OSS In the Office

[Scott H]

> From: Austin Godber <godber@uberhip.com>
> 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?
> 
> ----
>   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.

The questions Austin asks are:

1. is a good summary of business attitudes? 
2. how should opensource deal with it?

My experience as the "Senior Techie" at a
mid-sized American corporation ($2.5B) is the
answer to #1 is yes, in many cases.  A lot of
this is the PERCEPTION that many middle and upper
level IT managers have.  But this is breaking up
and more and more, and OSS is being considered
increasingly legitimate.  Backing by IBM and
others is helping change this perception.  

In response to #2, (and a response here is very
important!  We all need to work on this) several
people have hit on important ideas.  From my
experience, to those who are scared of risking
OSS, one needs to emphasize that today's
proprietary software really does NOT provide you
with ANY legal recourse.  You can't sue MS
because they have a known security hole and they
don't patch it.  Or if there software doesn't
work - there's just nothing legal you can do. 
Put any modern EULA in front of the chickens and
read it together.   Discuss real-life experiences
with software failures.  This is basically an
issue of PERCEPTION.  It SEEMS like there is more
recourse against proprietary software.  In
reality, there is little difference.  As far as
technical support, proprietary software sometimes
has the edge, sometimes not.  If you have a
problem with Exchange, you can call MS IT Pro
"Pay Per Incident" support for $245 and they will
stick with you until the problem is either
resolved or it is determined the problem is not
with the MS product.  If you run postfix or
sendmail or qmail or any other well-established
OS product, you will get very fast response times
on the mailing lists, but you won't get to hear a
soothing voice.  Lesser known and used OSS is
sometimes tougher to get help on.  But I would
take the free maillist support of a major OSS
product than a $245 call to MS anyday.  The mail
list gives me access to many wizards all at once.

Also I think if managers go with OSS *JUST* to
save $, they are more at risk of critcism if
there is a problem.  If they support their
decisions because of known problems with
proprietary software or with known advantages of
OSS, they will have firmer ground to stand on. 
They should be made aware of these differences. 

Good luck in your own battles against FUD,

/scott



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