Solid Block of Ise

I’ve just been at a meeting. The company I “work” for is setting up a new AD-server, and since they’re short on time and staff they’ve outsourced this project to an external consulting-company. Today was the second meeting about this project, what time-frame it’ll be constrained to and any potential risks with it.

Now, I like being a part of this. It’s interesting seeing how things like this are handled, and I feel privileged to be allowed to witness it. Me being a UNIX/Linux-nerd primarily I only have theoretical knowledge about these things, but I feel that I learn at least some things about it.

But that’s the sad part. Every time I get to see the corporate side of computing, the hacker inside of me just grows even more cynical and tired. Most of these people are stamped from the same mold. They’re all the same MCP-toting, closed and proprietary ecosphere-propagating drones. In most cases you couldn’t tell where one ends and the next one begins. They’re entire professional career has been within the Microsoft-sphere, and for every problem they’ve been taught that the only “real” solution is from Microsoft. They’re all experts at what they do, and I respect them for it - yet I grow weary about the corporate side of computing.

I like freedom in computers. These days I’m becoming more and more like the good parts of RMS and hopefully without too many of the less amusing parts of him. My computers at home all run free software, and this website is served up using free software. Not just free as in cost, but free as in speech and use as well. The flipside to this is the way corporate consulting firms work. They don’t like free software. It doesn’t fit into their monosphere of proprietary software. Most of them will actively spread FUD against it.

Even though the people today weren’t as bad as that, I just knew that had I asked them about free software, about software licensed as Open Source they simply would’ve regarded me as some eccentric nut who wasn’t in touch with reality. “Why don’t you use [some proprietary and extremely costly solution] to do that instead?”

Pretty much everything in the corporate world of computing is in my experience dull and without any imagination. Most of the time the solution is to throw money at problems. Corporate MCP-drones know how to use the software, but they know nothing about the software itself - nor are they interested in it. They’ve been constantly indoctrinated through their education, upbringing and work-experience that software is proprietary, and that FOSS is for nutters and communists - not for serious professionals.

I like Micke and Anders, my “bosses” at VK. They’re intelligent. They’re funny. They haven’t been completely brainwashed by the corporate attitude about computing. They both say they would like to do it some other way, but they themselves don’t have the knowledge and in the short run it’s more economical to do it this way.

But the MCP-toting drones at the corporate consultants, they never see anything outside of their own monolithic ecosphere.

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