Re: Desktop Linux? Where is it hiding? Is this group a joke or something?

From: Renegade (not.v_at_lid.net)
Date: 05/30/05 

Date: Mon, 30 May 2005 14:48:49 GMT

On Sun, 29 May 2005 22:23:49 -0700, probability2003 wrote:

>> Bullshit. If a CIO mandates something, and is backed by the CEO, the
>> employees will use it.
>
> But then the CIO is sticking his/her neck out. If the plan fails or is
> perceived to have failed then the CIO is history.

Otherwise known as "shit runs downhill".

> There used to be an old saying that "Nobody ever got fired for chosing
> IBM." It's much easier for a CIO to go with the status-quo then to risk
> it all on getting the entire company to convert to a new software
> standard.
>
> There's even slightly more to it than this. The company makes the switch
> and assume it works perfectly. But now spreadsheets created with
> OpenOffice are emailed to partners and documents created with OO are
> emailed to lawyers. And now there is a compatibility problem. The OO
> macros in Excel don't work 100% correctly and the documents don't render
> right. Suddenly this company is in a way electronically isolated from
> all of it's partners.

That argument makes no sense at all. Notice that the company is only
concerned that OO has a compatability problem with Excel. Yet there is no
concern that if they used MS-Office that anyone *not* using Office doesn't
have compatability with their documents. You want to do business with us?
Well, you'll just have to use the same hardware and same version of
software that we do.

Print shops are the worst offendersin that regard. Most use Macs with
version of Adobe software. Version 7 of XYZ will not correctly open
version 6 Files. If you want a flyer or sign printed, *you* have to buy
the same version of XYZ for Windows (for big $$$) just so that you can
save the file in a format that the printshop can open. And next year the
shop will upgrade their software to have the latest bells and whistles,
breaking compatability with the version of XYZ that you paid for and used
maybe a half a dozen times. They increased the costs and placed the burden
on the customer just because they refuse to buy a Windows PC and the
matching XYZ app themselves.

That is only one reason that proprietary formats are bad.

> When you get to the CIO/CFO/CxO level one of the things you need to
> consider is risk-management.

Vendor lock-in and proprietary formats that change with each release
should be a higher priority. How long can a business operate if you
upgrade an app for security reasons and it can no longer read the older
format that all of your data is stored as?

BTW, I fixed the crosspost problem that the original poster started. ;)