DevBlog

Ten years ago, InformationWeek (Weak) ran a story stating FoxPro was dead. I haven't paid much attention to the rag in that time and have round filed several offers to subscribed. Ted pointed to a sidebar to an article on people moving to Linux. The article, Linux Going Mainstream, itself really concentrates on people moving from Unix and supercomputers to Linux, rather than from Windows to Linux. Ted, who promotes Open Source, neglected to point out two quotes from the main article. The first, from Tony Johnson of Trimble Mobile Solutions,

"I've never believed the 'Linux is free' story," Johnson says. "The numbers aren't that much different between Windows and Linux."

The second from Nick Gray of UPS,

The idea of an IT environment where Unix, Linux, and Windows coexist doesn't bother UPS. "Mixed environments are the norm for IT departments," Gray says. Linux as a replacement for Windows is less appealing for UPS, which has 6,000 Windows-based servers and 100,000 Windows-based desktops. "Windows works for us, and it's already on Intel," Gray says.

Now, the sidebar, Defection: Microsoft Proponent Moves To Linux, talks about Whil Hentzen. Some things about this sidebar bother me. First is the reporting by Larry Greenemeier. It says that Whil has been a recipient of Microsoft's "Most Valuable Programmer" award. I learned in my junior high school journalism class to check the facts. Mr. Greenemeier got it wrong here, obviously because he didn't check his facts. It's the "Most Valuable Professional" award.

Second, there are some things attributed to Whil that just don't make sense to me. Try this one on for size,

Why the switch? "A confluence of things made me look at what else is out there," Hentzen says. The most compelling reason came from Microsoft, which has pushed its FoxPro development tools aside in favor of .Net, Hentzen says.

When have you ever seen FoxPro take a front or even equal stance to VB? Before .NET even came along, VB was being pushed ahead of VFP. Here's another,

Add to this the trouble Hentzen was having with crashes and blue screens on the Windows NT 4.0 servers running his publishing business, and a change clearly was needed.

Ummm, Whil, NT 4.0 was known to have crash problems. Did you ever consider Win2K, which was much, much better? Finally,

He estimates that in 2002, it would have cost him $10,000 to upgrade his servers and workstations to the latest versions of Windows. "Suppose I upgrade to Windows 2003 and Windows XP. What would I be able to do then that I can't do with my current boxes? Nothing," he says. "I don't need all of the collaboration features available in the latest versions of Windows."

OK, fair enough. I don't know what Whil's network looks like, but he's one guy stating his needs. That doesn't mean many others don't need the collaboration features. Microsoft.com has many case studies showing where the collaboration saved companies thousands of dollars.

As I've stated before, Open Source is great and has it's place...as do "proprietary" systems. But, the Open Source community needs to get off this stance that their solution is less expensive or more secure because the facts simply don't show it.