On Tue, 18 Sep 2001 23:39:00 -0400, Dan Lowe wrote:
> This kind of attitude from a board-room type probably boils down to "who
> can we sue if this thing blows up in our face and we lose business?"
I hate to contribute to an off-topic thread, but I've kept quiet so many
times when this has come up, and I notice that my own perspective has
never been mentioned. I feel it might help techies understand, and
perhaps save a few hair follicles.
Techies are often well insulated from the more financial and political
wranglings of the business. In some areas, this _can_ actually be
healthy.
The people referred to as "management" are often much less insulated
from these issues.
The point is that, exposure to these and survival in the midst of them
often rely on learning one key skill; the exercise of skepticism.
So it's not altogether unreasonable that management should be extremely
skeptical of software offered for free.
Personally, I find the following simple strategy highly effective in
convincing people that my views on open source software are at least
worth listening to:
Commercial software tends to be developed in pursuit of money.
Free software tends to be developed in the pursuit of technical
excellence.
These are generalisations, of course, and any given software package
should always be evaluated on its merits. However, this generalisation
often brings skeptical management folks to the point where they're able
to do so objectively.
Ciao,
Sheldon.
