Chris, nice article! I’m a big fan of the FOSS philosophy myself, although I still use mostly proprietary software for pragmatic reasons. I’d use my duel-boot of Kubuntu more if it weren’t so damn buggy, and if AMD’s fglrx wasn’t so terrible. It’s a shame, because I really do like using it. Do you know if there’s a good third-party driver for AMD cards? Hell, I can’t even use compositing with that driver!

Gerv

Turning from Boycott Novell articles to embracing Meego. Wow!

My position: Boycott Novell is harmful to FOSS/Linux – Meego is even more harmful.

Thanks for the comment. I was in no way meaning to cast aspersions against your character through that suggestion, and I’m happy to remove that line if it would please you (I didn’t think of it as your personal blog post, but rather a company announcement). The point I was making was from the other side of the fence, that Microsoft will no doubt use that post to show how Open Source is a failure and people should buy their products (perhaps rightly so).

Out of curiosity, have you come across Zarafa? It is an “Exchange replacement” which sits on top of existing Linux services such as Postfix, etc. It can synchronise with iPhones (via Z-Push free software project), which seemed to me to be the main missing feature from your previous implementation. Of course, commercial support is available to make it all work in your environment.

Also, I don’t know how much it has cost you to roll out Exchange (not just in licenses but down time, implementation and training, etc) versus how much it would have cost to hire developers to write something from scratch (rather than hacking things together, putting out fires and eventually moving on). I realise that it might not have been cost efficient (or even possible), but it seems to me that if a free product is supposed to sync with iPhones, then it should just work. If it isn’t meant to, then bolting things on top and trying to make it work isn’t the right approach. It’s open source and you guys are smart, so why not write a proper implementation? If the “best tool” for the job doesn’t exist, why not create it for everyone’s benefit!

Hell, if you’d have told the community that this was a problem for you guys and that a move to Exchange would be the end result, you could have gotten a thousand developers coding you a solution for free.

You are right about using the right tool for the job. Absolutely. If you read the rest of my post you’ll see that’s exactly what I say, too. Everybody has criteria about what makes a particular tool the best for the job however, and for me a proprietary vendor lock-in based solution is no-longer on the list (in the past I have rolled out hundreds of Microsoft Exchange solutions).

Anyway, you guys are awesome and I’m sure that you will continue to do great things (I’m still waiting for my NodeMobilePhone service..). In a way I have to thank you for your blog post, because that’s the final thing which made me change the way I think about free software. Before, I used to push it no-matter what. Now I don’t. If Exchange truly suits your needs, then great.

Anyway, thanks again. And please accept my apology.

Cheers,
Chris

“OK, so that does read a lot like a Microsoft PR statement (I wonder what discount they received for printing that), but if Internode can’t get it right what hope does the rest of the world have?”

The answer is: No discounts, at all. I wrote that blog post because I wanted to explain what had happened for us in this realm. It wasn’t, and it isn’t, a PR exercise. We literally did spend years with our guys (mostly FOSS advocates) failing to get the integrated result (including to mobile devices) that we have achieved with Exchange.

Exchange is in no sense a perfect thing. There are plenty of rough edges, but the benefits exceed the downsides – and yes, especially in mobile device and cross platform calendaring integration.

Please, don’t ever think that I write stuff because Microsoft (or anyone else) pays me to do so. That just doesn’t happen. I write stuff because I feel like writing stuff.

There is no need to generate an implication that anyone, ever, has to ‘pay me off’ to write things. At a personal level I find that a wee bit offensive.

We’re an organisation that works with a lot of open source – and has even released the odd thing of our own creation back into the open source community at times. I believe Open Source is a wonderful thing. But its not a wonderful thing when it becomes the source of religious zealotry.

Use the best tool for each job. Its that simple.

Regards,
Simon Hackett

I’m genuinely sad to hear this. I’ve only just found your content on the web, and much of it is really good. Don’t give up just because there are many negative and backwards people out there. You know you are doing a good thing, and people like myself know it too.

I’ve published a summary of your MakeTheMove website on my blog for my readers:
http://www.bitbot.com.au/2010/03/make-the-move/

I’m in Newcastle, and I take it you are in Canberra? I hope to meet you someday… or perhaps I already have and don’t realise it.

I’ve got no problem with tweaking free software, I think it’s fun. My machines all run Linux and with the exception of that damn MacBook Pro (and it’s ugly ATI graphics) everything runs perfectly. Of course I’m always there the help you with your MythTV box.

True, I don’t recognise me. It’s an interesting point – I’ve been defined by FOSS evangelism for the last ten years (for whatever good it’s done), indeed my entire IT career has been built on it.

If I don’t have FOSS evangelism then I don’t know what I’m doing in the computer industry at all. It might mean I have to get out and go so something with languages or such. I wonder if DFAT is recruiting..

Come to think of it, I probably owe at least a year’s supply of lollies at work. One day I should pay up, the mother load, and then never have to worry about it again!

-c

FOSS is competition to Microsoft, Apple is competition to FOSS and Microsoft is competition to Apple.

If one camp has a good idea, it spreads to the other camp (patents notwithstanding). Someone sees what the competition is doing and says “Hey, that’s a good idea, but it would be much better for me if I tweaked it like this…”

Most people want things to ‘just work’. Generally, Mac hardware and operating systems have just worked. DOS worked, if you were willing to tinker under the hood. Someone looked at PC-DOS and said, “Maybe we can make it better if we put a nice GUI on it, like Apple have done… Lets buy the bits of DOS that we don’t own and make it better for the average person. Apple and Microsoft came up with new ideas to make their operating systems – often feeding on the inventions of the other party.

Other people want to tinker. Bunnings is making a fortune selling stuff to people who want to do it themselves (and builders are probably making a fortune fixing what people have done).

Some people are happy to spend hours overclocking their computers to eke out the last remaining hertz. This could be for the kudos of their peers, or just for fun, or for some other reason. People who use their computers as an appliance just think the tweakers are mad.

Some people are willing to spend 30 minutes slaving over a console to get something to work. This could be because they want to show others that something can be done, because it needs to be done, or for the fun and excitement of learning new skills.

There are times when I fit into many camps. I want my mythtv box to just work (well, it’s mainly my wife that wants that). I want to be free to tinker with that computer – to see whats under the hood and learn new stuff that I can use elsewhere – on other computers, wherever.

Anyway, we need evangelists for every camp. The Apple fanbois who say “Hey, this is how easy a computer should work”, Microsoft disciples who say “No, our way is the one true way – just look at all our followers (but I do like the way thing X works)” and the FOSS zealots who can say “That’s a good idea, but I would like product X to do Y” (and make it so) and “I want to be free to do whatever I want to MY machine”

Don’t give up your evangelism – We won’t recognise you