“As for my propeller head: The more source code I have, the
happier I am. I can “borrow” good ideas that I find in the code. If
I try hard enough, I can even fix the bugs that are invariably a
part of every product I’ve ever used. Imagine that. No more calls
to Microsoft to find out that they know about my problem and, if I
send them $49 next year, they’ll have an upgrade ready that will
solve my problem. A lot of good that will do helping me get a
system running now.”
“But it’s just this scenario in which the real importance of
open source starts to unravel. If you’re running one of those very
rare IT shops with almost no turnover among your stable of very
gifted programmers who are intimately familiar with the inner
workings of your open-source platforms, the self-supporting
possibilities offered by open-source software puts you in an
enviable position. Ditto for the potential power of applications
built on the known behavior of the innards of an operating system.
For the rest of us, however, anchoring our IT efforts to a cadre of
programmers with an intimate knowledge of and the ability to
recompile entire operating systems belongs in the catalog of worst
business practices….”
“As much as I love Linux, at a strategic level, it’s still a
distraction and unlikely to be much more in the coming years.
Deploy Linux where it’s known to work well if you’ve got the talent
to support it-but as a core platform for your strategic
initiatives, it’s just not there.”