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Rethinking Open Source Strategy

Posted by tadelste on · 2 comments
IT Management; By One thing is for sure... The open source movement is gaining momentum and serious technology manager 		Mail this story
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[Ed: This is one of the most confusing pro-open source articles I have read. Ultimately, the author gives his reasons why FOSS works. He starts off, however, saying that the major companies he had at a panel we not enthusiastic about FOSS. He named the firms and suddenly, I realized he was speaking with the wrong people. Some of those companies have made major investments in Linux. Stay cool until you finish. It's not that bad. -tadelste]

One thing is for sure... The open source movement is gaining momentum and serious technology managers are beginning to rethink how they might participate in the open source movement. So what would you say if I asked you straight up, Wwhat are you doing about open source software in your companies?''

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Comments (2)

tuxchick ·
It appears that FOSS still means "dirty unreliable hippies" to a lot of business folks, and they aren't looking very far into the future. Don't make the mistake of believing that business folks, even in large enterprises, are very smart, 'cause they're not. They don't know how to do a proper cost/reward analysis, they're usually not interested in exploring other options, and most of them consider the IT department to be an expensive, but necessary, nuisance that they would rather not have to bother with. And nobody from Debian or Gentoo or Slackware will ever take the PHBs to lunch at a hooter bar. (The commercial Linuxes, I don't know.)

So it's incumbent on FOSS supporters to continue educating on all the benefits. I'm not sure how to reach the decision-makers- that's a tough one, because it seems more political than factual. But tech folks understand things like technical superiority and freedom.
helios ·
It started out very simple. I walked into my daughters jr high school the second day of summer vacation and went to the office. I asked who was in charge of the computers and was pointed in the right direction. That's all I did.

I struck up a conversation with the tech guy there trying to repair an email server and got to talking shop. My singular goal was to get someone there to try Linux. Now, I am not delusional...I know how much luck can play in a situation like this but to make a long story a bit more tolerable...in time, I ended up getting a Linux Lab started in that sub-district and the administrative offices made the switch to oOO before the next school year began.

that was one sub-district. 212 computers and a dozen kids after school twice a week. (I am recovering from a serious illness and am back to facilitating this lab). For as much success as I had at that school, I all but got thrown out on my face at the next one I tried. That leads me to believe that laziness is to be observed at all levels...not just the complacent home user but the IT administrator of a school or business. They KNOW how to fix the system they have, they don't want to learn another one.

Seems that is the major obstacle I run into anyway...and the fact that 2/3rds of the everyday computer users I talk to have no idea what Linux is. As soon as we get a fairly centralized distro group, we might wanna think about advertising.

helios

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