On Jun 10, 2005, at 11:40 AM, Patricia Swarbrick wrote:
There are a few companies that have a policy of not using *any* open
source software. In other words, if its got a GPL or a BSD licence,
its totally taboo to use it on any company owned equipment.
I worked at a government facility recently (hint: aerospace) where it
was taboo to use Windows. Their firewalls were open-source, their
clusters and supercomputers were mostly open-source, and their
workstations were overwhelmingly Linux or Mac. To even use a Windows
system on the network, you had to sign a waiver of responsibility.
Marketing particularly likes it when proprietary equipment is used,
because they can say "we use x as our firewall" and be almost
instantly understood, however if they say "we have ___ open-source
firewall" they may faced with a bunch of technical questions that
they may not be able to answer.
Fortunately, the more qualified one becomes as a
technician/consultant/engineer, the more likely one can choose to work
for/with open-minded companies. It's unfortunate that there are still
so many companies that dictate their actions by CYA and "what the CTO
just read in Computer Weekly".
Also, I've noticed that there seems to be that stigma associated with
open-source software; That it is often more unreliable and buggy
compared to proprietary software (M$ has been pretty successful in
promoting this idea to non-tech or low-tech people) and that it is
complicated to maintain (this can be a valid point since there is a
lot less formal education offered in the use of *nix based firewall
equipment as compared to say, Cisco firewall equipment).
I'm going to have to disagree with you here. Virtually all of the
companies and government divisions I work with these days either a) use
open-source or b) plan to use open-source in at least some capacity
within their organization. Folks are tired of the endless security
hoops that proprietary vendors force them to leap through. In
particular, high-tech and scientific companies tend to subscribe to
this throwback to academic-style computing.
--
Jason Dixon
DixonGroup Consulting
http://www.dixongroup.net
