What CIOs Do Get About Open Source

  

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I suppose CIOs are an easy target to poke, because they sure are getting beat up over Open Source lately.

What they do get about Open Source, however, is how it's coming into their organization.  They realize that no matter what kind of mandates and policies they create to keep Open Source out, it still comes in through their developers.

First, their developers will simply download it from sourceforge.net or apache.org.  If those sites are blocked, they'll find mirror sites or use anonymous proxies.  If that doesn't work for some reason, they'll burn it to CDs at home and bring it in that way.  Or perhaps a USB thumb drive will do the trick.  If all else fails, they'll bring in a personal laptop and do all their work on it and email the results to their work computer to check into the source code control system.

In other words, the best developers will never be thwarted.  They'll quit before succumbing to rules and regulations that prevent them from getting the job done.

In my experience, it's far easy to work with them than against them.  Good CIOs understand this and try to create policies that help direct, manage, and track Open Source usage rather than threaten termination or law suits.

BTW, I know the threats don't work because we have a number of Fortune 100 customers that tried that approach only to find that the Open Source usage simply goes underground.  As soon as they brought us in to manage the Open Source and provide amnesty, they found dozens or hundreds of skunkwork projects using a myriad of Open Source components completely under the radar.

That's what should really scare CIOs: not knowing what they have in production.  It's better to shed some light on the subject so they can acquire the appopriate training and support for their people than to force them to hide in dark corners like a fleet of rebels waiting to attack at the first sign of weakness.

So in defense of good CIOs everywhere, I think they understand this.  They don't want their best developers to leave, but they also need to implement a standard of care in their enterprise.  That's why I'm talking to more of them every week.