OSS In the Office

[Austin Godber]

Here is a snip from a slashdot thread today (the one about MS Office). 
I am wondering if this is a good summary of business attitudes, and if 
so, how should opensource deal with it?

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  The reason that they [businesses] won't touch OSS is because they 
perceive risk to their careers in going with it. It's not that OSS is 
more or less buggy, it's a matter of them having to take the blame if it 
goes badly. If you buy from a proprietary software vendor, then you've 
got somebody that you are paying, that you can yell at if things go 
wrong. The decision to use their software won't ever be questioned, and 
either they'll be made to fix it, or another vendor will be chosen. The 
decision to pick that vendor will likely never be questioned as long as 
the manager can show some due diligence in making the decision.

On the other hand, if they choose an open source product, if there is a 
bug, there's nobody to pass the buck too. So the manager is taking on 
the burden of responsibility if that software does have bugs in it. 
He'll be perceived as exposing the company to unnecessary risk just to 
save a few bucks.

This is part of an overall attitude problem in corporate america. 
Managers, generally, suffer more for a mistake than they gain for a 
success. Success is expected, that's doing your job. Failure is 
incompetence. Of course failure caused by an effort to get the company 
ahead of the game is still failure, so why take the risk. Hire 
contractors, and pay for software vendors because if there is a mistake 
you just dump the blame onto them, cut ties, and your job is secure.
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Austin