[FOSS] How does one respond to this line of questioning?

[Jon 'maddog' Hall]

>Why do many large organizations tend to resist FOSS?  Discuss.

FUD...utilizing the true definition....of the unknown.

Even today there are lots of people in IT management who started after
the beginning of Microsoft and Apple....and other "systems" companies
who utilized closed source.  "Buying a solution" is all they know.

Many in IT management today do not remember, or never experienced, the
crafting of a solution by working with a consultant and stating what the
company's goals are, then having the consultant create a contract and
deliver a product that is supportable.   The "solution" for many large
customers is "SAP" or "PeopleSoft" or "SalesForce" and is now becoming
"The Cloud".  They change the way they do work to fit the product, not
the other way around.

Another example:

The concept of sending an employee or two to attend a week or two of
education is fast going the way of the dodo.

In "the old days" the justification for training was to make the use of
the 2.5 million dollar mainframe 10% better.  ROI was about 250,000.

Today you don't train the person to use the computer better, you simply
wait a week and buy a faster CPU.  Management sees that as "cheaper".
They do not see the long term investment in the employee.

I know that I am using "globalisms" here and there will be lots of
people that may not agree with me, but large companies' management
strains to understand the latest buzzwords created by marketing people
and never understands what it is like to really generate a solution.

Just think about the issue of having to create the phrase "Open Source"
because too many people in large corporations could not understand the
term "Free(DOM) Software".

md