[Nottingham] Jobs in Open Source?

[Andrew Mason]

Quoting David Bean <david at dbean.uklinux.net>:

> On Mon, 2004-06-07 at 15:00, Martin wrote:
> > > On Sunday 06 June 2004 17:54, David Bean wrote:
> > > 
> > >>To be quite honest, Linux isn't ready. I've not seen a GNU/Linux
> > >>distribution which has as many of the enterprise features of Windows.
> > 
> > I know of at least one distro that has excellent 'enterprise' features 
> > far and above and beyond the 'Wondows Experience'.
> 
> Requirements to upgrade to GNU/Linux where I work:
> 
> Compatibility with (Legacy) Windows Applications (for 7 years in some
> departments)
> - Windows itself
> 
> Annual maintenance agreements for above software (an audit requirement).
> - only if you are running windows xx for many companies
> 
> Distributed user configuration
> - Active Directory distributed permissions
> 
> Centralised application roll-outs, and upgrades.
> - Active directory enabled applications
> 
> A single standard desktop, for support costs.
> - Probably running Windows at home too.
> 
> Minimal training of non technical staff (about 500 of them).
> - Mainly in the use of a different office application.
> 
> Minimal Training of IT staff (9 of them).
> - Many don't even want to more than the minimal amount of work to get
> paid. Only one other person familiar with anything but Windows.

If they are that bad get rid of one of them and give me a job ;-)

> Automated roll-out of OS releases, and patches. 
> - SUS and Active Directory.
Many distro's can do this quite easily.

> 
> Cheap, fast and trouble free migration/upgrade.
> - A single day offline would be too slow, for, say, an Exchange
> migration/upgrade. 
A day is a rather long time, it should be < 1/2 and hour if you install it on
your back up server, pre-configure it and test it prior to plug in...10 minutes
to boot depending on h/w (some of the Intel servers take forever), that leaves
about 20mins for fine tuning once its live.

> 
> Cost/Benefit and Risk
> - GNU/Linux and Open-Office would possibly be cheaper but is it worth
> the risk of moving from Windows?

The above reasons you have given are definately not evidence that Linux is not
enterprise ready. They are simply reasons why its not cost effective to replace
your wintendo's with GNU/Linux boxes. Which is absolutely fair enough and there
is no point fixing something thats not broken. However if say the mail server
died, your backup server was put in place and showing strains, I am sure you
wouldn't think twice before slotting in a more scaleable <Insert Linux/BSD/UNIX
MTA here> server. If you were initially setting up a network or maybe migrating
an old NT4 network or something you would quite easily be able to meet all of
your requirements with OSS. Although if your end users NEED windows the linux
servers will still play nice so you can use each OS for what suits you best.

Andrew M