Linked by Adam S on Thu 16th Feb 2006 05:07 UTC
Podcasts Are IT people happier when they are fighting? OSNews, episode 2 can be downloaded as an MP3 (3.02 MB) or a Ogg Vorbis (4.77 MB) file. Our podcast is located at osnews.com/files/podcast.xml.
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There is a good reason for it
by egarland on Thu 16th Feb 2006 05:36 UTC
egarland
Member since:
2005-08-05

People defend and advocate the products they use for good reason. The more widely used and respected software is the more useful and valuable their experience with that software is.

Take Linux for example. If everyone switched over to BSD tomorrow and threw all Linux's out, everyone who knew how to properly configure their /etc/modules.conf and troubleshoot kernel panics and send a certain ioctl call out to find out how many bytes are available for reading on a pipe before it blocks would have the value of those skills reduced to nothing. All the kernel developers and module developers would have their work's worth reduced to nothing as well as having their highly valuable skills as a kernel programmer being rendered worthless. It's all about self preservation.

If nobody used Firefox, development would end and I wouldn't have cool new features in the next version. If Visual Source Safe got ripped out of everywhere and replaced with subversion, VSS admins everywhere would have their experience with the product rendered worthless. No matter how good an idea that would be (and it would be a good one) people will fight it.

We hitch our wagons to every piece of software we use and if that ends up being a bad choice, we end up paying for it, even if it's only a little. People defend their software choices because making the right one is important and people who imply you made the wrong one are basically implying that you are stupid and worthless.

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