On 10/9/07, Andrew Lentvorski <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Bob La Quey wrote: > > Knowing that security is always a hot topic here > > I thought it would be useful to get you folks perspective > > on this interview. > > > > ¨I think the whole RFC process is obsolete.¨ > > > > ¨I think we could do away with the whole standards thing very easily > > if a few customers just exercised their economic power a little bit > > intelligently. Big customers have huge power, but they seem to have > > forgotten that. > > Actually, this is fallacious. The big firms have almost *zero* power > nowadays because so much in computing is a monopoly. > > What exactly is any firm going to do to Microsoft that Microsoft > wouldn't laugh at? > > What exactly is any firm going to do to Cisco that Cisco wouldn't laugh at? > > In addition, no truly large company cares about interoperability. The > maintenance costs of a heterogeneous environment outweigh any pricing > advantage that could be wrung out of vendors by competitive bidding. > > Furthermore, the biggest firms already get what they want *anyhow*. > This rant is the mumblings of a whiny middle tier with no market power > and no money to spend. > > If they really wanted an interoperable VPN solution, they'd figure out > how to deploy Linux VPN's that talk to their Windows clients. > > -a
I have often wondered what would happen if say the Fortune 500 got together and formed a buyers club. Say they each agreed to spend 5% of their IT budget over a period of say five yearts on Open Source solutions to specific problems. Say making Linux completely competitive ith Microsoft, or replacing a key Cisco function (note I did not say product.) Maybe it would not work, but the risk is really quite low. I do not see exactly what it is keeping such a buyers coop from happening ... but clearly it has not happened. <speculation> I suspect the key issue is that CIO/CTO types are not really power brokers. They will simply go with the flow. I suppose a corallary of this is that people almost never go from this role into the CEO/COB role. They just do not have the power lust it takes. </speculation> "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings." --From Julius Caesar (I, ii, 140-141) BobLQ -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
