Re: Elocution

The answer is simple really. Fingers. When something goes wrong fingers turn
into blame compasses. At my two previous jobs and my current one, immunity
of finger pointing was the #1 reason for sticking with something expensive.
This pointing applies in two directions: to managers and to vendors.

If a manager keeps the tanks, and the M1A2 dies in the middle of a
battlefield, they can say, "well we had an acceptable track record with the
M1A1, so it wasn't a crazy idea." Others will follow the reasoning (assuming
the M1A2 has similar design criteria and didn't end up a being a VW beetle)
Reason will prevail, and he will keep his job. If a manager replaces systems
with new ones, he had better justify it on very solid grounds. If it fails,
he gets canned, the company suffers, fire and brim stone, egg on the face,
etc. Plain and simple. Since the business is used to "buying tanks" and
tanks have always worked for them so far, staying with tanks is a safe move.
They know the fuel consumption and repair rates. The staff is trained on
tanks. Switching to Hyundias is very risky. (Sorry for the cheap shot, but
more on this later.)

When things go wrong in an immediate nature, the manager can call the vendor
and get support. While this is largely true with most important open-source
products today, it seems not as good. The people who support don't always
own the code, and there is no guarantee that the fix/hack will make it into
the source tree, no matter how benevolent the dictator. Maybe new patches
need to be developed and applied for the next version. Also, trying to
support things yourself is costly, and usually incomplete. (Though as a
hacker, I prefer doing it myself!)

Back to the Hyundai remark. OSS is inexpensive, light, stable and while
not-new, the image has been only recently grown to the point that people are
very familiar with the product line. (Elantra, Tiburon, Santa Fe)->(Linux,
Apache, MySQL*) (*by popularity)

Lastly, when everyone else is driving M1A1's, would you feel safe on the
information super-highway even though you saved $989,999? I'd be wondering
about the situation I put myself in, and what I was smoking when I did.
Yeah, I've got a lot more money than everyone else to spend now, but it
doesn't do you any good if you're a pancake on the information
super-highway.

Fortunately, all those reasons are merely psychological - not technical -
and attitudes will/can change. It's not even MS FUD too. When I told my
current boss about PostgreSQL, and it being free, he asked: "What's wrong
with it? How can it be free?" To which I answered: "Well you can pay for it
if you want." It didn't have the same effect. (Note to self: Set up an S
corp., charge for PostgreSQL disks, manuals and 30-day installation support,
$10000 (Starbucks effect)) Eventually people will see the Hyundias running
circles around the tanks, and people will feel a bit safer about buying one.

-----Original Message-----
From: pgsql-advocacy-owner(at)postgresql(dot)org
[mailto:pgsql-advocacy-owner(at)postgresql(dot)org]On Behalf Of Paul Ramsey
Sent: Monday, December 09, 2002 2:39 PM
To: pgsql-advocacy(at)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: [pgsql-advocacy] Elocution

So, here is my parable.

Should you drive to work in an M1A tank? There are lots of very good
reasons to do so, prominantly the way driving to work in an M1A tank
enhances your personal safety. In both freeway incidents and grocery
store parking lots, it is the fellow driving the M1A tank who comes out
on top. However, there are lots of reasons not to drive an M1A tank to
work. The initial aquisition cost of several million dollars is pretty
hard to swallow. And even if you can quietly steal one from the local
Army base, the fuel costs alone will bankrupt you in short order.

Companies have been running their IT infrastructures on the
equivalent of M1A tanks for the past several years, and the fuel bill is
starting ot catch up with them. The first manifestation of this
changeover is the way Linux is eating the bottom out of the proprietary
UNIX market. Why run your web server on an Ultra 450? It is the finest
hardware around, but it is not actually *needed* for the application.
Between commodity hardware and simple failover systems you can achieve
the same results for far less money. So why not save the money?

Once you look at how the operating system market is shaking out, the
next chapter seems blindingly obvious. Oracle is wonderful software,
but it is an M1A tank, and its many features are not *required* for most
applications. Why are people running contact management software on
Oracle? Why are they running web services on Oracle? Like proprietary
UNIX, in many installations Oracle is a nice-to-have, not a
have-to-have. And cost-concious CIOs should be looking with just as much
focus at their Oracle database budgets as they have recently been
looking at their proprietary UNIX budgets.

Has a certain simplicity, doesn't it?

--
__
/
| Paul Ramsey
| Refractions Research
| Email: pramsey(at)refractions(dot)net
| Phone: (250) 885-0632
\_

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