Luke S Crawford wrote: > Edward Ned Harvey <[email protected]> writes: > > >> MS has some products that are best in class (particularly AD, and I also >> love exchange), and some that are pure garbage. >> >> Google has some products that are best in class (I personally love google >> code and google earth), and some that are pure garbage. >> >> And Apple is the same. And Dell. And Adobe. And every one of these major >> companies. >> > > > See, I think it's important to call out companies when they do something > that goes against the interests of their users. I think it is > valid to avoid companies that have an eregreus history of doing things that > harm the interests of users similar to yourself. It's essential > for a rational market; otherwise these companies will continue to abuse > you. > <soapbox_mode=on>
Please, it's time to 'get real'. Sure, some of these companies offend my sensibilities when they trample existing standards - but just avoiding them does not fix the problem. Novell asked me and a colleague for help when they were putting a TCP/IP course together (back in the pre-SUSE days). There were some very nonstandard features in their TCP/IP offering - and in their Unix system - and their TCP/IP crew, who had little real-world experience with either TCP or Unix were grateful and eager to get all of the input that they could, and did correct many of the nonstandard deficiencies (yes, the complete opposite of my experience with the Netware NDS folk :-). I've given input to people from Microsoft to help 'guide' them towards a more standard AD interface offering for Unix. No, they don't take absolutely everything and implement it tomorrow - but some fixes did appear, and this doesn't happen if the Unix community just completely ignores them. I didn't do this because I love Microsoft, I had purely personal motives - I needed the functionality in AD for our installation! And, it happens that my $WORK had some influence with them at the time. Use these opportunities to enlighten those that need it, if you're lucky enough to get such a break. There are truly moral issues for not dealing with a person, company, organisation, government, whatever. Having lost a family member due to a completely-avoidable tainted blood transfusion, I certainly will not deal with that organisation to accept or donate blood - to me, that's the kind of issue that deserves a personal boycott.Avoiding a company that didn't religiously follow a standard here or there? Attempting to make money at others' expense? Really! Isn't that what they call capitalism???? BTW - how many of you use a Mac, iPhone, iPod, etc.- shame on you! Full of proprietary, non-standard stuff! And they litigate against anyone who tries to open them up! ;-) If I attempted to avoid everyone who had ever offended my sensibilities in any way, I'd never get out of bed in the morning - after all, I offend myself sometimes! Yes, this is (still somewhat) a free country, and you are allowed to vote with your feet and talk with your emails. However, please don't expect everyone to follow your code for avoiding anything non-completely-open, non-standard-fanatic, non-overly-corporate. The rest of us have to live in the real world, and make compromises of some of these issues to get: 1) things to work 2) others to work with us 3) paid <soapbox_mode=off> - Richard _______________________________________________ Tech mailing list [email protected] http://lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tech This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
