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>It is very hard for seasoned businessmen and women<br>
>to trust something that is Open Source as<br>
>it is completely contrary to their way of thinking. <br>
<br>
It is'nt really of course, it's the most natural thing possible in mercantilism
and craftsmanship. Here is why. Software itself is not the end all. It
has to be at least installed. And then at least configured. Then used to
produce real work. Software is not really a product. It's the toolset of
computer engineering of all sorts. Shrink wrapped software works on the
idea that you be your own expert. It's works because it's expensive to have
a software engineer build you something like MS Word. People be their own
expert in that case. But it's a more traditional thing with systems to have
someone customize the tool to fit it to the particulars of the business at
hand. Someone that doesn't need anything from Word that isn't in Open Office
is clearly now in the market to spend a few hundred dollars for some custom
macros. <br>
<br>
What craft has not adopted some standard tools? This is the real impetus
for software to be free... it's not to give anyone anything for free, you
are supposed to give the money to someone who will do something really usefull
with it. That might not be a software engineer, maybe it's an author getting
paid to write something using Open Office. But it might be a software engineer
customizing Open Office for that successful author who naturally has a few
dream-feature requests.<br>
<br>
Software is the ultimate tool building craft. The result is always a tool
itself. It's like a carpenter in the same situation would find that once
he built a certain type of house he could just copy it. Instead of a work
product the house actually becomes another tool. He can just pop it down
anywhere, as a starting point. He will have to adapt anything that was dependent
on the original location, like the water and electric system hookups. Over
time you grow more adapters and make the houses more standard in respect.
This is all optimizing the amount of adjustments made to place a particular
model at a location. Open Source of all kinds is a system where programmers
get to reuse not only the houses they've built, but the houses of thousands
upon thousands of other programmers. Truly a situation with a lot of engineering
potential. <br>
<br>
We'll be able to provide this profitably because open source will be standard,
and customizations someone wants for the first time will be 9/10'ths of some
subsequent customization. Instead of companies dying and taking their products,
our tools, with them, we know that awk will stay even if perl is better,
A person will be able to choose something better, if they think it's better,
but customers won't find their system no longer works with a new machine
because only new versions of the OS are available on it (or at least far
less often).<br>
<br>
Basically I'm saying all IT workers split the billions a month that microsoft
takes in from Windows and Office, with the users getting tools really customized
to the way they do their business... businesses do have their own processes
after all. Each and every one does and it's why that business is surviving.
<br>
<br>
Long winded for someone that usually lurks and watches, eh? I was a little
inspired by the other reply that talked about discovering unix through linux.
My first thought of Unix was that it seemed crazy compared to VMS... but
it came borglike and I learned to appreciate why. Largely it was this linux-epitomized
openness. That and it's been reimplimented so many times people have it
down pat and ironed out. I truly believe that Unix is unstoppable, and I
always have since I saw VMS consumed in the flames of Unix' installation
tapes. Linux is like a barage of flaming arrows falling onto the small
commodotity harware platform which IBM managed to create by rushing out
a PC with mostly stock parts. I imagine a couple more decades and everything
is a flavor of Unix, or a recognizeable Posix variant, at least.<br>
<br>
But then, there <i>was</i> that time I was wrong about everything.<br>
<br>
cheers, <br>
craig<br>
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