'Commercial Partners'

[Eric S. Raymond]

Avi Alkalay <avi at unix.sh>:
> To help Eric fine tune his accuracy, I have to say that I work in a
> global well known IT company, on Linux solutions sales. We fight
> everyday for Linux not to die in the commercial world, because of this
> annoying "missing packages". On the commercial desktop space this is
> specially annoying.
> 
> This is so ridiculous that you still can find Linux sales people
> making Linux presentations on Linux events using MS PowerPoint. Just
> because to use Linux isn't that straight forward as Andy may think.
> 
> I believe that too much religion in our OSS world doesn't help much.
> Exactly as real religions, it makes its followers a bit blind to see
> whats really happening out there.
> 
> So I think Eric is pretty accurate in its statement.

If this list weren't 99% populated by techies, you'd see hundreds of
mails like this.  

One of the things I make a special point of doing is keeping in touch
with people who are in the trenches every day doing Linux conversions
for SOHO customers.  And kids, it's a whole 'nother world out there.
Your average Linux developer is just *astonishingly* naive about what
actual customers' priorities are and what drives technology adoption.

I wish I had the luxury of such naivete.  I wish we could fort up in
our technical-specialist back-room niche, worship at the shrine of
100% undiluted free software, and not worry about what very powerful
enemies will do if we don't outgrow their capacity to smother us.

Alas, reality is not that kind.
-- 
		<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>