[ILUG-BOM] Re: Pitching Linux to corporates?

[Devdas Bhagat]

On 24/09/06 00:49 +0530, Vivek J. Patankar wrote:
<snip>
> The techs promply point a finger at Microsoft who is ever willing to
> bend over, take it up the tailpipe and provide a solution/workaround
> ASAP, ie. if the company is a "Gold" customer.

And if you aren't, they simply tell you: "Sucks to be you".

> I have seen this happen, and I believe that this is a common occurance
> as most major corporates end up being Gold customers of Microsoft.
> 
Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM (or in this case, MSFT).

<snip>
> license/documentation states that "THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED AS IS AND
> WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY" and that the developer is not resposible for any

So they don't use Windows either? The point here is that Sun would
support tested versions of the software (in this case, RHEL). they
wouldn't support other software, in this case CentOS. The company could
have gone to any other Linux vendor, or asked on the CentOS lists for an
appropriate vendor, or gone with RHEL.

What they have claimed was just an excuse not to use Linux.

> data loss or other problems arising from using the software.
> To what extent this  decision was adhered to, I don't know.
> 
> No matter how much we stress of the benefits of Linux instead of
> Windows, the question of accountability for problems with the software
> and who is going to fix it will always be a stumbling block. Agreed
> that GNU/Linux distributions have much lesser problems than the
> competitor, but the corporates want someone to turn to or someone to
> blame for the problems they face, and that *someone* should be able to
> fix the problem or provide a workaround promptly. Microsoft seems to
> be doing that pretty well.
> 
Riiiiiiiiiight. About the only thing that Microsft fixed quickly was the
DRM hole. Welcome to the world for patch Tuesday and Exploit Wednesday.

> Any comments on this case?
> 
Microsoft is a company which lies and cheats by policy (and has been
convicted in court for this). They have a constant policy of not
following open standards, and trying to enforce their own.

For that matter, if corporates want brand name Linux support, they have
RedHat, Novell, IBM, Sun, HP, Dell, Canonical, ...

Devdas Bhagat