In comp.os.linux.advocacy, 7
<website_has_email@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote
on Thu, 25 Oct 2007 20:54:21 GMT
<1o7Ui.37057$c_1.10490@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
> Roy Schestowitz wrote:
>
>> More Linux poison, just as they do in the EU.
>>
>>
>> ,----[ Quote ]
>> | "The majority of our customers have mixed-source
>> | environments, and they want their platform vendors
>> | to make things work together," said Roger Levy,
>> | senior vice president and general manager, Open
>> | Platform Solutions at Novell.
>
>
> That simply put is an out of date lie.
>
> Today, open source customers want open source products.
>
> They don't want it tainted with proprietory technologies.
>
> Every time proprietory is mentioned, your average IT
> manager now creates a big fuss over how they are being
> screwed. Your average techie voices the same opinion
> by expression how their time gets screwed with closed
> source unmaintable products.
>
There appear to be multiple issues here. Presumably,
the main level a business will want to work at is
providing services such as email, conference management,
asset/document handling, and order tracking -- "office
stuff", one might call it. Since most shops have some
proprietary software (I'd hesitate to say "all", but AIUI
most software is in fact contract and/or inhouse work), I'd
say they'd want the solutions to work together, as well.
Microsoft of course makes a show of integration -- mostly
with their own stuff (called, in a fit of high originality,
"Microsoft Office" [*]) -- but with standards, an IT department
has a fighting chance of actually being able to do email,
conference management, asset/document handling, and order
tracking without delving into the idiosyncratic/idiotic
world of machine management, virus malware eradication,
volume defragmentation, and network troubleshooting.
Of course Microsoft Office is the obvious solution,
it's the simple solution -- and, it turns out, it's the
wrong solution. Not to say Office isn't a good idea,
but between Microsoft's insistence on using proprietary
formats which are convenient for them, and attempting to
lock out competitors by not standardizing those formats
(and, worse, modifying them on occasion so that competitors
can't reverse-engineer them), IT shops are presumably up
in arms, waving at the flies buzzing around them as the
alligators munch on their legs in the swamp which they
were supposed to be draining -- in this case, because the
Microsoft pump's clogged, and the new pump with a too-short
electrical cord won't work with the old pipe.
Is OpenOffice a good replacement? Dunno, really. I like
the spreadsheet but prefer writing the HTML myself.
(YMMV on all this.) Impress is adequate but I tend
to work with SVG for images. The math package works
though one wonders why they felt the need to implement
a TeX replacement. (Of course TeX has its own issues,
mostly because I'm not sure there's a well-defined set of
macros that works everywhere.)
But at least I know OpenOffice has a chance of working.
It might even become a natural monopoly. (I hope not;
I want to keep it accountable. Of course, email is but
one method of communication between individuals anyway.)
I don't know about Roger Levy's customers, but software is
a unique animal -- if a wheel already exists out there,
no point in reinventing the wheel as opposed to merely
making a copy of a known working one, unless the wheel is
known *not* to work for some reason (e.g., a side is flat,
it's too thin, it wobbles, the stuff it's made out of
melts in hot temperatures), in which case one can modify
the wheel, making another wheel, which others can copy if
they need to. (And of course the axle must fit.)
The GPL encourages this sort of thing. Microsoft, of
course, would just as soon sell a green-curtained wheel
to its customers and have them worship it (by paying a
monthly or yearly maintenance cost). Pay no attention to
the hexagon behind the curtain; it's a wheel with our
specially innovated "Stay-Put" feature! Trust us.
[*] there is, predictably, a flip side. Web browsers
in the non-Windows world have many colorful names --
"Safari" in MacOSX (it's a jungle out there?), "Opera"
(your page isn't loaded until someone sings?), "Galeon"
(slave driver!), "Epiphany" (Wow, I could have viewed
the Web!), "kahehakase" (gesundheit?), "Arena"
(Round 1...fight!), "Mosaic" (wooo, pretty tiles),
"Netshark" (cue the music, please), "Lynx" (nice kitty
cat, don't bite me now...) "Grail" (with or without
Castle Zoot?) and "Cyberdog" (fetch!).
Maybe Apple's right -- it's a jungle out there. Round 2?
--
#191, ewill3@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Useless C/C++ Programming Idea #11823822:
signal(SIGKILL, catchkill);
--
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