RE: why linux?

["Chuck Ackerman" <cackerman@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Life is tough, very tough.  It's very difficult to be 100% politically
correct all the time.  And, it's always foolish to make business
decisions based upon religious beliefs.

I'm just a little guy.  My company only has about 1,000 desktop
machines.  Any decision I make out of retaliation against Microsoft will
have absolutely no effect on the marketplace.  Probably, if I had
1,000,000 desktops I might be able to make a dent...maybe.  

Putting it in those terms I must make decisions that are best for MY
company, not decisions that I think will hurt Microsoft.  Having said
that here's my bottom line: STANDARDS MEAN ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!  I'll say
it twice for emphasis: standards mean absolutely nothing.  The only real
standards are the ones set by the market leader.  And right now that's
IE.  

There are many web pages, including ones that I've written, that expect
a browser to act a certain way.  If I suddenly get a religious epiphany
and replace all my desktops with Linux and now deprive my users of
properly functioning web pages then I'm the idiot for having made a poor
business decision.  

Yeah, sure, it's a noble fight to go against the evil empire.  But I'm
not about to do it on my employer's dollar.  I stayed with the IBM evil
empire in the '70s and '80s and I'll stay with MS in the 2000s.  I'd be
cheating my employer if I chose otherwise.  My job is to make the best
decisions I can for the company, not to feed my ego.  It's the price
I've paid for 28 years in senior I.T. management.

Yes, it requires more tech support costs to support Microsoft products
but even after factoring that and the cost of MS products the overall
ROI for the entire enterprise is dramatically less than a Linux desktop.

At some point in the future the desktop may be more than 60% Linux.
It's at that point that I'll consider the Linux desktop.

Chuck
Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of my employer.


> Apparently not, since they're willing to buy into a company that would

> rather force its competitors out of business (with anticompetitive 
> tactics that would make the "robber barons" of the early 
> transcontinental railroads seem downright beatific) than produce a 
> decent product. Microsloth (actually, my preferred nickname for that 
> company incorporates an obscene Yiddish word) is the Enron of the 
> software industry.