onfocus

Way back when I played guitar, I bought Ernie Ball strings. I hadn't heard that name for a long time, and I enjoyed this interview with Ernie Ball CEO Steve Ball about his company's switch to open source software. [via biohabit] Ball tells it like it is: "It shows how ridiculous it is that I can get press because I switched to OpenOffice. And the reason why is because the myth has been built so big that you can't survive without Microsoft, so that somebody who does get by without Microsoft is a story." I've heard about these auditing raids he describes before, but I didn't realize just how terrible they could be. This alone makes a strong business case for going with open source software. Why would you want to be fined and publicly humiliated by your software vendor?