Month: May 2002

open source in business: how to sell the idea

Slashdot | Danese Cooper (of Sun) Finally Answers

If I were trying to convince my IT boss to adopt an Open Source technology I would be looking at the total cost to use it (i.e. Is it easier to use,learn or manage? Is the cost differential big enough to justify whatever risk? Is real support available?) in addition to evaluations based on feature set. In the area of control I would focus on the flexibility that comes from having Open Source rights to the code. No longer are you at the mercy of vendors who may or may not class your issues as high priority. I would point out the national governments and NGOs who are chosing to mandate use of Free and Open software as evidence that Open Source has entered the governmental mainstream. However, its important to recognize that the mass migration to liberated infrastructure software will be evolutionary because a revolution would be too disruptive to Business.
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elusive spring

The high today is supposed to hit 56: that’s not very spring-like. The temperature in my kitchen window is 70, but I can’t fit in my kitchen window. Brr.

FUD demolished

Congressman Villanueva’s reply letter to Microsoft

It is necessary to stress that there is no position more anti-competitive than that of the big software producers, which frequently abuse their dominant position, since in innumerable cases they propose as a solution to problems raised by users: “update your software to the new version” (at the user’s expense, naturally); furthermore, it is common to find arbitrary cessation of technical help for products, which, in the provider’s judgment alone, are “old” and so, to receive any kind of technical assistance, the user finds himself forced to migrate to new versions (with non-trivial costs, especially as changes in hardware platform are often involved). And as the whole infrastructure is based on proprietary data formats, the user stays “trapped” in the need to continue using products from the same supplier, or to make the huge effort to change to another environment (probably also proprietary).
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Open Source and and Strategic Business Risk

Open Source and and Strategic Business Risk

The logic is compelling; closed source code is an unacceptable strategic business risk. So much so that I believe it will not be very long until closed-source single-vendor acquisitions when there is an open-source alternative available will be viewed as fiduciary irresponsibility.
Eric Raymond, The Cathedral and the Bazaar.
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