Re: Selling management on Cygwin

[Andrew DeFaria <Andrew at DeFaria dot com>]

Jason Pyeron wrote:

Semi-light hearted, semi-jabbing responses follow...
> Please note, none of these issues are meant to imply that other
> solutions do not have these issues, these are just some of the issues
> we have received from customers' management about tools, including Cygwin.
>
> OOS:
> * Licensing
Licensing shouldn't be an issue unless you incorporate Cygwin in your
resulting product and are trying to sell it.
> * IP liability assurance / indemnification
I'll let the lawyers have at it on that one...
> * Entity backed product lifecycle and migration.
Not sure what you mean here...
>
> Support:
> * Who supports it, contracted terms.
Honestly, who supports Windows? By that I mean, have you ever personally
called Microsoft regarding a Windows product and have gotten support? I
know I never have - in 25 years. This goes for many, many other products
both commercial and open source. In fact I get more support, better,
quicker, etc. from open source stuff.
> * Warranty
Ah... what fer?
> * Other vendors will not support the system if you install it.
Shh! Don't tell them! (Mainly because it's largely irrelevant).
> CM:
> * Feature Stability
IMHO Cygwin is pretty dern stable.
> * Interoperability testing (and costs associated of doing something new)
Right, like when companies install Visual Studio or some other paid for
product they run extensive interoperability test suites before rolling
them out! I assure you, at least where I've been - and I've participated
in many roll outs - they don't.
> Security:
> * Who guarantees safety
The same people who guarantee the safety of Outlock that most corporate
IT depts insist that you use! And we all know that Lookout has never
been known to cause any security problems... ;-)
> * Foreign national/government written code
Again, huh? Not sure how this is relevant...
> * disclosure of vulnerabilities
With open source you can disclose your own vulnerabilities simply by
looking at the source.

Again, I meant this to be light hearted and a little jabbing. I
understand the corporate concerns. But I've also been in the trenches
long enough to know that the concerns, while perhaps well founded, are
not applied equally nor fairly or that they really don't make sense in
the practical world. YMMV.
-- 
Andrew DeFaria <http://defaria.com>
Boycott shampoo! Demand the REAL poo!


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