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I've had similar experiences. Corps get calcified; individuals don't
know which FUD to believe, and place little emphasis on direct
experience; non-profits are staffed by the slow and terrified.
But more and more I've been thinking, so who cares?
Linux does not need these people. Linux deployment is growing at an
astonishing rate as it is, with new corps, individuals and non-profits
seeing the light every day. Advocacy was really important a year or two
ago, and I did a lot of it in my own small way, but the laws of
thermodynamics are starting to take over now. So we don't need to
advocate Linux for the sake of the advancement of Linux, it's selling
itself.
Do these people need Linux? To you and me it certainly appears that
they do, it would save them all kinds of money and headache,
particularly when compared to A Certain Overrated Windowing System That
Can Barely Handle DNS For Its Own Company.
But if you don't know you're hurting, if I have to convince you to try
something new, then pretty quickly it becomes my problem instead of
yours. And the first time something goes wrong with their nifty new
Linux network, they'll blame Linux, not their own errors or the neotonic
state of computer science in general, because they were talked into
using something they were reluctant to consider in the first place -- as
for example if (as some have advocated) government regulations were
enacted which required government organizations to consider Free
software for all software purchasing contracts.
All I'm trying to say there is that the source of motivation matters a
lot. Let them come to Linux on their own because they think it's their
own idea, and they'll have a much better experience than they would if
somebody talked them into it, possibly because they'll arrive in pain
and find balm in the land of the forward-facing slash.
And, I think that day will come sooner or later. Maybe later, maybe
many property tax dollars will be siphoned off to Redmond or to a
nonprof-centered consulting company first, but it's getting hard to
ignore the free Unices even in the non-technical community. The need is
just too great, and growing, and too well met by solid engineering
rather than enthusiastic marketing.
We can help by being available and by putting in the effort when they do
open the doors to us. Schools are always short for help, and Unix
knowledge is always in the top five why-nots in deploying a Linux or BSD
network (Windows knowledge should always be in the top five why-nots in
deploying a Windows network, too, but nobody seems to realize that, and
anyway I digress). So don't you think most schools would be thrilled to
get a phone call from a Unix network administrator offering to set up a
network on a volunteer basis, say, for the cost of the (cheap)
hardware? And don't you think they'd be even more thrilled if that
network turned out to be a pleasure to work on, and could be managed
day-to-day by non-experts, maybe even the students? And if it weren't
subject to the vagaries of an ISP, or some other outside entity that can
come and go without warning? _Particularly_ if they've been struggling
with a Windows rig put together by a pay-to-play consultancy and getting
all their name service lookups from someplace else for the past couple
of years?
So anyhow. Others may differ, but I'd advise making your presence
known, making your opinions heard, and offering to help, and then
leaving it at that. Maybe show up for a board meeting once a year or
so, offer your services, maybe bring along some charts or something
showing some TCO numbers for Linux compared to something else. And then
let them call you.
Christopher Kolar wrote:
<snip>
> That said, is there anything that we can do beyond evangelizing about
> Linux, but also teaching more about enterprise computing issues, IT staff
> organization, and in a more general way just letting people know about the
> kinds of things that businesses do every day. There are a lot of lost
> opportunities here, and the problem is much deeper than the operating system.
--
Michael Jinks, IB // Technical Entity // Saecos Corporation
Opinions expressed above are my own, and not those of my employer.
-=-
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: Tue Mar 06 2001 - 13:35:16 CST