Ponytails and politics handicap Open Source in the U.S.
The ponytails belong to the Open Source
advocates. The backwards politics belongs to the decision-makers.
The lax dress code of the open-source community is one of the reasons behind the software’s slow uptake in commercial environments, says former Massachusetts chief information officer (CIO) Peter Quinn.
Quinn, who played a key role in rolling out 50,000 open-source desktops in his home state of Massachusetts in the eastern United States, said “appearance matters” when trying to convince business decision makers of the merits of open-source software.
He pointed to the “sandal and ponytail set” as detracting from the business-ready appearance of open-source technology and blamed the developers for the inertia for business Linux adoption.
The culture of fear was exacerbated by the fact this was an election year in the US.
Quinn, who faced plenty of scrutiny over his support of the OpenDocument standards-based office document format, said proponents of open source in government faced formidable opposition from vested interests if they went public.
“When you think about the lobbying power and the cash that’s available for opponents of open source and opponents of OpenDocument, there is a significant amount of money and resource that people can and will bring to bear,” he said.
You can include good old-fashioned fear of change into the latter half of this discussion.
Posted: Wed - March 29, 2006 at 06:10 AM