[TriLUG] Novell & Microsoft - sleeping with the enemy

[Steve Litt]

On Thursday 15 March 2007 14:21, sholton at mindspring.com wrote:
> Shawn William Taylor <STaylor at torexretailna.com> writes:

> >I don't think the failure is with the technology piece, I think it's in
> >the sales and marketing piece. Most people (From what I can gather by
> >being a pretty green linux user and observer) on this list are either
> >using open source or contributing to open source (or both). However, I
> >don't see a lot of people marketing those solutions or actively selling
> >those solutions.
>
> People don't buy open source solutions; they buy solutions. Smart people
> (or people with a memory for the last time they were burned) buy solutions
> which keep their options open, and thats what FLOSS does best.

I buy open source solutions. I can no longer trust proprietary software 
vendors with the welfare of my business. I'm not at all adverse to spending 
several hundred dollars for an excellent piece of software, but the baggage 
proprietary software comes with makes it unsuitable at any price. Phone home 
forced registration. Self-help shutdown. Binary (or obfuscated) native data 
formats that cannot be conveniently exported. Threats of $250,000 lawsuits 
and "polite" visits from the SBA or whatever they're calling themselves 
now. "License management". Who needs it!

In other words, if Gnumeric, by far my favorite spreadsheet, were proprietary 
software, I'd switch to OpenOffice spreadsheets.

SteveT

Steve Litt
Author: Universal Troubleshooting Process books and courseware
http://www.troubleshooters.com/