Re: The Linux community has always been this way.
So the Linux zealots had been suggesting a solution that, you agree, would be perfectly suited to solve a real problem.
And the head of the department put you into the 'zealot' category even you didn't deserve it.
Therefore the fault is with zealots like you.
Ok, makes sense to me.
People's perception is their reality. If one of those frothing-at-the-mouth zealots had gone into a meeting with this manager and did what I have seen plenty Open Source fans do then yes, I can well believe that that would have pretty much shut the door.
Two friends of mine are good hacks, and have been involved in Open Source for decades . Both have built a business on it, and one is politically quite astute. However, as soon as I have either in a meeting with me I have to control them like mad to stop them from slipping into zealot mode and preach the benefits of Open Source and Linux. I guess they had to do this so often that it's hard to switch off, but it is sometimes simply not appropriate - you can actually break the conversation there and then. Management doesn't like black and white fanatics (it's one of these things that Richard Stallman will never learn either), and especially at board level you'll find few people who are even remotely interested in the wheels inside the machine so you're wasting precious time with stuff they're not only not interested in but can actually scare them away from the table.
With people like that, the ONLY thing you can ever put on the table is cost/benefit analysis. In scenario A we invest X, and over 5 years we'll have a TCO based on these factors, in scenario B we pay Y, and over 5 years our TCO is thus. You stay off words like "communities" and "free" (that's instant distrust, and ignoring support costs), and you pick one distro in advance (be ready to motivate that choice, and that should again be about economics). In some cases, you don't even talk about Windows or Linux, you treat it as a black box called "solution". Why do you think this Cloud rubbish sold so well?
Go in as a zealot, and you've burned it for quite a few years to come.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
