Chris's Wiki :: blog/tech/UniversitiesFreeAttraction Commentshttps://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/tech/UniversitiesFreeAttraction?atomcommentsDWiki2010-01-01T06:09:35ZRecent comments in Chris's Wiki :: blog/tech/UniversitiesFreeAttraction.From 78.35.25.18 on /blog/tech/UniversitiesFreeAttractiontag:CSpace:blog/tech/UniversitiesFreeAttraction:da73924116f42adb5bb0e7557ccd70788f75e9a1From 78.35.25.18<div class="wikitext"><p>This isn’t even unique to SSL certificates and doesn’t even require the heft of a corporation to be an issue: cf. <a href="http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001106.html">The Problem with Software Registration</a>.</p>
<p>Of course, for a corporation, having to manage all their licences for all the software they “bought” is infinitely much more of a hassle.</p>
<p>A major attraction of libre software is entirely analogously that you simply don’t have to bother with any of this kind of bureaucracy. You just install it, use it, delete it… whatever you need to.</p>
<p>—<a href="http://plasmasturm.org/">Aristotle Pagaltzis</a></p>
</div>2010-01-01T06:09:35ZBy DanielMartin on /blog/tech/UniversitiesFreeAttractiontag:CSpace:blog/tech/UniversitiesFreeAttraction:97d62b0f35865cbccacd88a6d3ad2c2e07441405DanielMartin<div class="wikitext"><p>This isn't unique to universities. Specifically, at my previous job I found this to be the case for tools that were required to do my job.</p>
<p>Getting signoff from the various necessary executives to purchase software or software services necessary for deployment (Sybase or Oracle licenses, Red Hat Support contracts, etc.) was easy. (*) Getting them to authorize purchases of software tools necessary for my own job was another matter. Fortunately, Eclipse and subversion were more than adequate to the task. I do wish I had pushed harder to get a commercial java profiler; it would have been a cost-effective move for the company to buy me one when I asked for it to track down a particularly odd performance issue. However, I gave up after the first round of meetings, and never scheduled the second round.</p>
<p>I think that the lack of hassle in adopting open source (because it doesn't need budget approval) is a big part of what has driven open source adoption inside large organizations of any type over the last decade.</p>
<p>(*) As you might expect, this was to a great extent the result of which budget bucket the money needed to get pulled from. Not in that we were passing the cost along to the client (a stupidly written contract meant that we were eating the cost), but in that politically it was fine for certain budget buckets to expand, but not others.</p>
</div>2010-01-01T04:40:05Z