Linux in business

On Thu, 22 Jan 2004, Craig White wrote:
> I think I'm fairly consistent about this - I don't bash Microsoft or
> Apple - and I see very little difference between them except that
> Microsoft has the market share and Apple doesn't.

*winces* Did you just put Apple and MS in the same category? :-)

*throws holy water on Crag* Back demon! Back! *laugh*

> It seems to me that the issue about HIPPA compliance that der Hans is
> trying to make is moot, merely because of the good citizen moniker that
> is automatically given to Microsoft. If it were felt that Microsoft's
> licensing terms were in violation of HIPPA, Microsoft would change those
> terms and that would be the end of it. The intent of HIPPA wasn't to
> exclude vendors.

Agreed.


> Now, if we are talking about Microsoft collecting data, they long ago
> admitted to doing that with registration of Office. Clearly they are
> collecting hardware data during the 'activation' of WinXP. I am not
> knowledgeable enough to know the specific fears of giving them control
> over DRM when you use Office 2003, the potential threats of Palladium
> (or whatever name the technology goes by today) or the intrusions by
> .NET and Passport but I know enough to worry about all of this as an
> attempt by Microsoft to forever insinuate themselves into the control of
> computer operations for the forseeable future.

I only want to add that this doesn't apply to corporate customers, since
we are not requried to go through that idiotic activation process. If we
were, we'd have second and third (possibly fourth) thoughts about using
the product. When you have thousands and thousands of desktops, simple is
good.

>
> That being said, most businesses are not concerned about the evils of
> Microsoft and when presented with the FSF/open source choice as a means
> to escape those evils that they don't see, it rarely resonates. It will
> resonate when the actually figure out that changing to the FSF/open
> source systems is a sound business decision. It's slowly getting there.

I agree with this also. You have to show return on investment through
various means: financial, privacy, security, productivity, the list goes
on...