Chris's Wiki :: blog/tech/WhyPeopleGoCommercial Commentshttps://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/tech/WhyPeopleGoCommercial?atomcommentsDWiki2007-04-25T17:18:33ZRecent comments in Chris's Wiki :: blog/tech/WhyPeopleGoCommercial.By Chris Siebenmann on /blog/tech/WhyPeopleGoCommercialtag:CSpace:blog/tech/WhyPeopleGoCommercial:35ef059c0ca83162a41e23312c85cb49a36fc8f3Chris Siebenmann<div class="wikitext"><p>System administrators have a natural advantage here, because we're just
glorified computer janitors and no one arranges their office furniture
for the janitor's convenience. Even apart from the philosophical bits,
any experienced sysadmin is used to being handed a system and told
'make this go', when the system is nothing like what we'd have designed
ourselves, so we generally get a very direct exposure to the issue.</p>
<p>(There are various coping mechanisms that sysadmins use to deal with
this, many of which do not help our reputation.)</p>
</div>2007-04-25T17:18:33ZFrom 71.182.145.200 on /blog/tech/WhyPeopleGoCommercialtag:CSpace:blog/tech/WhyPeopleGoCommercial:2478dd186edceb295593736d977aa94a21c593afFrom 71.182.145.200<div class="wikitext"><p>You wrote:</p>
<p>"My personal opinion is that it does us good to remember that our priorities are not necessarily the organization's priorities."</p>
<p>This is an amazingly important point. It's one that most nerds -- and I include myself in that group -- never fully grok. It's actually why I got away from working directly for a chemical company and went into consulting. Honestly I'd prefer never again to work directly for a company whose primary business isn't software or IT consulting. The cognitive dissonance of being unable to do the OBVIOUS BEST GOOD RIGHT thing -- because of reasons having nothing to do with solving the actual problem -- can be just overwhelming.</p>
<p>-- jhkiley</p>
</div>2007-04-21T14:52:46ZBy Chris Siebenmann on /blog/tech/WhyPeopleGoCommercialtag:CSpace:blog/tech/WhyPeopleGoCommercial:d76dfbafde02b91f73f58ea4f6ed7a50e6cc2acfChris Siebenmann<div class="wikitext"><p>From the perspective of organizations I think it is commercial that is
important, not proprietary (although I suspect that it is important that
the company be seen as providing <em>the thing</em>, not just support for it).</p>
<p>From the perspective of the (perceived) disadvantages, yes, you're
absolutely right: those disadvantages are mostly those of proprietary
products, not commercial products, since there are a few commercial
open source products. Commercial open source still has some
disadvantages; for example, in practice you can't modify them except
in emergencies, because allowing modifications generally negates the
advantage to the organization of going commercial.</p>
<p>(And sometimes you basically can't modify them at all, because modifying
them negates your support rights for something else that you're running
on top of them.)</p>
<p>It's interesting that several non-commercial open source products
have become completely acceptable to organizations. No one blinks
at using Apache, for example, to the point where there are no
commercial competitors on Unix.</p>
</div>2007-04-21T12:15:23ZFrom 67.181.30.74 on /blog/tech/WhyPeopleGoCommercialtag:CSpace:blog/tech/WhyPeopleGoCommercial:d758e63d616a5e2dfb19827ed67b107f944591bfFrom 67.181.30.74<div class="wikitext"><p>You are confusing commercial and proprietary. I'm no RMS, but in this case it seems a big eggregious.
-- Pete</p>
</div>2007-04-21T05:50:13Z