[CrackMonkey] [maney@pobox.com: [LUNI] Important reading for Linux advocates]

[Peter A. Peterson II]

This is looks like a good article for anyone trying to convince a
Winders Shop to switch over -- and maybe a more important read for
consultants trying to push for such a change. THe below blurb is from
one of the members of the luni[1] list.

http://www.troubleshooters.com/tpromag/200104/200104.htm#_tdotc

pedro

[1] Linux Users of Northern Illinois.


----- Forwarded message from Martin Maney <maney at pobox.com> -----

Envelope-to: pedro at flynn.zork.net
Delivery-date: Sat, 31 Mar 2001 19:42:04 -0600
Date: Sat, 31 Mar 2001 19:03:34 -0600
To: Linux Users of Northern Illinos <luni at luni.org>
Subject: [LUNI] Important reading for Linux advocates
User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i
From: maney at pobox.com (Martin Maney)
Sender: owner-luni at luni.org
Reply-To: luni at luni.org

There's a long article on troubleshooters.com this month about the
proprietor's lengthy voyage from Windows to Linux as the almost sole
platform he uses in his business.  (almost because there are so far a
few legacy apps that he needs ol' legacy Windows for) Now, he's
obviously not a Linux guru, and there are some self-inflicted wounds
along the way, as well as some foot-dragging.  But what makes this
worth reading is that there are generally valid concerns behind his
slow and deliberate approach.  As he says, if switching to Linux caused
him to lose access to important data (which at the start is in various
more or less proprietary formats), it could have substantial costs to
his business.

He doesn't make a big deal of it, but the key lesson that many Linux
advocates need to absorb is that you can't ignore the potential costs
of someone's conversion.  You don't have to worry about paying them,
but you won't be an effective advocate if you don't pay attention to
them.  I'm not putting this as well as he does, largely, I think,
because he doesn't just tell you about this: he shows you examples of
these issues that he ran into, and that's always more effective.

Read it.  Read it for all that and also for a fairly cogent description
of the sound reasons for not wanting to have your important data locked
up in a proprietary application's proprietary data format.  Read that,
at least (it's covered at the very beginning of the piece) if you don't
see what all the fuss over UCITA is about.

Especially if you read the whole thing, try not to get too distracted
"fixing" the little problems he describes.  A lot of things he does,
well, yes, they *could* be done more easily.  But that's another
important lesson in this article: no one knows every trick.  This one
gets demonstrated a lot, both intentionally (at first I did X, but then
I found that it was much easier to do Y) and through the sometimes
clumsy little hacks he describes.  Also, however, take note that
sometimes what you or I might consider clumsy, he has done quite
deliberately.  As he points out, even if you got that pipeline to do
what you think you want done, when the cost of a mistake is substantial
it can be reasonable to choose to do it less quickly... with a chance
to see the unwanted result before it's too late.

Another reason to read it depends on how you find it.  I came at this
by way of LinuxToday, and there were a couple of interesting things
that I found in the talkbalks.  One that I'm going to add here, because
it's such an unexpected find is the "SQL Ledger Accounting" package:

  http://www.sql-ledger.com/

>From a quick look, this is a real find.  Double-entry, multi-company,
etc. bookkeeping written as a CGI in Perl using Postgres as the
backend.  GPL, of course.  It even looks pretty good in the
screenshots.

Go.  Read it.  Absorb the lessons it has and become a more effective
advocate for Linux.  Oh, and if you might yourself be looking at a
Windows to Linux migration, you can read it as an example of a
considered approach to the job, too.  Real multi-talented article here. 

-=-
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----- End forwarded message -----

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