Ramblings of a Wompy

Its a tough fact to face that Open Source as we know it will never be mainstream. I know this is heresy for me to say. I mean I’m the Linux loving, BSD supporter, subscriber to linux journal and more. As I have stated, and will state again, the most expensive part of software cost is support. Whats support have to do with it? Everything. It does not matter what you think of Microsoft, they have built a great infrastructure. They make the software, training, certification, and are the de facto of commercial software. The key is the certification. When HR is notified to hire a system admin or any other technical role they begin the search. They will look at their system and decide to hire someone that is certified in their software because the little certificate informs them they have been properly trained.

If the company was running Red Hat or another similar distrobution of linux they might be able to find a similar certification of training. The problem comes down to so many different distrobutions. Sure, they are similar, but each distro has little quirks that will vary with hardware and how the OS was built, was the kernel optimized. This means that to hire someone that could sufficently support the system would be expensive. Techies and nerds will argue, there is a large community of support online that could handle this. True, the problem is that its not cost effective for a business to spend all their time looking up answers online. If the person that had your custom built Debian server running leaves for whatever reason how easy would it be for someone else to come in? In a Microsoft enviroment it would be easier. Even in an interview I had recently the head of IT admitted that the company will probably just go with MS server 2008 for its active directory support. Not because its better but because its quicker and easier to get running.

Now I’m not a supporter of MS. far from it. I’m a realist. There so many flavors of Linux and other open source OSs that it makes it difficult for the common user to decide. Ubuntu is the closest Linux has had to having a standard. Linux will always be for people who like to tinker and check under the hood. It will always be for special applications, I just don’t see it being on grandmas desktop. It will find its way into tech savy and cheap businesses but I’m sorry to all my open source supporters, This will never be mainstream and calling all those that do attempt to go open source noobs is not the answer.