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calewisHNSource author
Lessons learnedExperience excerpt · English

I worked for a very old school manufacturing company based in Switzerland

I worked for a very old school manufacturing company based in Switzerland. We wanted to roll our own IoT platform for sensors in the factory. We spoke to MS, what they had was a load of garbage, so we decided to carry on as we were. I later found out that the MS CEO called the CEO of this company and from then on we were fighting every day as to why we weren’t using MS. This was a private company, not even a big spend, yet they got the CEO involved on sales calls? That’s when I realised how corrupt it was an org.

Original discussionLessons from open source in the Mexican government95 source comments · at import
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HU
huijzerHN

I found this part interesting: > González Waite said that all of the large proprietary software companies ""are big bullies"". He has been called into the US embassy and been threatened because Mexico was using technology that was not from the US; those threats were dialed back when he explained that the government also used software and services from Amazon, Google, and Microsoft. Various companies use the US government to bully other countries, but they also use license audits as a reaction to projects that move to open-source software. Every time a successful switch happened, ""six months later there was an audit""; having the right legal team helps defend against those tactics, he said. It matches also what I heard from someone working for the Dutch government. He said that whenever they needed a new software system, that Microsoft would send multiple consultants for "free" which all…

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NO
noisy_boyHN

> We spoke to MS, They are out to lock you in to ensure sustained cashflow, not solve your problem in the most impartial and cost efficient way for you.

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SP
speed_spreadHN

Small companies matter because the transition to non proprietary tech is potentially simpler and thus more likely to succeed. Add a few success stories from small players in the same market, making them more competitive might raise the attention of bigger players.

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WI
WillAdamsHN

Classic example of this was when Dell use WebObjects for their shop-front --- Microsoft was so put out that they threatened their licensing deals.

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DG
dguestHN

CERN (also in CH) made a half-effort to switch away from MS a few years ago. MS had started charging them a crazy amount of money. They got a few people working on it and even switched a few of the back end services. And actually the open source stuff worked amazingly well! Then like a year later they doubled down on MS products (right after a new IT head came in). The IT people I spoke to had no idea why this happened but no one seemed to think going back to MS was a good idea. Discussed more here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41717607

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