Software is used at various levels in big corporations and government - namely desktop productivity software and corporate application systems. I still have head on my shoulders, so I am not gung-ho about putting Linux on the desktop. But if the infrastructure team does that for me (by the way this is how windows is installed in many companies. No way they will let users install windows by themselves. Out!), and support it, I have no issues.
More to the point, almost all corporations where I have worked, are powered by a mish-mash of custom-developed software. Many have installed (with considerable pain) ERP software. But the ERP software is not sophisticated enough to be a total solutions across the breadth and depth. So, custom development is almost given. So, proprietary languages, proprietary databases etc abound.
My experience has shown me that open source is now at a stage where horizontal tools (thanks John for the term) are functional and robust enough to craft good custom solutions. The mainframe software that many companies use is totally antiquated. It is a big effort to even send an email out from an application.
I am advancing the arguement that corporations should now start experimenting with open source software to find out if it would work for them or not. Instead of paying $100K in license for proprietary language and utilities (yes, I have it for a fact, please believe me) that only perpetuates the mainframe monoculture (by the way the applications are not robust either), there should be a spirit of innovation even on a very small scale.
But all I see is blind bigotry.
IBM is offering discounts on mainframe hardware if customer agrees to run Linux in a 'partition'. They want to see the numbers. This is good. However companies are only thinking of putting proprietary stuff on this partition !!!
The kind of support I have seen from some 'proprietary' vendors is no where near what I get from mailing lists!
.... and the discussion continues... :)
