[Sussex] Well done Gareth / .NET

[Geoff Teale]

Gareth wrote:
-------------
> funny you should say that, the purehand was just ment to be 
> me doing some contract work websites and stuff.

Oh, OK.

> But I got a job today so now I am employeed as of monday :).

Excellent news.. does this mean we'll see you at LUG meets again, a LUG
without a LUGMaster is like a fish without^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H king
without a crown ;)

> There a bad point though its using asp.NET and the such but 
> still its work that I can get paid for.

Absolutely, as far as work is concerned the .NET environment is reasonably
pleasant and actually quite interesting - it's only the idealogical aspects
that concern me - and most of that concern is not with the technology
dirctly but with the tactics Microsoft are using and their intent.  As many
people on this list will tell you every company has to weigh up the
cost/benefit of spending a little time and effort in setting up a secure,
reliable and functional free-software solution as opposed to spending
thousands of pounds so they can do a quick install from a supplied CD-ROM
and instantly have a unreliable, insecure but very functional system.


"""Warning, the following goes a bit Michael Moore... but hell, it'll give
Nik something to write about on Sunday"""

This may seem like an easy decision to some on the list (Nik, Steve,...) or
a finely balanced one to others (Neil, Mark,...), but for a lot of companies
it's going to be Microsoft every time, it's a no brainer for them for one of
the following reasons (I'm sure there are a whole load of other ones to):

============================================================================
==============
a/ They have no knowledge of free-software (so they have no decision as far
as they know).  
============================================================================
==============
That's why you need to be vocal about it - whether or not it's the right
decision a business should consider things before they proceed with capital
expenditure.  There's no need to fight an impossible corner, but just
mentioning it can be a useful thing.  

If the business has shareholders (i.e. they are a company (ltd or PLC)
rather than a sole-trader, partnership or limited liablity partnership - and
unless you're working for a very small business or a law firm, this means
your business) then to knowingly ignore an alternative that could result in
greater returns to the shareholders (either through dividends or stock
value) is a breech of the primary function of incorporation (an offence for
which shareholder can look for serious reparation of damages and depose the
active board and in the case of greater offences (TIPHOOK!!) can contribute
to criminal charges).  

In practice it is very hard to make this stick up front, though it gets
easier in retrospect - many a board member has been dismissed for not
following the rest of the market through ignorance or arrogance.  Remember,
simply not investigating or not knowing is as deadly to a board member as
making a bad decision.  Mentioning this to managers who report directly to
directors can sometimes get them to think again.  

The best advice I ever heard was this.  If you work for a PLC, buy some
shares in it. Instantly you acquire more power then any non-shareholder
(which will include most of your management chain).  If you are a real git
you can write to the board every time you think your manager has made a
decision that could be detremental to you as a shareholder, or you could
simply choose to speak up at the AGM - this is your right.


============================================================================
=============
b) They've heard of Linux/Apache but they've never looked at it and they
don't feel they have time to waste investigating an uncertainty.
============================================================================
=============

The short-termism inherent in a free market economy driven by an abstract
exchange of futures _always_ generates this kind of attitude amongst those
less able to see "the bigger picture".

c) They're Microsoft partners.
==============================
Companies will sacrifice a lot to get this status because it supposedly
bumps up your income a lot.  There are two assumptions that underly this:

	1) 	Being a Microsoft partner gives you an advantage 
		over other vendors, what actually happens is 
		that your leading competitors either go into 
		partnership with Microsoft as well or simply do 
		better based on superior products.  In the industry 
		I am currently working in (traditionally thought of
		as slow, conservative and lacking in IT knowledge) 
		the trade press are pointing to Micrsoft as part of
		the problem - in an industry that has to process 
		large amounts of data centrally and does little more 
		than data input and small reports on the desktop you 
		have to wonder who exactly thinks the PC Architecture
		or Client/Server model actually represent anything 
		like a cost effective or, equally importantly, fast 
		solution.

	2) 	Bill Gates is like king Midas.  Hmmm, Bill is very 
		good at making money for himself and Microsoft, 
		if you look back nobody has realy done that well 
		out of partnership with them - even intel - who have
		grown to huge proportions with the PC boom still 
		consistently get slapped down by Billy G's Boys 
		(luckily for Intel they're big enough to take care
		of themselves, Windows XP won't support Intel USB2 ?
		My Arse it won't... intel got hardware vendors, by 
		stick anbd by carrot, to make USB 2 the hottest 
		computing property of last year - if XP had launched 
		without USB2 support, even fewer people would have 
		bought it!).
		
... ah well, that's enough for now.

Good luck with your new job Gareth!

-- 
geoff.teale at claybrook.co.uk
tealeg at member.fsf.org

Anyone who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of
course, in a state of sin.
-- J. von Neumann


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