Open Source in Tuttle, OK

[firecat]

A follow-up story:

http://www.tuttletimes.com/siteSearch/apstorysection/local_story_088201244.html

The city manager is quoted thus:

[CentOS is] a free operating system that this guy gives away, which tells you how much time he's got on his hands.

Comments

[kmd.livejournal.com]

Um.

I wonder whether this will increase the number of folks likely to be willing to run CentOS on their system, or decrease that number.

My sense is decrease.

[rmjwell.livejournal.com]

I'd vote the other direction, as most people at the gummint user level will never, ever see CentOS.

[kmd.livejournal.com]

True enough. But the users don't choose the OS. Geeks will still choose CentOS after seeing this; they're the constant. No increase there. The folks who are, I believe, less likely to choose it after seeing this are IT managers or COOs who are not geeks. "CentOS? Isn't that the one that somebody in Texas or somewhere used and ended up getting abused by the programmer because he didn't understand something and then it was in all of the newspapers?"

Unless I'm mistaken, the incidence of MBA-types (i.e. non-geeks) making managerial decisions for IT is pretty high. Those are the folks who are going to be a whole lot less likely to choose CentOS if they read about this. IMA&EESHO.

[rmjwell.livejournal.com]

I think there will be an uptick in geeks using CentOS simply because the news has made it moe visible and they might give it a look. No matter how geeky, everyone suffers from Too Much Stuff Not Enough Time. I don't think geeks will pick because of the dustup, just that more of them will become aware of it.

The MBA types in IT management ususally don't worry about the nuts and bolts decisions; they have a lower-level geek put stuff together. As long as the price is good (and you don't get better pricing than "free"), the MBA types will go on about the rest of their day. IMO.

[kmd.livejournal.com]

Except of course the actual price is not free or else everyone would be using it right now. Training, staff hours to do the switch, limitations on other software to use, etc.

MBA-types do indeed have lower-level geeks put stuff together. Proposals. Then they review them. If they associate CentOS with this story in any way, they're going to run screaming.

Thought experiment. Imagine you are not a geek. Imagine that you work with geeks, and manage them. Imagine you read this story, or worse, you read the original email exchange. Who are you going to identify with?

Hint: not Johnny Hughes