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Businesses IT

Opening Up for Open Source 101

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the if-we-build-it-they-will-come dept.
jondaw writes "Businesses want to save money and boost IT efficiency. Can open-source software do the trick? Cnet attempts to answer this open ended question and provides a number of good case studies and examples."
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Opening Up for Open Source More

Opening Up for Open Source

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  • Of course it can't. (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Geez. Do they even need to ask? Noobs.
    • Sadlt yes

      Most in IT today agree that Linux is great on a server in some circumstances but the Microsoft Salesmen come into the picture to our bosses with glossy brochures about TCO studies of costs being lower in Windows.

      They also count in retraining costs and the fact that an MCSE is cheaper than a unix admin.

      Many in IT are convinced that Windows is cheaper as well since its an integrated platform with VS and all the windows desktops.

      Its a tough sell these days and now the MS salesmen are trained to scare

      • Re:Of course it can't. (Score:1, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Even so, if there is a $15,000 to $30,000 disparity between the cost of a paper MCSE and a *nix admin, that cost is easily recouped by not having to pay for CALs (Windows PLUS Terminal Services PLUS Exchange), SQL Server licenses, plus premiere support contracts for a small handful of servers for just one year.

        MySQL is free, unless you need to run tasks that shell scripts and crond cannot manage, or unless you want to bundle MySQL with a closed-source product, or unless you want to pay for a support contrac

  • Yes, but... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Only if it gets the issue of security right. The thing is, the whole claim that OSS has inherently better security has been exposed as hype for a long time now.

    Some OSS projects have excellent security, because the project leaders place sufficient emphasis on it, and the coders code with that emphasis in mind.

    Other OSS projects do not have good security, sometimes not even as good as Microsoft and co.

    Consider this: I have downloaded patches for more security flaws in Firefox than for IE in recent weeks. Mor

    • Re:Yes, but... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by MightyMartian ( 840721 )
      You are aware, I trust, that Microsoft frequently sits on vulnerabilities for some time before offering patches. Your metric for security appears to have nothing at all to do with security.

      • Re:Yes, but... (Score:4, Informative)

        by Michalson ( 638911 ) on Sunday August 21, 2005 @02:46PM (#13367226)
        You are aware, I trust, that the Mozilla foundation frequently sits on vulnerabilities for some time before offering patches.

        As an example, rather then just making an unsubstantiated allegation, the most recent patch, 1.0.5, fixed a critical vulnerability ("Code execution through shared function objects") that Mozilla had been sitting on for 2 months, and a high vulnerability ("Content-generated event vulnerabilities") that Mozilla had been sitting on for 3 months.

        There where also additional vulnerabilities ranging from High to Low patched in that update that had been known to Mozilla for 2 or more months.

        And this is only recent. Before FireFox 1.1, Mozilla was far less forth coming about vulnerabities, often patching them at their leisure and then silently introducing them into builds without any advisory to let people protect themselves; go look at the disclosure list - you'll find pages of dangerous vulnerabilities you where never told existed and for which you remained unprotected against unless you where downloading builds on a nightly basis (and reading the list wouldn't help you - Mozilla used to intentionally keep it 2 major versions behind).

        Mozilla built its reputation for security (a reputation that is dimishing as each new FireFox vulnerability is announced) by hiding its flaws and promoting fanboys (like the parent). Now that it has broken into the mainstream, it has to play like everyone else, without the special treatment and fanboy reality distortion fields to protect it.
        • You are more than welcome to go back to IE and download spyware, adware, activeX scripts of all kinds. Guess we won't be seeing you on slashdot for awhile....

      • You are aware, I trust, that Microsoft frequently sits on vulnerabilities for some time before offering patches. Your metric for security appears to have nothing at all to do with security.

        Real security is not a matter of patching vulnerabilities. It is a matter of getting design right so that those vulnerabilities are both confined and minimized. Sendmail, for example, is a textbook example of how not to design a secure program. BIND is somewhat better but historically it had many of the same sorts of

    • Re:Yes, but... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by rbarreira ( 836272 ) on Sunday August 21, 2005 @01:01PM (#13366803) Homepage
      Consider this: I have downloaded patches for more security flaws in Firefox than for IE in recent weeks.

      You say that as if you wanted to imply that Firefox has more security holes, but that's not a certain conclusion! Couldn't it be the case that Firefox just gets more attention from its developers?

      Signed,
      Captain Obvious

    • Re:Yes, but... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Master of Transhuman ( 597628 ) on Sunday August 21, 2005 @03:23PM (#13367378) Homepage
      "Moreover, the IE patches were offered to me via automatic updates within minutes of being available on Windows Update"

      Uhm, that's WHY they call it "Windows Update".

      Moron. Microsoft takes longer to patch, their patches break more things, and the vulnerabilities they patch are more serious than OSS ones in most cases. Just because Firefox, and indeed, other OSS products such as Apache or Sendmail, have had a number of security issues doesn't justify tarring the entire OSS field for bad security in comparison to Microsoft.

      And comparing all of OSS to Windows in comparing security is just braindead. A more appropriate comparison would be either Linux/BSD vrs any version of Windows OS, or ALL Windows apps against ALL OS apps.

      As quality of OSS code has been demonstrated to be better than commercial code in several studies, it is likely that security would be at least equal, if not better. As security-concious coding practices are relatively new, both OSS and commercial code obviously need more work.

      And finally, nobody ever said OSS software is perfect.

      They said it was as good and cheaper than commercial software in many cases. And it is.
    • Consider this: I have downloaded patches for more security flaws in Firefox than for IE in recent weeks

      Your post is a blatent lie. The last Firefox update was the 25th of July. Its now the 22nd of August. There havent been ANY patches to download in the last MONTH

  • Just what are they asking? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 21, 2005 @12:52PM (#13366767)

    > Can open-source software do the trick?

    For money, or for candy?

  • Free software pays for better support (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mpoli ( 713584 ) on Sunday August 21, 2005 @12:53PM (#13366774)
    I am an IT consultant and I get a lot of clients who ask about the real cost of free software. Most business here are very cautious to choose switching for open source mostly because support for this solution is still somewhat more expensive than for the old paid solutions.

    In the few companies I consult that are currently switching or have switched in the past, the Total Cost of Ownership of their computer infrastructured has lowered significantly, even though the cost of the support staff is truly higher.

    But, anyway, support here is somewhat cheap, as I am in a developing country that pays a lot more for software than for the people running then in a number of times.

    • Re:Free software pays for better support (Score:5, Informative)

      by Glonoinha ( 587375 ) on Sunday August 21, 2005 @01:28PM (#13366884) Journal
      You have pretty much hit on the key metric that is most often overlooked - the cost of the people running it.

      Honestly most of the time the cost of the actual package (database engine, operating system, office suite) is inconsequential when compared to the cost of the IT staff required to support it. The minute you need to hire a new guy (or worse yet, a $160 / hour consultant or contractor) to support the environment - you can throw the cost of the package ($100 - $1,000 - even $25,000) right out the window because compared to $100k ~ $300k per year for an additional single person to keep it all running, the cost of the warez is inconsequential.

      In the long run you save the most money by standardizing on a single platform - not for cost savings at the software license level, but because a single IT staffer can support it and support even more of them (by himself) down the road. Same thing applies to hardware - shave $100 per machine by going with home-built hardware, a different configuration for every single machine, and the minute you need to add a $50k / year (fully burdened salary) to the payroll all of your savings are not only gone, but blown completely out of the water.

      The only way OSS is going to save a company money is if it lets fewer people do the same stuff, or lets the same number of people do more stuff - regardless of licensing costs. Most companies spend more money each year on executive perks and bonuses than software licensing, so you are pretty much on the money when you say focus on TCO.
      • You have hit the nail on the head. In most medium to large companies, the cost of equipment and tools is nothing compared to the cost of wages. I remember seeing a graph of a generic company and at least 40% of the money through-put was wages. This means that if you can cut the complexity of using a tool, you can save more money then the cost of the high end tool. You only need to hire someone who is not a specialist. Not to sound like flame bait but this is the only difference between Linux and Windows w
        • Reduce the level of experience required to support the IT infrastructure and you save a fortune. The only problem is that if a real problem occurs, no one knows how to fix it if there is no button on the GUI that says "fix problem".

          Right, so you hire a consultant and blow your wage saving out of the water. Or worse, double up on your IT staff to try to compensate for their incompetence. As a consultant, I can't tell youhow many companies I have gone to which had 5 IT people doing the job of 2 or 3 and th

      • You are absolutely correct, Glonoinha, when you consider costs of a developed country.

        Talking once more about me experience in Brazil...

        One of the companies I consult for has just renewed their campus wide anti-virus licence (about 1200 desktops running Windows). The cost of the licence alone was comparable to the salaries paid to 5 avarage-to-senior full-time supporters for that same year (if you disconsider the almost 100% government taxes on labour).

        And that was for the anti-virus alone. Think a
      • Don't forget the cost of training and supporting employees. It's reasonable to expect every new professional employee to have fair to good skill in MS office programs and Windows. If the office uses something else, the training costs for new employees is probable a week or two. If business transactions (documents, presentations, email) need to be compatible with those of business partner's the cost of OSS becomes very high. The $250 of so for an Office license (for small businss) is small compared to the
      • You have pretty much hit on the key metric that is most often overlooked - the cost of the people running it.

        A MSFT rep or a politically minded CIO. Looking at examples across my customer base the cost of support is not any higher for OSS applications, or applications built on open source products, exclusive of the licensing costs. I bill the same whether I'm supporting an application built with .NET and SQL Server or PHP and MySQL.

        Provided you're not trying to support open source products with MCSE'

        • Wow - that was pretty harsh, considering I never said which package was more expensive to license in the first place, nor which package I personally considered more productive or easier to manage (large scale,) or under which package I feel that developers are more productive under.

          For the record, I do Java and database development for deployment to an AIX environment, and for my purposes Linux (SuSE 9.1 Pro, or SuSE 9.0 Enterprise Server) gives me the most effective environment in which to do my developmen

      • Re:Free software pays for better support (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Daniel Dvorkin ( 106857 ) * on Sunday August 21, 2005 @02:33PM (#13367156) Homepage Journal
        You have pretty much hit on the key metric that is most often overlooked - the cost of the people running it.

        Are you kidding? This is never overlooked, because the anti-F/OSS crowd keeps harping on it. "Sure, you'll save $x,000 on software," they wail, "but what about the cost of wages? That will go way up, because open source is haaaard!"

        Which, of course, is bullshit. The fact is, F/OSS IT solutions cost no more to administer than comparable proprietary ones do, and often cost less, because Oracle DBA's and the like make businesses pay through the nose. I fought a long and mostly successful battle to move my employer away from proprietary to F/OSS for our IT needs, and I built the infrastructure mostly from scratch, myself. Wages for proprietary software: one employee. Wages for F/OSS: one employee, who was a hell of a lot happier working with his choice of tools than with whatever crap a "solutions vendor" wanted to foist on us.

        The upshot? We have a stable, working IT infrastructure, and because of the money we saved, the department was able to grow in recent years from one employee (me) to four, keeping pace with the company's growth from a four-person shop in a single office to a $30 million / year multinational. Granted, this may not be all that impressive by MegaConglomerCo standards, but we make a good product and a lot of people, including me, are pretty damn happy about how things worked out.
        • Wow - are you and HangingChad in cahoots?
          Read my reply to him here [slashdot.org]

          I never said I was pro-MSFT, anti-F/OSS, or even pro-F/OSS. I didn't name any technologies, I just said 'pick the one that lets one guy get the most stuff done.'

          To apply it to what you said, if there was a technology (I didn't say MSFT, I didn't say F/OSS - I just said 'a technology') that let the company grow to be as large as it is and you alone could still support it all by yourself (without adding three other IT techs at $60k to $80k / y

      • And this is exactly why open source is beating commercial software.

        Because open source is OPEN SOURCE - you can see the software and you can tweak it. Which saves money on contracting with a closed source company to do that, as you can likely find somebody to tweak it for less money.

        Closed source companies won't even tweak it in many cases, for exactly the reasons you state - it then becomes a nightmare for them to support a hundred different versions of their software.

        Also, a closed source company is going
        • And this is exactly why open source is beating commercial software.

          Huh? In which universe?

          • This one, moron.

            Did you expect it to happen overnight?

            You can't read the percentage uptake of OSS products over commercial? The double-digit percentage growth of Linux and other OSS products year after year? The trade journal articles that cite double-digit percentages of companies implementing open source?

            Can you read at all?
            • Wow. The fact that you're so upset about it kind of shows your bias.

              So growth of linux and OSS products is now equal to "OSS is beating commercial software"?

              Can you read at all?

              Are you 12?

              • Look, stupid, I don't have time to respond to juvenile taunts from idiots who have no clue what OSS is about or how well it's being taken up by corporate America.

                Do everyone a favor - walk in front of a bus.
                • You really do a great job proving your point. I know very well what OSS is about and have a good idea of how well it's being taken up by corporate America. You seem to be lacking in that regard with statements like "OSS is beating commercial software." OSS is surely gaining strength and doing very well, but I don't think "beating" is a valid word there. Commercial software is still, in fact, winning. That was my entire point.

                  I'm sorry if my questioning of your comment offends you as a person in some wa

                  • If you'd SAID that OSS software is doing well, but not "beating" commercial software, instead of mouthing off with "Huh? In what universe?", you'd have gotten a better reaction.

                    Particularly since I then could have explained to you that MY point was that OSS software was "beating" commercial software in the sense of being BETTER, not necessarily because of market share.

                    Which still includes the point that OSS is going to beat commercial software market-share wise EVENTUALLY, with Linux being taken up twice as
                    • Sometimes it's necessary for me to be an asshole to debunk FUD that Linux/F/OSS zealots tend to spread. It's comments like "F/OSS software is beating commercial software" that make you a zealot. That statement is essentially false by every stretch of the imagination. It's the same thing as saying something like, "Well, this shouldn't be a suprise, since Macs are faster than PCs anyway." It's a nonsensical statement with no basis in reality. I'm not saying that F/OSS software is bad, or that Macs aren't
            • Totally off topic, but odds are the people reading this thread know the answer :

              I'm grew up in the Microsoft world of networking, and before that did lots of Netware - now I am dinking with Linux (SuSE 9.0 ES, and others) and one thing that I have yet to even see mentioned is how to configure 'network shares' or 'a shared file system' on Linux. How do I do the equivalent of the following in Linux:
              a) set up a particular directory tree on my Linux box as shared,
              b) configure rights for users that are not actu

      • 1) You need experienced people to run closed source solutions aswell, cause we're talking about enterprise solutions, not notepad.

        2) The open source solution is usually harder to set up and implement. But this is due to its mayor flexibility (ergo, it can be twisted to match your needs).

        3) Closed source solutions have a oh-so-better-support is a myth. You probably didn't read the licenses you purchased

        4) Once you've set up an open source solution, you don't have to put someone there to watch the app runn

        • shit that the programmers didn't imagine could happen, and I saw a few of those things

          Just finished a class that went through all the advanced stuff Oracle can do (most databases, come to think of it,) including pre/post triggers. If you want to throw even your most seasoned programmers for a loop, throw a few rude triggers (like stuff that just ignores an update, but only between 9:00am and 9:10am on every other Tuesday, and only if the updated field is at least twice the pre-update value) in there.

          Just p
      • I am occasionally considered good at supporting systems - crossplatform dba and sysadmin, cisco networking, checkpoint firewalls - but as a support tech, I didn't get anywhere near $100K or even half that - and I was the highest paid support tech there.
        Training is another matter, but tbh again, that's a monopoly backlash - you say that people can be expected to know the monopoly package, and to a certain extent that's true - but working for a company with almost entirely an MS monoculture, we got literal
      • Now lets get to the real cost of crap software. It is not the licences and it is not the tech support. The real cost is having yoour staff sitting there idle because that windows network has crapped out again, it is about having to repeat the same work over and over and over again because windows crashed, it is about having to buy the same software over and over and over again, it is about retraining your staff again and again and again to use the same software but now different, it is about becoming securi

  • Yes (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Ckwop ( 707653 ) * on Sunday August 21, 2005 @12:58PM (#13366786) Homepage

    Absolutely. Two cases in point:

    Case One: We were looking for a bug tracking solution and we had short-listed the contenders to a choice between Bugzilla, BugTracker and FogBugz. Although FogBugz was a superior product BugTracker won because we could modify it to suit our needs. We didn't like Bugzilla because of it's clumsy interface and the fact we'd need an extra machine to run it.

    We saved money on the licenses and we got something we could modify and maintain ourselves. Free software at it's best.

    Case Two: We were paying through the nose for anti-virus subscription and software. We all know that anti-virus software takes a lot of real estate. Most have *HORRIBLE* splash screens that no-one is interested in seeing and they tend to slow the machine considerably.

    Our solution to the problem to the anti-virus problem was the Windows version of ClamAV. It has a nice outlook plugin that protects from e-mail based virus and we set a schedule to scan the disk every night. There is no "resident shield" in ClamAV but to be honest they rarely do any good anyway.

    My former boss works at a much larger company (we're still good friends) and he's deployed the strategy across a company with around thirty machines and saved a fortune.

    So yes, companies can save money using Open source. The hard part is convincing them that a not-for-profit organisation can deliver quality products. I find ten minutes with Firefox usually does the trick.

    Simon

    • Re:Yes (Score:4, Insightful)

      by bburton ( 778244 ) * on Sunday August 21, 2005 @01:13PM (#13366835)
      Well, it's not always just about saving money. There's a lot of open source projects out there that are much less painful to work with.

      Not having to worry about CD keys, crazy EULAs, spy/adware, and vendor lock-in are big pluses of most FOSS.
      • People overlook this benefit. The administrative cost of keeping up with licenses can be huge. In some companies there are people whose full time job is to keep track of licenses and to make sure nobody is pirating.

        I also love the fact I don't have to type in those stupid keys when I install software. What use do they serve anyway?
    • " Our solution to the problem to the anti-virus problem was the Windows version of ClamAV. It has a nice outlook plugin that protects from e-mail based virus and we set a schedule to scan the disk every night. There is no "resident shield" in ClamAV but to be honest they rarely do any good anyway."

      Oh, the number of times my AVG res shield has saved my computer from Skynet, MyDoom, other assorted Trojans... AVG's a joy to use. It's light, it's fast, it's free (for personal use). And you get free updates. Usu
  • Of course, it will never work. It never did.

    That is why Novell and red Hat are making millions of Euros and Dollars even though they are OSS

    .
    XD

    • Re:Open Source and Money? Are you nuts? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by DaHat ( 247651 ) on Sunday August 21, 2005 @01:05PM (#13366813)
      Oh yes... because Novell [yahoo.com] and Red Hat [yahoo.com] are such great examples of making money hand over fist.

      Let us also not forget VA Software [yahoo.com], one of the original poster children for making money through Linux

      • Re:Open Source and Money? Are you nuts? (Score:1, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        You just had to come along and pop everyone's happy balloon with the awful truth didn't you?

        You should be ashamed!

      • Re:Open Source and Money? Are you nuts? (Score:4, Informative)

        by Coryoth ( 254751 ) on Sunday August 21, 2005 @02:40PM (#13367199) Homepage Journal
        So share price is the ultimate measure of profitability? Those charts and data tell you very little beyond the fact that around 2000 there were some suckers who were stupid enough to pay exorbitant prices for shares in... well lets' be honest, any tech company.

        What you might want to look at are Novell [yahoo.com] and Red Hat [yahoo.com], and the statistics like "profit margin" and "gross profit". Are they raking in money hand over fist? No. Are they making a healthy profit, particularly for companies of their respective sizes? Certainly. Contrary to what you seem to want to imply, they are doing quite well.

        VA Software [yahoo.com]? Yeah, well they're pretty fucked right now.

        Jedidiah.
      • Novell and Red Hat are bad businesses to own?

        Tell you what. I'll pay for any property or computer equipment they have and assume any debts. (I'll need an equity loan, but there would be no shortage of people ponying up the money.) If what you're implying is true, the owners of Novell and RedHat would gladly accept my offer to get out of their sink hole companies and move onto something that would make them more money. *snicker*

        If you want to make money hand over fist, you more than likely need a monopoly.
    • So let's see...

      Companies want free software and outsourced labor for $6/hr developers.

      So essentially the new American business plan is this:

      1) Get free stuff
      2) Get free labor
      3) ???
      4) PROFIT!!!

  • Do we really even have to ask? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by yfkar ( 866011 ) on Sunday August 21, 2005 @01:01PM (#13366802)
    If commercial closed software can do it, why couldn't open source software?

    • Re:Do we really even have to ask? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by CyricZ ( 887944 ) on Sunday August 21, 2005 @01:05PM (#13366811)
      The main limiting factor is, like usual, time and resources. A product like Oracle, for instance, has had years upon years of time and millions upon millions of dollars poured into it. While the open source community can produce the mighty fine PostgreSQL, they just don't have the time nor resources to produce a product equivalent to Oracle.

      Like it or not, open source projects are constrained by the same factors of production that any other good is constrained by. They can't be avoided, be it an open source project or a commercial, closed-source project.

      • Re:Do we really even have to ask? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Master of Transhuman ( 597628 ) on Sunday August 21, 2005 @04:04PM (#13367549) Homepage
        "A product like Oracle, for instance, has had years upon years of time and millions upon millions of dollars poured into it."

        While PostgreSQL hasn't had scores of millions of dollars poured into it, they also haven't had the "years upon years" - although they ARE one of the older OSS products around.

        Nonetheless, their achievements are impressive.

        Most of Oracle's "features" beyond PostgreSQL are stuff involving applications development, tuning, and other stuff that most smaller companies don't particularly need or which are so complicated to use that most DBA's probably don't even understand them. Oracle is one hellaciously complicated product.

        Oracle has more "feature-itis" than even Microsoft.

        A better comparison would be MySQL which is younger and doesn't have all the features a good database should have - but it's getting them over time.

        Given that most open source is less than ten years old, and open source project methods vary across the board from one-man projects to corporate-sponsored projects with hundreds of people, I think this form of comparison to closed-source software as to end results is a bit premature.

        Open source is division of labor at its best.
        As the open source methodology matures, I think we'll see no real limits on what it can achieve - short of putting a man on the moon in ten years.
        • But MySQL is heavily funded and developed by MySQL AB [mysql.com]. It's far more commercial, even if it is open source, than PostgreSQL.


          • MySQL is still younger than PostgreSQL.

            And being funded better by providing a double license is why MySQL is improving quickly. The more OSS programmers that can afford to work on a project, the better the project is, usually.

            But PostgreSQL is older and had more time to develop, so it's still the more fully developed product.

            If PostgreSQL had the kind of money MySQL has, let alone Oracle, it probably would be better than Oracle by now. But it's pointless to discuss it, because that doesn't happen in OSS.

            It
      • During the SQL server 6.5/7.0 timeperiod periodic flamewars would erupt on the usenet about oracle vs sql server. The softheads would always use the refrain "sure oracle has more features but sql server does everything you need for less money". Now MS is facing the same argument. Sure SQL server has more features but postgresql does everything you need for less money.

        Oddly enough oracle and sql server are the same price for the same feature set now.

  • Not always - of course (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Elixon ( 832904 )
    > Businesses want to save money and boost IT > efficiency. Can open-source software do the trick? It's clear that it can. But it is of course risky operation (as any other business decision) so the OSS solution must be selected with certain level of knowledge. OSS can boost efficiency but of course not always. So generalizing is not good way to ask this question. What I don't like is the SW business using OSS for faster start up. Simply pretend to be totally FREE - get fast response, fast growing co

  • For a counter-example (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mparaz ( 31980 ) on Sunday August 21, 2005 @01:23PM (#13366866) Homepage
    Remember Project David, the WINE ripoff featured last year? [slashdot.org] They're back [pinoytechblog.com].

  • Case Study Available (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Made in Japan - The Teriyaki Experience - in Oakville, Ontario, is running approximately 100 restaurants, from Newfoundland to British Columbia on a Point of Sale solution which is about 99% free software. They have an IT department which consists of one person. Using rsync, HQ has its central file systems updated from each location every 10 minutes. Nagios alerts HQ of the health of dozens of system critical threshhold variables in real time. The IT staffer can open a remote display on any location from

  • What cost the crashing (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I think we should be teaching our children about Intelligently Designed Operating Systems - clearly something as complicated as an Operating System cannot have arisen by 'programming', which was clearly proved wrong in the 1800's - observe the faliure of Babbage.
    Operating systems crash because of the sins of their users.
    As a Pastafarian I believe that a Bistromath is the one true computer.
  • Is there really any doubt as to what Slashdot's audience thinks about this issue?

  • Here's another couple of case studies (Score:5, Informative)

    by DSP_Geek ( 532090 ) on Sunday August 21, 2005 @01:57PM (#13367012)
    If you run a Windows shop and mess up on a few licences, even by accident, the BSA will come down on you like a ton of bricks.

    http://news.com.com/2008-1082_3-5065859.html [com.com]

    As a matter of fact, they can screw up your operations by merely conducting an audit during your busiest season:

    http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-996210.html [zdnet.com]

    Even if you don't use the big-buck CRM packages mentioned in the article, if you're running a business the logical choice is to avoid the risk of extortion and/or business disruption by choosing open source and telling the BSA to stick it where the moon don't shine.

  • ERP systems (Score:2, Interesting)

    by theid0 ( 813603 )
    From the article: "Such a shift toward open-source software for CRM and other business software applications, such as enterprise resource planning, is now beginning at corporations across the globe."

    I've got three questions about this, from my experience in a manufacturing environment.
    1) Where is this open source software that so easily replaces the commercial software?
    2) How can I convince a corporation that has been dealing with a vendor for a particular product for many years that it is worth the pai
    • "Unless the manufacturers start programming a lot of code themselves and don't mind giving up their work to competitors"

      Well, if you buy a closed-source product, your competitors are buying it, too. Where's your competitive advantage?

      Whereas if manufacturers support open source projects run by people either directly or not directly employed by themselves, but who are familiar with MRP needs, those people will write the basics - and then the manufacturers can hire those people as consultants to customize the
    • Try weberp, compiere or erp5.

      Maybe you don't actually need erp as much as automating existing processes so that data is moved around automatically instead of being processed manually. Eg: take stuff from a database and make a spreadsheet out of it with perl dbi and perl ooolib, mailing it automatically to the right person. This is non-disruptive and frees up employee drudge time, and reduces errors.

      Maybe hire a geek to figure it out for you.

  • Open ended question? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by stinky wizzleteats ( 552063 ) on Sunday August 21, 2005 @03:06PM (#13367315) Homepage Journal
    Can open-source software do the trick? Cnet attempts to answer this open ended question

    Yes.

    ...

    (Not an open ended question)

  • Oh god... don't yell 'bout it... (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ...I must sell my MSFT & Oracle shares first...

    The only reason for OSS unpopularity is the lack of common sense in the management... the management has been brainwashed to think this way : "A corporation is good if it earns lot of cash, if the corp. is good then they must have a good product." Now, let's try this on politics : "a political party is good if it has many members, if the party is good then the ideology also must be good"...

    I just wonder why I'm not dressed in a brown uniform and sing "Wate
  • TANSTAAFL
    TANSTAASB (silver bullet)

    But that won't stop Business looking for both... rather like Alchemists and the Philosopher's Stone. Maybe, one day, Corporate CTO's will go the same way as the Alchemists, hopefully by blowing themselves up... one can but hope.
  • As part of a panel discussion I moderated recently that included the participation of CIO representatives of about 30 major companies, we learned that larger businesses are:
    1) VERY interested in F/OSS;
    2) are NOT interested because of the potential cost savings, but rather because they believe that F/OSS can offer better technology with shorter delivery cycles;
    3) are going slow because of the relative lack of enterprise-friendly support options.

    If anyone is interested I can maybe write up a journal entry abo
  • There's a nicely compiled list of Linux companies in Omaha [phpconsulting.com]. My experience is that companies in midwestern cities are slightly less eager than big cities/big co's to jump on the bandwagon when it comes to purchasing high-dollar solutions from Microsoft and the like. The local user group is pretty active too.

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