Re: [edlug] Stallman's talk

[michael calwell <michael.calwell@xxx.xxx.xxx>]

Dick Middleton wrote:

> On Friday 28 May 2004 23:08, James Eaton-Lee wrote:
>  
>
> > there simply
> > isn't the money to train or hire someone competant in *all* of the
> > fields which they require to administer a set of linux machines to
> > handle all of their needs: the average small to medium charity office
> > requires:
> >    
>
> The implication is that somehow it's easier to do these things with doze than 
> linux.  Different I can accept but easier - no.   
>
> Dick
>
>  

Sadly, and I do genuinely mean that, I don't agree.

About 18 months ago I worked at a startup IT operation for a big 
financial in Edinburgh. The whole shebang was brand new - everything - 
network, machines etc.

The process by which machines were initially built was simply stick in a 
disk, configure locale, give it IP info, then stick it in a domain. And 
that was it. When the AD side of it was up and running and the desktop 
packages had been created and Exchange had been set up and a 
flileserver, it was pretty much zero effort, to be honest.

At that point, a small org or charity would have had all of its needs 
met, quickly and easily. I'd love to say Windows 2000 was inherently 
flaky and unreliable, but I can't, and if you stick to a small handful 
of applications of roughly the same vintage, you're generally OK.

Of course, the real problems start with windows when...

1:  The minute you start exchanging data and you connect to the 
internet. Then, you need an army of on-the ball people and software to 
keep your network and your data 'safe'. I wonder what percentage of 
windows TCO is consumed in that task? Interestingly, that's a complete 
function of the non-free nature of M$ products by  Stallman's criteria - 
you can't see what the problems are until they happen, and even if you 
could, you couldn't fix it.

2: The minute it gets 'old', (the licencing expires*, or there's a kind 
of peer pressure to upgrade to Word X) Then you are forced onto the 
ridiculous upgrade roundabout, ditching perfectly acceptable hardware to 
accomodate bloatware that doesn't actually do anything more than what 
you've replaced it with, other than features that you'll never actually 
want or need. It's a rather silly charade of  waste, coercion, 
disruption, and only to wind up where you started, and shows up such a 
lack of vision, imagination and courage on the part of the so-called 
professionals that instigate and perpetuate it.

So although organisations that ride the virus/vulnerability/upgrade 
roundabout enough times should get the message that maybe they need to 
think about alternatives, and putting resources into that, many don't. 
And for new organisations thinking tactically rather than strategically, 
it's understandable to take the MS route, and it's difficult for someone 
to come along to them and suggest an alternative to MS without taking an 
enormous personal risk, and maybe enven jeopardising a small startup's 
chances.

Sorry about the rant, but I've watched enough waste of time, money and 
hardware and the creation and elevation of McJobs not to feel strongly, 
and on the other hand, I'm acutely aware of the practical limitations of 
the open-source alternatives. I suppose we need to work hard to close 
the gap.


* I was one of two technicians tasked with the astonishing task of 
upgrading a battery of OS/2 Warp 4 application servers that had been 
running those applications without fault  and without a single call to 
IBM for years to the latest version of OS/2, even though the corporate 
strategy was to migrate off of OS/2 completely within 6 months. We 
managed to get the project canned once we explained the technical and 
testing implications raised but the chief reason? IBM were dropping support.

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