What will happen as more corporations see the open source light? Paul Ferris editorializes: “Like it or not, zealots and heretics are finding common ground in the open source holy war.”
The Age of Corporate Open Source Enlightenment
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
The first sentence was enough for me to gauge the quality of the piece as a whole:
“Like it or not, zealots and heretics are finding common ground in the open source holy war.”
If you want to be taken seriously, don’t use such stupid terminology.
Exactly… Give us a break.. Lets not post trash.
Holly war? Like it or not?
well, I think it is fine use of artistic licence.
it gives the reader a good metaphore that they can sort of relate to so they know just how firy the encounters are.
instead of zealots vs. heretics it would be historically accurate to use: zealots vs. preatorians (Roman empire thing). 😛
*preatorians = praetorians 8^)
This is the best article I’ve seen yet on this topic. It should be read and understood by anyone interested in the present and near-future of corporate IT. I also predict that it will be very influential in the corporate IT community.
This quote alone is probably worth tens of thousands of dollars (or more) to any substantial purchaser of Microsoft products:
“A sizable company with a large Microsoft desktop investment would be crazy not to create a credible internal initiative that evaluates open source. With a credible internal initiative—and some leaked memos of your own to the local Microsoft sales rep—the purchasing agent for your company would likely see a huge benefit from a cost standpoint. Use this to your advantage: If you have a sizable Microsoft contract, do the open source software evaluation and make sure your Microsoft sales representative knows about it.”
why must article authors insist on stating the obvious over and over?
More people will lose their jobs. Because open source is only a small piece to the enlightenment puzzle. And it doesn’t include enlightened self-interest.
I had a bunch of scripts that I did in Perl that worked great. My boss said redo them all in VBScript because I am not sure Perl will be around. Garrr!
This the best article I’ve read this year.
From the article:
Heretic: “You need to reconnect your desktop to the corporate LAN.”
Zealot: “Why?”
Heretic: “I need to be able to push the latest virus definition files onto it.”
Zealot: “It’s not going to ever get a virus again. I’ve firewalled it off. I check my e-mail via pine on my Linux box.”
Heretic: “What’s pine?!?”
Zealot: “It’s not elm…”
That one really boke me up – I haven’t laughed so much since I last saw an episode of Ab Fab.
Or how about this aweful fate to happen to a windows shop manager:
worse, the CIOs who decree that Linux is now the corporate standard for some core business function.
Yes it happened where I work – that was a great laugh too at the time.
Yes one of the best and funniest articles I have read for a long time.
fun to read and it has some valid points.
More people will lose their jobs. Because open source is only a small piece to the enlightenment puzzle. And it doesn’t include enlightened self-interest.
The bigger question is, why should I pay for an operating system? if an operating system is a means to an end, aka, for you to run software on it, why then would one be worried about what is running underneath when the important stuff is the middleware.
Most businesses I come across don’t mind paying for software, it is just another fact of life, what they DO mind paying for is an operating system of which they will use none of the built in functionality and are fed up expecting to pay a per-client access license for every user accessing the server on top of all the other client access licenses that they may have to look after.
I have yet to meet one person who can honestly say that they can build a complete OpenSource solution that compares to something commercial. NOW, it is, however, perfectly valid for a person to build servers that just do basic things like serving static webpages, sharing printers and files etc. however, when you get into large installations, which one are you going to use, DB2 or MySQL? JBoss or Websphere?
If you didn’t read past the first line of the article, you missed out on the best editorial I’ve seen posted on this site in months. It really hit the nail on the head, it described to a “T” exactly what is going on in my company right now, and what is going on with me personally. Especially this line:
“Breeding more control at work and stifling choices doesn’t make people automatically stop thinking about the forbidden fruit. It just makes them go home as early as possible so the fun can really begin.”
Too true, too true.
The religious metaphor shouldn’t have been used by Ferris : it scares away those who judge an article by the first sentences. Also, I find it odd that zealots are opposed to heretics : generally, those words aren’t used in the same historical context.
I disagree with the way the author describes the “suits” (the executives). They are depicted as people who are eminently practical, focused on results and only interested in getting the job done. If that is true, how come these guys have endured malware generated by Microsoft for so long ? Why do they consider natural to waste countless hours trying to salvage their IT infrastructure after they’ve been hit by stuff like Nimda ? These supposedly efficient people have gladly and proudly paid billions to a company whose products are known to be defective by design. Contrary to common sense, they have come to believe that BSOD is an Act of God.
Another point Ferris could have made is that when open source activists are called communists, it’s an attempt by big business to use one of the US government favorite tactics : if poor countries don’t bow to economical pressure, raise the specter of communism; then, it will be justifiable to slaughter millions of innocents in places like South East Asia or Latin America. Unfortunately for Microsoft or SCO, this doesn’t work as it used to; American politicians have come up with a more marketable scarecrow : terrorism (biological, chemical, nuclear, narco, etc., ad nauseam).
It could be argued that Microsoft, among others, strive to become a public nuisance of an unprecedented magnitude. Software vendors that are prosperous start to behave like their oil counterparts. They engage more and more in political activities, relegating their core business to the role of money making machine. Microsoft (for instance) having a lot of cash, has decided to make people lives miserable with crazy ideas like the TCPA, the registration of software already paid for, the extortion of money from those who misplaced their licences, the signature of a contract with a college in Canada so that their botched version of C would be taught instead of the real thing, …
On the other hand, open source proponents provide people with tools that allow them to use their computers as they see fit, with no strings attached, in order to reach their goals (earning a living, acquiring knowledge, having fun, …).
” I disagree with the way the author describes the “suits” (the executives). They are depicted as people who are eminently practical, focused on results and only interested in getting the job done. If that is true, how come these guys have endured malware generated by Microsoft for so long ? “
Up until now they thought they had no choice (remember he is referring to the CEO’s and CFO’s who in the vast majority of cases have no IT background) – but a lot are now learning that there is a choice. That is why over the next five to ten years MS will be toast and most major corporations will use opensource for core infrastructure.