MS contributing to Linux

[Smoot Carl-Mitchell]

On Thu, 2009-07-23 at 18:10 -0400, Fred Roller wrote:
> On Thu, 2009-07-23 at 14:02 -0700, Smoot Carl-Mitchell wrote:
> > I am not promoting anything.  I am pointing out the realities of many
> > Microsoft server shops these days.  I hope the folks in charge of
> > virtualization in these shops will look at alternatives, but I am not
> > naive enough to think they all will. 
> 
> Unfortunately it's all too common to hear "but it's not windows." from
> many businesses (and end users).  M$ spent billions to train these
> people; they don't see the options before them easily.

I worked in a Windows shop for a while (due to an acquisition).  The
legacy applications I managed were all on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
Getting anybody to pay attention to getting a Linux infrastructure in
place was daunting.  My Linux environment was considered little more
than an annoyance even though I could demonstrate very good uptime
numbers (better than 99.9%) up through the Java/Tomcat application tier.
At the OS level the servers were up nearly 100% of the time.  In two
years I only rebooted the servers when the OS was patched.

But they were stuck in their Windows world because the application they
ran was written using Dot.Net and they could not see nor did they really
want to get out of that environment.  The business people did not care
what kind of technology the applications ran on and the technologist
were trapped in a Dot.Net world imposed on them by the business people.
Unfortunately, this is a reality in the IT world.  The best technology
does not always win.  And frankly, there are a lot of IT professionals
that know and like Windows and do not understand why anyone would do
anything differently.

>From my point of view anything that makes it easier for Windows shops to
evaluate and run Linux and other OSS, the better.
-- 
Smoot Carl-Mitchell
Computer Systems and
Network Consultant
smoot at tic.com
+1 480 922 7313
cell: +1 602 421 9005