On Mon, Dec 13, 2010 at 12:22:28PM -0500, Brian Mathis wrote: > On Sun, Dec 12, 2010 at 11:45 AM, Zdenek <zdenek.w at o2.pl> wrote: > > Hello all. > > > > Does anybody have experience with pushing CentOS in enterprise? > > > > I have the following situation. I tried to promote CentOS to local > > bank. They have now a couple of Gentoo-based systems and I tried to > > explain them that CentOS is much better option for enterprises. > > > > IT department is interested in stability of the system, so they are > > ready to give CentOS a try. But the problem came from management > > and information security division. > > > > That guys look much affected by FUD created by M$. They tell the > > story like "you can not rely on this open source, it is built by > > just few community geeks, you never know what will happen if the > > developer will be hit by bus tomorrow" and so on. They especially > > refer to the last year FUD story published at ZDNet > > (http://goo.gl/y0LBi). So, IT guys are allowed to use open source > > only if they can prove that it has stable community and transparent > > development and build process they can reproduce on their own if > > necessary. > > > > I guess, I'm not the first who encounter this issue. Could you > > share your experience how to deal with it? Are there any public > > resources that can be used as proofs of CentOS stability? > > > > -- Zdenek > > > This sounds a lot more like a religious war from the people who think > that using Gentoo is the "right" way to do things because it's pure > from source, etc... The fact that they already have Gentoo means > they are not opposed to Open Source per se, just that they seem to > look at Redhat as the "MS of the Linux world", and have some kind of > prejudice against that. > > The only way to combat this view is to highlight all the problems of > maintaining things from source code, and to show the benefits of a > standard platform. Be prepared for a high amount of dismissiveness, > attitude, and flat out accusations that "maintaining from source > isn't that hard and if you can't do it you're obviously not qualified > for the job". This is a sure sign of an amateur sysadmin or someone > who thinks a sysadmin is just a person too dumb to be a programmer. > As for the standard platform thing, just look at what all major > vendors support for Linux, and you can bet that Redhat is #1 on the > list. > > As for concerns about the community going away, it's quite easy to > point out that all commercial software also has this risk, and that > risk could actually be higher since they have to maintain profits. > And since when can you build any commercial software from source if > the company goes out of business? Anyone who advocates maintaining from source has simply never administered more than a handful of machines at a time. Great way to learn, but impractical for hundreds to thousands of machines. Ray