I was just listening to your June 20-something broadcast on my MP3 player this morning before work and caught the segment where you asked people to tell you why companies are hesitant to move to the Linux platform. I have a pretty specific example.
I had an internship with a company that used windows exclusively. Indeed, almost 80% of my time the first two months was spent troubleshooting windoze boxes; I was actually supposed to be programming, but they figured "hey, free labor!" (yes, I worked for free, as I was starving for "experience"). Anyway, there were two main reasons why they weren't even considering linux:
First, the "technical lead" didn't know didley about linux (and later I found out that he didn't know didley about keeping his job as a windoze admin either
)Second, and the larger point: the company was in the process of integrating a new Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system into their business. This was a program written entirely for windoze and costed a whole hell of a lot of money. Now, not to get off on a rant, but this system was one big joke. It costed like 30,000 and didn't even use a real database!!! I mean, it used T/SQL but it wasn't built on a tested database, it was just their pet project POS database. What's funny is that a solution using MSSQL costed like three times as much.
Now, this second reason is, I think, the most popular rationale, but only alludes to the company's incredible lack of foresight. For example, there are a bunch of reports that this program generates, and for some reason my company was required to buy a program called "automate" to run them on a scheduled basis. This program is a hoot, seriously, you should check it out. It exacerbates the horrible mess that is the windoze O$. One actually has to go out and buy a tool that basically controls GUIs automatically because the programs were so poorly designed that there is no (visible) command-line interface. So, if I wanted to print something in a browser via automate, for example, the macro would look like this:
1) Open browser
2) go to address bar
3) paste address
4) hit "go"
5) go to file -> print
6) hit "print"
Instead of "link http://somepage | lpr"
LOL
Anyway, if you've gotten this far in my rant, I praise your ability to cope with my unplanned mess of writing
