“As the leader of the Mozilla.org project, an AOL-funded open-source Web browser technology, Baker has been trying to stoke the fire she helped light in 1998. Mozilla, which was created using Netscape’s browser code, found support among a legion of software developers intent on blocking the juggernaut advance of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. Making sure that’s a prediction and not a pipe dream is going to be Baker’s challenge. She recently offered her thoughts to CNET News.com on why, despite the heavy odds against it, Mozilla will triumph.” Read the interview at News.com.
Interview with the Leader of the Mozilla Project
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Together with OpenOffice, Linux, BSD etc…
They do indeed offer a very good alternative to Microsoft.
ciao
yc
a good alternative if you don’t need Photoshop / Flash MX / Outlook / Illustrator / Quickbooks / Access …..
The Apple Macintosh has those things, if you want them, and even some Microsoft software.
>>a good alternative if you don’t need Photoshop / Flash MX / Outlook / Illustrator / Quickbooks / Access …..
That’s correct! Most people don’t use these programs on a daily basis. Except perhaps Outlook for which there are great Linux replacements.
Consider a company with 100,000 desktops and 10,000 or so servers running mostly custom in house applications and Office suite apps add in the cost for premier support then ask yourself if Redhat Linux 7.2, OpenOffice 1.0, Mozilla 1.0, SendMail, PostgreSQL, Apache aren’t excellent alternatives…
Businesses can save so much money with Linux it’s not even funny!
They just need the guts to dump Microsoft.
Linux can work very well for most businesses!
ciao
yc
Yes, that sounds good initially. But, in actuality, the initial buy-in costs are very high.
More than likely, the majority of the tech support people at this imaginary company only know Windows. So, you must spend money to train them to support Linux. Next, your IT department is used to programming for Windows, and now need to be trained to program for Linux. Next you administrative people are not tech savvy what-so-ever, and need to be trained in all of the new applications you just got for free.
So, after all of the training, time wasted on training, time spent migrating everything, money spent on training, and so on and so on, you now have a very huge cost, instead of the slow creaping cost of supporting your current infrastructure.
If this make believe company was smaller than 100,000 or so desktops (like 1-10), then your argument may be true.
btw, I have the only linux desktop at my company
More than likely, the majority of the tech support people at this imaginary company only know Windows
I’m afraid it’s even worse. Often they don’t know nothing but at least they’re *familiar* with Windows. Cluelessness and a (correlated?) aversion of change are the biggest hurdles of all IMO. Having alternative choices available and actually making such choices are different things. There’s a lot of psychology involved as well as just plain ignorance/stupidity/laziness.
Having said that, of course Moz also has a Windows version, as has OpenOffice. And THAT’s where we’re going to see interesting things in the near future especially with Microsoft’s current anti-piracy campaign getting on the roll (“make sure its legal” — bah, my FreeBSD boxes are 100% legal, thank you ;-). They’re going to harrass businesses like never before.
Personally I only turn to Moz if Konqueror poofs out on some website that I really want to read, but it is without a doubt one of the most significant projects and I’m thinking especially for embedded/appliance purposes. Both Mozilla and OpenOffice are historical milestones.
— ok, enough rambling
It wasn’t that long ago that this initial investment (yes, that is what it is) had to be done for M$ stuff. You can either change all at once or do a transition. Eitherway, longterm you are better are better off.
I also do not recall anyone saying that it had to be 100% linux. I would think that the smart thing to do would be to identify where a switch to linux would make the greatest impact – servers, developer’s workstations, etc. The folks in the admin section can still have a couple of machines to cook the books while the whole weening process is accomplished.
>So, after all of the training, time wasted on training, >time spent migrating everything, money spent on training, >and so on and so on, you now have a very huge cost, >instead of the slow creaping cost of supporting your >current infrastructure.
I still say that the combination of 64-bit chips and emulation projects like WINE ( OK, runtime not emulation…. picky! ), ConnectixVPC, Bochs, Codeweavers Crossover, iFusion ( PPC Mac on Windows using PCI card G3 )……… will eventually make it trivial to install any app on any Computer
Then, once the application compatibility hurdle is overcome and systems have the power to run emulated environments at high speed.. we can see who really has the best underlying OS.
The existance of crossplatform software like Mozilla , openOffice, KDE can only make this easier.