Why people don't adopt FLOSS

I'm in a rush to finish a lot of things at work and am working on a longer post about incorporating systems analysis in emergency management so for now I'm going to quote a large portion of text from the Confused of Calcutta blog entitled "Learning about why people don't adopt open source". I think the post nails the problem on the head.

1. They hate the principle. Such people are uncomfortable with the concept of opensource, they tend to get hung up with the free-as-in-gratis rather than the free-as-in-freedom, and they feel that somehow the very nature of their existence gets undermined by the use of opensource. It’s unAmerican, it’s McCarthyist, it’s even (hush your mouth) Communist. And don’t you know it’s already illegal in Alaska? Where will the world go to if everyone started using free things? Opensource users are stealing from the mouths of people who work hard everywhere. The very idea! These people are hard to convince, but when convinced experience Road-To-Damascus moments. Work on them, it will pay off.
2. They believe it’s insecure. [Again, a wonderful feat of marketing, excellent management of the metaphors and anchors and frames around opensource.] Quite a common response. Code that everyone can use, that anyone can change, that no one owns? Open to inspection by all? How on earth could that possibly be secure? It’s all a plot to bring down the capitalist world as we know knew it. Solvable by education.
3. They’re out of their comfort zone. This tends to be the response of steady-state professionals in IT departments in many organisations. If it works, why try and fix it? Why force yourself to take responsibility for the integration, deployment and support of something, when you can pay someone else to take care of it all? They’re risk-averse and responsibility-shy; understandable, defensible, this can often be solved by education.
4. They know a better way. These are people who point to the end-to-end control that Apple/Microsoft has, and how that gives people more choice and a better experience. [Yes, I've always wanted to drive my car on railtracks, ensure that the wheels fit precisely on the tracks, and go by car only to the places the railway takes me. ?!?] Solvable by education.
5. They don’t know about it. These people have been cocooned away so effectively that they aren’t even aware of the options they have. Totalitarian rule. Most probably they aren’t allowed to go on to that dangerous place, the internet, where they might see strange places and maybe even catch exotic diseases. If they do have connectivity, it’s locked down to a small number of cleared sites. Mozilla is definitely not one of them, and even Sun is banned. Solvable by education.
6. They can’t do what they want with it. To me, this is one of the most understandable objections. They use something that’s proprietary, they’ve built a whole pile of things around the proprietary thing, and now they can’t function without it. It’s hard to replicate elsewhere or using anything else. It’s not just the applications, you have to think about the processes, the training, everything. I almost buy this. Almost. But all you need to do is imagine you are in a merger or takeover, and all this changes. There is an imperative to move, and all the excuses disappear. So while I have sympathy for this view, I am aware of how fragile it really is. The best way to solve this one is to simulate a merger or takeover involving a firm that does not use what you’re using.
7. The move represents serious operational risk. Puh-leese. Find the remaining deckchairs on the Titanic, and get them on it. They will happily move them around until iceberg time.

Sole-source-anonymous

We've been on a bender of sole-source proprietary software procurement. And because the tools dictate the way we work, we have also been on a kind of sole-source mindset bender.

Never fear, there is hope and a 12 step process.

Sole-source-anonymous 12-Step Program

1. We admitted we were powerless over software procurement from on high—that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of communal development as we understood it.
4. Made a searching and fearless inventory of our toolkit.
5. Admitted to the community, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs
   
6. Were entirely ready to have transparent and interactive development and procurement remove all these defects of character
7. Humbly asked everyone to reveal and help remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through constant interaction and conscious infusion of diverse opinion to improve our conscious contact with the community as we understood it, hoping only for knowledge of their will and the power to carry that out
    
12. Having had a communal awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to sole-source addicts, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

Hugging is optional.


(If I offend, say so in the comments - it was not my intent to mock the 12-step program for AA but only for demonstrative purposes)

Purpose of the blog

Kristin Shoemaker at OSATIC references a great article (post?) written by Bruce Byfield at Datamation. The post, called "Nine Attitude Problems in Free and Open Source Software" is a synopsis of the current challenges, most of complacency and focus, that he sees in the FLOSS world. The bullet point that hits home for me also provoked Kristin's post. Bruce Byfield thinks that FLOSS proponents have been preaching the trees for the forest. For every FLOSS advocate, much of the tenor of that advocacy has been of the "Woah! This tech is so cool. Look what I/you/we can do" with one particular piece of software. Byfield and Shoemaker urge the FLOSS community to instead start rephrasing the pitch more akin to the way the recycling movement has done. Focus on positive externalities and not the process.

That's what I want to do with this blog. I want to convince people (I'll start with a person) to start experimenting with FLOSS because of the ideals. FLOSS organizatinal structure is ready made for volunteer-dependent non-profits. It's a shame and it's beyond time to fix this problem.