tools. Learning the tools makes you have to understand internals and programming. NT doesnt force that on you.
Some say that is what makes *nix bad, some say its what makes it good. I agree witht he latter, I would rather have the mechanic working on my car understands how it runs than simply install parts at random under the advice of the dealer. : )
As for GNU\Linux sucking without support contract. HAHAHAHAHAHA. Being "corporate" I have a Dell Laptop that SUPPORTS GNU\Linux. EVERY problem I have had, I called Dell support and spent two hours on the phone, only to get a we dont get it. In each case 20 minutes on the net or IRC not only solved my problem, but made me understand WHY!
So support is relative my friend. Having it packaged and paid for doesnt make it better. Support or software.
Competition is good for EVERYONE. Now that both desktops are FREE it really levels the playing field. As people not willing to sacrafice their freedom before would not even consider KDE competition regardless of technical merit. Now they no longer have an excuse to not evaluate KDE.
I think with bonobo and some of the other stuff going on with Gnome and the talks to KDE about sharing the merged/shared code base will grow more and more.
We are doing something similar for FSF. We have a few hundred people on the list that are interested and several core coders. One company actually helping fund development. So there is a need. http://www.gnue.org
Are you really sure that it won't hurt to get this cheaper?
There is ALWAYS some sort of trade off. You buy a cheaper car you maybe getting a less safe or less performing car.
Now I am not saying cheaper isn't better. In some cases it very well is. I like the idea of paying less for something I have been buying more of lately. However, I don't like the idea that now domain squatters will be even more prevalent. It is already almost impossible to find decent domain names and most that are taken aren't even being used.
Oh well. I suppose I would rather see the industry (computer) grow and everyone have their own domain etc.. than to see it stagnate.
Derek Neighbors
DFC, Inc.
It will be interesting to see if several developers actually jump into the project and make a successful open source story.
:)
Or if it ends up like netscape where not many developers really jumped in to help out.
I think most OpenSource programmers really don't want to give their time to propel the profits of a company, but usually we dont get to play with their toys.
http://developers.forchrist.com
I tend to agree that arrogance is one of the primary hold ups in the Linux/Unix communities. When a new user comes to the community and asks a simple question, the get flamed and are told to rtfm!
We often forget that when someone is new that they often do not know the sources of where to get the information or they are so overwhelmed that they are just looking for guidance.
If the information is so common, would it not be easier to answer the question and the give a gentle (Information like this is easily located in the manual available at http://www.whatever.com).
However, I think that the Linux/Unix communities are starting to get better. A good rule of thumb is if you are trying to win a user base it is prudent to keep the flameflower off.
-Derek