----- Original Message ----- From: "Nagarjuna G." nagarjun@hbcse.tifr.res.in To: linuxers@mm.ilug-bom.org.in Sent: Tuesday, November 05, 2002 8:46 PM Subject: Re: [ILUG-BOM] HappyDiwali thanx to BILL to bill in BusinessWorld
You have put in a few excellent points. I read that article and it did
not /feel/ right. It never mentioned the ethos of the free software community. It never talked about /how & why/ GNU/linux is where it is today. All they talked about was business & money. The media only needs a bandwagon to jump on. Like so many linux "pushers" out there it too has very practical reasons behind it. Of all those managers who have "embraced" linux they have done it because it makes business sense - not because they believe in the philosophy. And it beats me why we have to even think about them.
[snip]
A point here is that most managers are going to take a decission on moving or not moving to Linux as a business decision. It is connected to profitability and costs. They cannot make a decision on the basis of philosophy or ethos. Even when they choose linux because of the pholisophy, it is because the MS way of working is going to be very costly in the long terms and tie them to a tech platform they will have not option to change from. They are supporting the free / open source software platform because it makes business (which is not necessarily economic) sense for them
For linux to be successful, there has to be enough users and enough software, specially for commercial and for home users. That is what MS success was been about. Then only, is an OS platform going to be "mainstream". So you have to think of them and make them move to it. Linux has to consider the needs of commercial organistions to grow.
On a related note, why is it that in mid 90s, 68% of webservers were Apache / Linux ? Not simply because the server owners thought open source phillosophy is great (many of them probably did too), but because it met a very important need of theirs and it was business decision. The reason why the number has now dropped to close to 50% is also because of business reasons (dont flame me if the number is wrong, it is what i read in a report a month ago -- I think even 50% is fantastic considering how hard MS is trying to capture the market).
For example, If I ever tell my clients to switch to Linux, it will be considering business factors only -- cost (not necessarily free -- and considering hardware + software costs), options avaialble, ease of use, difficulty to maintain and availabity of good tech personnel who are willing to provide support at a reasonable cost.
Regards Saswata