> > Gartner may sound creaky but under the starchy
> >  language, this is pretty revolutionary advice.
>
> I can't agree with the "revolutionary advice" part; business leaders,
> firms, advisers and abusers have been saying this already for years.
> That Gartner now is on the field saying it too shows nothing except
> how conservative they are; this is an old message, and certainly not
> aimed at people who's doing the actual work in their organisations.

No, the key is that they ARE very conservative and still influential.

> The only people that Gartner now is playing to are the business
> people, who will be surprised to learn that their organisations
> already use (and many fully embrace) OSS, and have done so for years.

Well, you and I know that two great arguments for OSS, from a
school-of-Gartner point of view, are a) commercial vendors already use it in
their products and b) people can make money from it. (In fact, I'm surprised
they didn't make those points.)

> OSS is already successful, and it's already working great even if the
> MBAs don't know it. And because Gasrtner now is playing to those
> people, that's why the porridge litmus test works so great; in
> reality, nothing will change, which for many is the perfect advice.

For those of us in the field pushing for new approaches, the Gartner report
does represent positive change. It's not that OSS isn't successful. It's
that some of us would really like it to be much more successful...

Karen G. Schneider
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