2005-03-31

Interesting items of note

Well, Mrs. Slaq has now left her job with the Department of Children and Families. Good riddance, in my opinion. I know *I* couldn't do that job. I'd want to throttle every parent that was an idiot.

As for me, I have an interview on Friday April 1. The shop that I'm interviewing with is a non-profit organization that is in the process of migrating every system on the campus to RedHat Fedora. Every server, and every desktop. No windows anywhere. I'd love to be a part of that.

See, I preach Linux in the workplace for two main reasons: Free, and Open.

To define, Free is just as it implies. The cost of rolling out and using the software on most Linux systems is exactly what you want to donate to the project distribution of your choice. No licenses, no seats, no compliance checks, nothing. The BSA is not going to confiscate every machine on your network if they feel like it. If you think I'm kidding, read this.

The next part about open, is much nicer. Say X and Y play well together, but Z doesn't like to play with X and Y. Well, in an open environment, I can dig into the guts of the software and play with it to see if I can wrench on it enough to get it to work. Alternatively I can pay someone to do the same. Trust me, there's nothing more frustrating than to ask a vendor "I need your software to do Z.", and get the answer "We can't do that. Sorry.".

Weather I get the job I'm interviewing for or not, it really doesn't matter. It's cool that other places are starting to think like I do and seeing that Free and Open are both good things. I won't say that all is perfect in the world of Linux, far from it. Desktop printing is still a mess (which 95% or more of the time, Windows gets *right*), and some of the applications don't have counterparts, or their counterparts aren't as polished (Exchange server/Outlook doesn't have a counterpart, Adobe Photoshop's counterpart the GIMP isn't as nice as Adobe's option. This is just what I've heard from people that have used them both) as they are on Windows. However, when you're an organization that either uses tax dollars, or is non-profit, I believe that you owe it to the taxpayers/people who sponsor your organization to at least look into Free and Open software, and use the funds that you've been put in charge of for more core operations.

I really think I'd like the job, tho. :D

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