Edward Ned Harvey said: "I don't think most people (oracle especially) are interested in solaris/opensolaris replacing the home user/end user operating system."
Corporate user says/thinks "But if this one doesn't run on my laptop, why should I expect it to run on my servers?? This other one I know runs on both my laptop, (or anyway the IT guys, and he has the same model as I do) and on the servers too. Which one will risk my job, and my companies stuff more?" The choice in their mind is obvious. I have seen these sort of mental metrics literally _tens_of_hundreds_ of times (sadly), and they'll beat price nearly every single time. In fact this is the core factor that made me abandon being an internal advocate for Solaris/Sun in most cases. All Redhat or Cannonical has to say is "well this is the safer choice" and boom, Sun's out of the `real' running in any `competition' for a sale. I finally figured out the safer choice for my job was to go 'yea I can make that work', instead of 'yea I can make that work, but this is a better choice'. One non-existent driver later, or other really stupid problem, and poof, it's Linux and `we're moving in another direction Tim, and...'. So ya know, screw that noise. I'll flail with Linux all day long and fill out my trouble tickets and keep my job rather than have the pointer on the wheel of blame fall on my tiny slice of the pie. I know Oracle doesn't want to hear that truth. In fact, I REALLY know they don't want to hear it. That's the ugly truth though, and no amount of "yes but" will change that. You'd think they would be first to the gate with understanding that aspect of external competition, but that would force them to look at their own internal culture of backstabbary. They aren't willing to do that, so ergo, they piss off their customers & fail in the wider market. In fact the strategy I use now is "doubter". "Are you sure you want to do this? I know I can make it run great, and *I* like it, but do you really want to take that on? It does this, that and whoa look this too, but gosh I don't know, everyone's more comfortable with ____ here it seems like. I know that's not innovative like you want, and the costs are more with the other choice, but I'm not sure this is really what you want" etc. Being an advocate has cost me money & jobs. Now, that's the sales slimes job. Not mine. If the code & company can't make the sale, I'll just as happily support Apache on Windows, and do a good job at it too. Because my job is more important than a piece of lint on a poker chip in Larry's game of `how greedy can I be and get away with it?'. Mirrors are kind of a biyatch when you don't want to look in them. When people tell me they're considering buying Oracle's DB's, and ask if I can support them as an admin I say 2 things. The first is "I'm not a DBA, do you have a DBA in mind that can do that job? Because I'm not that person." The second is "Well, ok, that's fine, and I can do a really good job at it too, I've done it here, here, here, here, and here (x4 to make the point I could keep going on...), but you do not get to blame me if there are problems with it, or what you want to do. Do you understand what I am saying? Are we clear that you are not going to get to blame me?" If they answer yes & yes, then I say "Ok, but I did warn you, and you understand I'm here to help, and that I'm not going to take the blame for any problems. If there's problems, you blame the DBA's, or you talk to Oracle, but you don't blame me for them". Mostly that works. Mostly anyway... I've had 2 times where they tried to blame me anyway after that, but hey, because I'd done that, it didn't fly. That beats the crap out of all the times I did suck up the blame for bad code and others mistakes. I don't _do_ that anymore. I'll own _my_ mistakes, not Oracles, not anyone elses. Hell I'm happy to own my own mistakes, it means I'm learning something... However I'm not getting paid to teach sheep tricks, or get my butt kicked for some other clowns Excel pratfalls, so that's as far as that goes. The truth is often a hard thing. I'm not exaggerating though, nor embellishing, I'm summarizing a strategy I use to promote honest dealings with *me*, and what I have to do to get there. I think it sucks. However, as the saying goes, ya can't hate the players, ya gotta hate the game. If Oracle wants to play Oracle's game, Oracle can get the same results they got with whatever ends up being the next MySQL, and now, sadly the next Solaris. Me? I'll just be happy if I can win an argument with the Oracle DBA's about turning off telnetd and only using role accounts. Of the 2, well, I'll take telnetd & call it a win, the role account thing, that's like trying to wipe oil off grains of sand, not a battle I'll fight to win. Ignorance and dishonest cunning will win out over knowledge and honest intent any day of the week in most large companies. Fear driven markets, and fear driven companies are the order of the day globally anyway thanks to the Rupert Murdoch's of the world. Tim -- This message posted from opensolaris.org _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list [email protected]
