[CS-FSLUG] The Moral Foundation of Free Software

[Tim Young]

I agree with both Fred and Aaron...

On one side, users do not need two weeks to learn a new OS.  But then, I have run
into users who quit their jobs instead of facing the upgrade from Win95 to
Win98.  I had one panic attack phone call when someone clicked on an icon on
their computer, and as the software was loading it flashed up the registration
page.  It had her supervisor's name on it instead of hers.  She thought her
supervisor had taken control of her computer and so she could not work on it.
And she would not.  I ended up driving 2 hours, opening up regedit and putting
her name in the registration, and then she could get back to work.

The short of it?  Never underestimate the non-technical side of the switchover.

    - Tim Young

"Fred A. Miller" wrote:

> On Mon January 3 2005 12:47 am, Aaron Patrick Lehmann wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
> > What do they gain?  If KDE is equivalent to Windows, but is going to cost
> > every user 2 man-weeks of time to get used to, this requires substantial
> > benifits to justify.  If they are paid workers, you lose money, if they are
> > volunteers, they will (rightly, in my opinion) feel their time is being
> > wasted.  The only advantage to FOSS is where it is different from
>
> [snip]
>
> 'Doesn't wash......period! The down time associated with using MickySoft is
> VERY costly, and is UNavoidable as long as management insists on using it.
> Further, I disagree with the 2 week learning cuve........it's much less.
>
> Fred
>
> --
> "As Internet technology itself vaults into new areas, so too does the
> Microsoft monopoly and its tried-and-true bag of tricks."
> -US Senator Orrin Hatch, (R) Utah
>
> _______________________________________________
> ChristianSource FSLUG mailing list
> Christiansource at ofb.biz
> http://cs.uninetsolutions.com