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"Eating Dog Food"

Posted by Aladdin_Sane on · 14 comments
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Once, well maybe 30 times or so, I and others suggested that our famous Fortune Fifty company use an Enterprise GNU/Linux distribution on desktop systems internally, instead of a Microsoft one.

Once, well maybe 30 times or so, I and others suggested that our famous Fortune Fifty company use an Enterprise GNU/Linux distribution on desktop systems internally, instead of a Microsoft one.



Managers eyes light up when you say millions in dollars saved. Been there, seen that.



But what if your company is so high-profile in the PC industry that every internal move is noted by MS? What if MS is permanently on-site? What if MS pays your company (in one form or another) to keep their desktop standard internally? What if MS coerces your business, despite all sound business advice to the contrary, to adopt XP or Vista early so they (MS) can show those licenses as sales to Wall Street? What if...just askin'.



But suggest Linux on the desktop inside the company and the only argument against it is, "We're eating our own dog food," meaning "We sell MS so we use MS."



I'm tired of eating your dog food. This argument has not been true for nearly a decade. The company I mention above uses Linux internally on servers, and has been selling it to customers for 8 years now.



IBM, Novell, famous German cities have been turning to Linux internally for many years as well. They ate some human food, I guess.



When someone mentions "eating their own dog food" watch out. This metaphor, taken literally will probably gross you out more than the OS you despise.



Dogs will be dogs. Food to them is relatively indiscriminate: If it is meat, eat it. So MS is meat we must eat? Are Linux adopters vegetarians, all? This is one of many questions you can raise by simply taking the metaphor literally.



I'm talking about the preservation of massive hardware investments on users literal desktops. I'm talking about reduced down time. I'm talking about innovation uncompromised by the small mind of Microsoft. I'm talking about network efficiency that results in reduced bandwidth usage by 1000's, in turn causing lower investment in new network infrastructure hardware. I'm talking about peace, freedom and love...between the users and the IT department (weird, isn't it?).



We all know that Red Hat's RHED and SUSE's SLED can do 110% of what the current MS desktop OS does inside a company. The cost/benefit analysis is obvious, if you are honest and unbiased.



It's embarrassing: Using a Windows-only application to record test results from Linux-specific tests. Imagine it not as a betrayal of a moral principle, but as a simple betrayal of human food for dog food. I've eaten enough.



Now, don't get me started about the metaphor, "Breathing your own exhaust..."

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Comments (14)

Dogs are omnivores

jacog ·
Just noting. :)
Aladdin_Sane Story submitter ·
Thanks for pointing that out.

I know some dogs are very indiscriminate (and will eat things they cannot digest), which was part of my point.

I decided to do some post-article research and found these entries:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnivora order Carnivora http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canidae family Canidae, the dog family

What did it for me was that "...nearly all [Carnivores] eat meat as their primary diet item..."

Turns out to be a much more complex topic than I had suspected.
Libervis ·
> Turns out to be a much more complex topic than I had suspected.

Doesn't it always? :)

I mean, there is always a surface of the topic which most of us may know about and there is the stuff beneath the surface, which you usually start learning on wikipedia. You can be amazed with what you can learn by scratching beneath the surface of every darn topic that there is. Of course, this may not be a very efficient use of your time sometimes. :)
techiem2 ·
Well, when you consider that your typical windows user "eats" (i.e. installs) everything that they are given, see pop up on screen, etc., omnivorous works pretty well....

Or, in the case of companies, they "eat" whatever MS feeds them....

:)
DrDubious ·
That's why they're insultingly called "consumers"

re: eatting your own dog food

hughesjr ·
I think that this is a good concept ... if your business is selling M$ related programs and services, you SHOULD use M$ in the workplace.

If your business is providing Linux support, software, services ... then you should be using Linux in your infrastructure.

Personally ... If I am shopping for a product produced by someone, if they do not use that product in production themselves, then I certainly wouldn't use it either.

You should "eat your own dog food" so that all your employees can see and use it on a daily basis. Makes it much easier to support it in the long run.
Sander_Marechal ·
Quoting:Personally ... If I am shopping for a product produced by someone, if they do not use that product in production themselves, then I certainly wouldn't use it either.


Can you say: Microsoft SourceSafe? :-)
pogson ·
hughesjr wrote:"If I am shopping for a product produced by someone, if they do not use that product in production themselves, then I certainly wouldn't use it either."

In this case the guy producing the product is not selling to you but some distributor is. If a distributor had only one line of products they would be pretty fragile.

Knowing how abusive M$ is of their partners, I would be sympathetic with the distributor.

Software is a commodity and we should not imply motive or recommendation to a distributor. Even M$ does not warrant its product to be fit for any purpose. Why should we ask a distributor to do that?

Linux is interesting. Novell and IBM decided it would be good for business and for sales to use Linux internally. They both learned about migration that way, which was good.
Aladdin_Sane Story submitter ·
Somehow, Logistics of Distribution just was not the point I had in mind when I wrote that.

But even Logistics would benefit by standardizing on Linux.

Micro$oft to OEMs: Bend over and take Vista like a man

henke54 ·
Quoting:Last week, Microsoft sent certified letters to its OEM partners regarding Vista's anti-piracy technology -- or, more accurately, what happens if they dare ship a system with a "non-genuine" copy of Vista. (Thanks to two Cringesters, both sporting the initials D.S., for supplying me with copies of the letter.)

The answer: The system is crippled for 30 days, then hosed entirely until you pony up for a license. This is apparently what Microsoft means when it warns of a "diminished user experience." (To me, that's what you get when Windows works normally.)

.....................

To be fair, I haven't heard a lot of whining about Vista's faulty WGA hosing people's systems. But that may be because Microsoft has been playing nice, trying to avoid more bad PR for its underwhelming new OS. The certified letter could be the first step in a get tough campaign. If so, we may be in for a long ugly summer.
http://weblog.infoworld.com/robertxcringely/archives/2007/06...
Sander_Marechal ·
Posted to the queue (where it belongs).
dcparris ·
Especially since we're kind of needy right now. ;-)
Aladdin_Sane Story submitter ·
Man, I thought my metaphor was distasteful...

I've seen this happen

d0nk3y ·
"What if MS coerces your business, despite all sound business advice..."

The last place I worked for (one of the larger organisations in NZ), has an MS rep on their technology strategy board.

There was one instance I know of where a linux based firewall component was put forward as a good idea. Most agreed until the MS rep threatened pulling our MS vendor support....

Yes, this actually happened.

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