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

[Mark Komarinski]

I'll be a bit of a Devil's Advocate here.

On 04/08/2011 09:02 AM, Jon 'maddog' Hall wrote:
>> 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.
'Buying a solution' is how we always approach things.  We don't build 
our own cars or houses from kits anymore - we buy them pre-built.  While 
you can do your own plumbing or electrical work, you hire experts to 
take care of it for you.  Why should software be any different?  If you 
need to hire a $100,000+ developer for some amount of time to design an 
application that you could license for $10,000/year.

Be honest here, how many of you built your home desktop from scratch?  
How about your parents?  Why do you think there's a discrepancy in those 
numbers?

Along the same lines, if you already have a staff of .NET developers, 
why make them learn PHP and Drupal when they can just do something in 
SharePoint?
> 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.
That's true and sad.   A real-life example from $EMPLOYER is any time we 
ask a question about $PIECE_OF_STORAGE that's more complex than 'please 
set the quota for person X to Y GB' it's immediately forwarded to the 
vendor.  If you already have to pay for software and hardware 
maintenance, why bother training when you can have the vendor on the 
phone in two minutes?

-Mark