[ale] top selling points for linux...? [anti-flame]

[Jeff Layton]

stephen wrote:

> I always like to emphasize the strong relationship between the user
> and developer community.  There are always people in the community
> of all skill levels willing to help anyone, whether it be through
> mailing lists, LUGs, IRC, or whatever.  And even if you can't get
> the immediate help, having the source on hand and someone skilled
> enough to understand it is usually enough to debug yourself out of
> most critical situations.

I agree, but I like to go further. If you can't or don't have someone
who can read the source and figure out how to fix problems, it's nice
to have a company who supports the software that can do this.

We have several cases of this situation. The nice thing is that these
companies usually employ the code developers. So we are supporting
the code developers by purchasing support from these companies.
Moreover, the support costs are much lower from Linux companies
than from traditional Unix or MS companies. In a recent exercise
we went through, we found that support costs to be about HALF of
traditional Unix companies (we didn't look at MS in this case since they
didn't have what we needed).

I guess you can make that another bullet - lower maintenance costs
than traditional Unix companies and MS.

To be honest though, I've had mixed results with mailing lists, LUGs,
etc. Sometimes they are very good - almost immediate help! (not
bad for free!). Other times, I've had no help at all and had to figure
things out for myself (the company I work for does not allow me to
to do that on company time so I have to do it after hours - it puts a
real dent in family time). Only one time have I gotten a hostile response
when asking for help or pointers (I view this as the equivalent of MS
saying, "yeah, we know it's a bug" and then hanging up). Overall, I
think the community support has been very good and I use it all the
time. However, the company no-brain IT managers want a company
to point to when things go south, so we hire Linux companies to support
us, which saves us money, and which supports the developers!

Jeff


>
>
> stephen
>
> On Mon, Nov 26, 2001 at 08:35:26AM -0500, Christopher Bergeron wrote:
> > I'm not a salesman, but in an attempt to help my sales/marketing department
> > understand why _my_ MIS dept. is better than a Windows shop.  Could you guys
> > help me come up with a few that I might've missed.  Again, my target
> > audience is a "technically inclined" sales group, but not "too technical".
> >
> > ROI - with Linux we get more for our money in the long run.  We save on
> > licensing fees and maintenance in general by bringing support "in-house".
> >
> > Performance/Efficiency - Linux outperforms _most_ Windows equivalents in a
> > production environment (ie, Samba vs. Native Windows file sharing, MySQL vs.
> > SQL Server, etc).
> >
> > Open archictecture - Linux is "open source" meaning it can be tailored/tuned
> > to work "better" in any given situation.  With Microsoft software (the
> > kernel particularly) you are locked in.  A good analogy is that it's like
> > driving a car with the hood sealed shut.  Your skills are wasted if you're a
> > mechanic (programmer/sys admin).
> >
> >
> > Does anyone know of any other good points or anlaogies that could make this
> > stuff crystal clear for my audience?
> >
> > TIA,
> > CB
> >
> >
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