Open Source, Closed Minds
Tuesday, September 24th, 2002
I’ve been pitching web collaboration via Open Source tools lately. I’m trying to generate interest in having people contract me in to supply them with a working Open Source based collaboration portal and to provide advice and development in those areas.
Specifically, I’m demoing to companies a full-featured Open Source based intranet site with news items, comments, forums, downloads, weblinks, etc and comparing its features to more extensive (and expensive) solutions such as Microsoft’s SharePoint. A really good example of such a comparison is the case study of the Government of Hawaii’s portal.
Last week I was in a gigantic multinational company. The presentation went well – they were impressed by the scope, manageability, extendability and feel of the demo site. They liked the idea of saving bucketloads of dough. Everything was going smoothly.
Then they remembered that the previous week they had received an internal memo declaring that Open Source software was not to be used in the company unless a commercial solution did not exist. They’d have to review that memo and see how it affected this decision. I’m not privy to the contents of the memo, but it sounds to me very much like Fear Uncertainty and Doubt rearing its head.
They also said that some company-wide desktop app Microsoft licensing agreement allows them to use SharePoint portal services throughout the company, so that would mean they’ve got it “for free” too, so maybe there wouldn’t be any advantage to my suggestions. I’m fairly doubtful that the licensing will include adding unlimited Win2k SQL servers and SharePoint servers, but I guess huge multinationals can afford to spend whatever money isn’t being looted by their executives on blanket licenses.
I’ve been pitching web collaboration via Open Source tools lately. I’m trying to generate interest in having people contract me in to supply them with a working Open Source based collaboration portal and to provide advice and development in those areas.
Specifically, I’m demoing to companies a full-featured Open Source based intranet site with news items, comments, forums, downloads, weblinks, etc and comparing its features to more extensive (and expensive) solutions such as Microsoft’s SharePoint. A really good example of such a comparison is the case study of the Government of Hawaii’s portal.
Last week I was in a gigantic multinational company. The presentation went well – they were impressed by the scope, manageability, extendability and feel of the demo site. They liked the idea of saving bucketloads of dough. Everything was going smoothly.
Then they remembered that the previous week they had received an internal memo declaring that Open Source software was not to be used in the company unless a commercial solution did not exist. They’d have to review that memo and see how it affected this decision. I’m not privy to the contents of the memo, but it sounds to me very much like Fear Uncertainty and Doubt rearing its head.
They also said that some company-wide desktop app Microsoft licensing agreement allows them to use SharePoint portal services throughout the company, so that would mean they’ve got it “for free” too, so maybe there wouldn’t be any advantage to my suggestions. I’m fairly doubtful that the licensing will include adding unlimited Win2k SQL servers and SharePoint servers, but I guess huge multinationals can afford to spend whatever money isn’t being looted by their executives on blanket licenses.
