Comparing open source
Search Open Source has a piece on one of the barriers to Linux adoption, the lack of an iteration of Microsoft Office for the platform. Focusing on the inevitable comparisons between OpenOffice.org and MS’s offering, it includes the sage advice “Stop whining and embrace change”:
There’s a contingent of IT folks, however, who discount these complaints about OpenOffice. IT pro Carl Hilton Jones sums up this group’s stance: “A surprisingly large number of people can’t tell the difference between the concepts ‘different’ and ‘defective.’ They will automatically label anything that doesn’t look exactly like Microsoft as ‘defective.’ Of course, this never applies to changes that Microsoft makes.
Paul Murphy, on the ZDNet blogs, takes a similar angle, railing against the received wisdom that open source apps “don’t measure up to Microsoft” in terms of functionality and ease of use. This fallacy stymies the adoption of Linux, or at the very least provides a figleaf for other motivations. The post has caused a bit of a ruckus, with fellow ZDNet blogger (and Microsoft employee) John Caroll publishing a rebuttal of Murphy’s arguments.