Question for TLUGgers: How can Canada take a leading role in FOSS?

Colin McGregor colinmc151-bJEeYj9oJeDQT0dZR+AlfA at public.gmane.org
Sun Apr 2 18:24:01 UTC 2006


--- William Park <opengeometry-FFYn/CNdgSA at public.gmane.org> wrote:

> On Sun, Apr 02, 2006 at 12:44:01PM -0400, Evan
> Leibovitch wrote:
> > Long before IBM and HP caught wind, one of the
> world's first 
> > publicly-known enterprise early adopters of Linux
> was Canadian
> > National Railways.
> 
> How come we never hear about companies using Linux? 
> Is there something
> about the marketplace which givem them disadventage?

A number of reason I expect. 

I spoke to one GTALug regular who works as a
consultant. Said consultant noted about one Ontario
Government minister who at a meeting claimed his
department was an all Microsoft shop. This our
consultant friend knew to be wrong as the DNS servers
for said department were some old but still
serviceable Sun machines running Solaris. Now, if your
an information technology guy (or gal) in this
minister's department are you going to contradict your
boss, or do like keeping your job?

I mean it is our job to keep things working at the
lowest possible cost, boasting about how you saved $
for the organization is not part of the job
description. Some of us do talk about how we saved the
organizations $, like I did here:

http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/7127

Other situations it may not be in your best interest
to talk about how you are saving money. Besides not
wanting to contradict a mistaken boss, or not wanting
to play PR department, you may not want to talk about
open source for other reasons:

- Your firm is a partner with a major firm software
firm who's good graces you need from a $ standpoint,
so talk of Linux could hurt you in $.
- You boss is susceptible to pressure from know
nothing higher ups, higher ups who would get phone
calls from a major software firm if it were known you
were not using their products exclusively.
- You are in a very cutthroat industry. You want the
opposition to think you are spending the $ on
commercial software and encourage them to spend
similar $ on non-free solutions...

There are no doubt other reasons why people don't want
to talk open source, suffice it to say there are
reasons why some folks don't want to talk open source
solutions.

Colin McGregor
--
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