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> Switching to something else requires you to replace that software. That's a cost. My point is that this is impossible. You can't buy the software you need a

> Switching to something else requires you to replace that software. That's a cost. My point is that this is impossible. You can't buy the software you need at any cost. It does not exist. You can't even consider other platforms for this reason. > you can still contact your software vendors and ask them for a Linux version. Zero interest in that for on simple reason: There's nothing wrong with deploying and using the software on Windows. Why would a company bifurcate their development effort to support multiple platforms when it isn't necessary. Programs like Solidworks, for example are highly particular about drivers and, in addition to that, need tools such as MS Office. CAMWorks, which is an integrated CAM programming tool for manufacturing uses an MS Access database for tool and operations parameters. Coming back to the ads in Explorer. I lack context because we are switching all of our workstations to Windows 10 and I have yet to see any such ads. Do they exist in the higher level editions or just in Home edition? Don't get me wrong, I don't like the idea at all. But, frankly, we probably spend significantly less than 1% of our time fiddling around with files in Explorer. When I am spending 12 hours a day on SolidWorks I couldn't care less what happens with explorer. This is no different from visiting StackOverflow and ignoring the ads. Yes, I know one is paid and the other isn't. Yet, in the context of a workstation with $30K to $50K of software installed, the cost of the OS is a rounding error, it might as well be free. Now, if ads start to pop-up in the middle of an 18 hour FEA run it's war.

AnthonyMouse 10y ago
> My point is that this is impossible. You can't buy the software you need at any cost. It does not exist. You can't even consider other platforms for this reason. There are people who can. Most people don't use $50K worth of Windows-locked CAD software. 80% of people who use Microsoft Office can get by perfectly well with LibreOffice or Google Docs, despite the loud objections from the remaining 20%. > Why would a company bifurcate their development effort to support multiple platforms when it isn't necessary. Because it's profitable. There are already people who use other platforms. Typically software prices are the inverse of popularity; more specialized software costs more. How many users does it take at $50K/user to justify the porting cost? 50? 500? That is not a large number against platforms with millions of existing users. And porting to three platforms costs about the same as two, because the differences between Unix-like systems are much smaller than the difference between Windows and Mac, and by that point you're already on a cross-platform framework like Qt and cross-platform database like postgres. So adding support for Mac justifies adding support for Linux, whether it did initially or not. > Don't get me wrong, I don't like the idea at all. But, frankly, we probably spend significantly less than 1% of our time fiddling around with files in Explorer. When I am spending 12 hours a day on SolidWorks I couldn't care less what happens with explorer. The problem is the only thing they hear is money, and you need to be objecting to this more than anyone else for your own benefit. Every time they do something like this they lose users at the margin, because the annoyance pushes those users above the switching cost. Those users are gone, because then the cost is to switch back. But every user they lose increases the level of ad spam the average remaining user will tolerate, because they know those users have higher switching costs and therefore a higher tolerance for ad spam before losing their business. Which means the only way for you, as someone with very high switching costs, to avoid being inundated with ad spam in the near future, is to push the switching costs down for as many people as you can. Demand that all your professional software be supported on Linux, even if you aren't going to use it on Linux. Encourage the people who can switch more easily than you to do it. Because that's the point where they stop -- when the number of users they lose costs more than the profit from the ads. If they stick you with ads and you don't like it but nobody does anything about it, tomorrow there will be even more ads.
- rebootthesystem 10y ago
  With respect, and I don't mean this as a personal dig but rather a statement of fact as I perceive it, I don't think you understand how business works. None of what you say above makes any sense in the real world. Absent a clear, true and significant competitive advantage not a single responsible business owner would make the reckless move of switching platforms. And, BTW, these advantages go far beyond cost. Frankly, in the end, if you have a real business, cost isn't as significant as function. And, by "function" I don't mean how the software works. I mean how the enterprise functions, with software being one set of tools at your disposal. Simple example: Hire office workers familiar with and trained on MS Office tools, of course on Windows. Now hire 1,000 of them. Shove them in front of Ubuntu Linux with Libre Office. The productivity dip will be significant and it might last a while while they learn both a new OS, new GUI and new tools. And, of course, now you have the potential for one or many compatibility issues as you communicate across departments or with other businesses. So long as you don't use MS Office compatibility, by definition, will always have a question mark next to it. And, if there are tools that depend on MS Office you have a serious problem. One example would be domain specific Excel add-ins. Yet, that's not the worst of it. This forced switch at scale causes the company to lose focus and have to concentrate on something totally unrelated to what it is they do for several weeks. Not only is that bad, that's irresponsible. And, in the end, what do you gain? Nothing. Actually, no. You gain problems and potential problems. The kinds of things you might regret in six months or five years as documents and work accumulate. "If it works, don't fix it" is sage advice.
  - AnthonyMouse 10y ago
    Your post can be summarized as "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM." But now 30 years later, hardly anybody is buying IBM -- they don't even make PCs anymore and there are more than a hundred commodity server customers to each mainframe customer -- because the more and the longer people say "you have to stick with the incumbent" the larger their competitive disadvantage becomes because they know they can get away with it. The only question is, do you want to be the company that spends $1 to avoid $1 in costs and disadvantages sooner, or do you want to be the company that waits until later, gets even more locked into the incumbent and then has to spend $100 to avoid $200.

AnthonyMouse 10y ago

> My point is that this is impossible. You can't buy the software you need at any cost. It does not exist. You can't even consider other platforms for this reason. There are people who can. Most people don't use $50K worth of Windows-locked CAD software. 80% of people who use Microsoft Office can get by perfectly well with LibreOffice or Google Docs, despite the loud objections from the remaining 20%. > Why would a company bifurcate their development effort to support multiple platforms when it isn't necessary. Because it's profitable. There are already people who use other platforms. Typically software prices are the inverse of popularity; more specialized software costs more. How many users does it take at $50K/user to justify the porting cost? 50? 500? That is not a large number against platforms with millions of existing users. And porting to three platforms costs about the same as two, because the differences between Unix-like systems are much smaller than the difference between Windows and Mac, and by that point you're already on a cross-platform framework like Qt and cross-platform database like postgres. So adding support for Mac justifies adding support for Linux, whether it did initially or not. > Don't get me wrong, I don't like the idea at all. But, frankly, we probably spend significantly less than 1% of our time fiddling around with files in Explorer. When I am spending 12 hours a day on SolidWorks I couldn't care less what happens with explorer. The problem is the only thing they hear is money, and you need to be objecting to this more than anyone else for your own benefit. Every time they do something like this they lose users at the margin, because the annoyance pushes those users above the switching cost. Those users are gone, because then the cost is to switch back. But every user they lose increases the level of ad spam the average remaining user will tolerate, because they know those users have higher switching costs and therefore a higher tolerance for ad spam before losing their business. Which means the only way for you, as someone with very high switching costs, to avoid being inundated with ad spam in the near future, is to push the switching costs down for as many people as you can. Demand that all your professional software be supported on Linux, even if you aren't going to use it on Linux. Encourage the people who can switch more easily than you to do it. Because that's the point where they stop -- when the number of users they lose costs more than the profit from the ads. If they stick you with ads and you don't like it but nobody does anything about it, tomorrow there will be even more ads.

rebootthesystem 10y ago
With respect, and I don't mean this as a personal dig but rather a statement of fact as I perceive it, I don't think you understand how business works. None of what you say above makes any sense in the real world. Absent a clear, true and significant competitive advantage not a single responsible business owner would make the reckless move of switching platforms. And, BTW, these advantages go far beyond cost. Frankly, in the end, if you have a real business, cost isn't as significant as function. And, by "function" I don't mean how the software works. I mean how the enterprise functions, with software being one set of tools at your disposal. Simple example: Hire office workers familiar with and trained on MS Office tools, of course on Windows. Now hire 1,000 of them. Shove them in front of Ubuntu Linux with Libre Office. The productivity dip will be significant and it might last a while while they learn both a new OS, new GUI and new tools. And, of course, now you have the potential for one or many compatibility issues as you communicate across departments or with other businesses. So long as you don't use MS Office compatibility, by definition, will always have a question mark next to it. And, if there are tools that depend on MS Office you have a serious problem. One example would be domain specific Excel add-ins. Yet, that's not the worst of it. This forced switch at scale causes the company to lose focus and have to concentrate on something totally unrelated to what it is they do for several weeks. Not only is that bad, that's irresponsible. And, in the end, what do you gain? Nothing. Actually, no. You gain problems and potential problems. The kinds of things you might regret in six months or five years as documents and work accumulate. "If it works, don't fix it" is sage advice.
- AnthonyMouse 10y ago
  Your post can be summarized as "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM." But now 30 years later, hardly anybody is buying IBM -- they don't even make PCs anymore and there are more than a hundred commodity server customers to each mainframe customer -- because the more and the longer people say "you have to stick with the incumbent" the larger their competitive disadvantage becomes because they know they can get away with it. The only question is, do you want to be the company that spends $1 to avoid $1 in costs and disadvantages sooner, or do you want to be the company that waits until later, gets even more locked into the incumbent and then has to spend $100 to avoid $200.