Getting people to recognize and use Linux / FOSS isn't happening very fast, but as time moves on I think we will see progress throughout the business. Organizations and companies don't like to pay more, especially if they get fed up with bad service and poor quality from the software companies they are paying now.
Recently my church's tech computer went down because of a corrupt Windows registry. I was going to reload it using the new version of Ubuntu, but they had a proprietary program they purchased and use for showing words and music lyrics on a secondary monitor and some projectors. After putting a clean copy of Windows XP and a fresh install of the projector software on the computer, the projector software kept crashing. Once I reinstalled it a different way, I found out it needed a serial that the church didn't have on record. I went to the company website and they said they would email the serial on the next business day. Unfortunately, it was the weekend so to make a long story short we didn't have working projectors that Sunday.
The projector software expires later in 2009, so hopefully I can try again to convince them the Linux software I want to use is a better, cheaper solution. It might not be easy since the proprietary projector software uses it's own file formats, but I have time to figure things out.
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Proprietary Headaches
Posted by: Lite on November 13, 2008 10:14 PMRecently my church's tech computer went down because of a corrupt Windows registry. I was going to reload it using the new version of Ubuntu, but they had a proprietary program they purchased and use for showing words and music lyrics on a secondary monitor and some projectors. After putting a clean copy of Windows XP and a fresh install of the projector software on the computer, the projector software kept crashing. Once I reinstalled it a different way, I found out it needed a serial that the church didn't have on record. I went to the company website and they said they would email the serial on the next business day. Unfortunately, it was the weekend so to make a long story short we didn't have working projectors that Sunday.
The projector software expires later in 2009, so hopefully I can try again to convince them the Linux software I want to use is a better, cheaper solution. It might not be easy since the proprietary projector software uses it's own file formats, but I have time to figure things out.
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