I would’ve NEVER ever moved to Joplin if it wasn’t able to sync with WebDAV. I’m not into having a special daemon running on a server for that task, makes zero sense.
However, the “give something away for free until they can’t live without it then force them to pay” model is pretty classic in tech by now.
Yes, this is a problem and a growing one, like a cancer. This new self-hosting and software development trends are essentially someone reconfiguring and mangling the development and sysadmin learning, tools and experience to the point people are required to spend more than ever for no absolute reason other than profits.
I could officially install any Linux distro to the company laptop (which I did of course) fully replacing the wintoys. Could use the machine as I liked, no corporate mandated BS spyware or anything.
Yes, and when the company gets hacked they can sue you for not keeping “your” computer secure enough. When I started my career on the field I also had those ideias that companies are evil and want to spy on everyone and enforce stupid policies on computer and whatnot.
Eventually I moved to heavily restricted environments where once you see what’s going on there you simply wouldn’t even open WhatsApp on that machine, let alone surf unknown websites. You wouldn’t do it not because the fear of being monitored but by the amount of liability you would be exposing yourself if you did. Trust me, the company isn’t bad, predatory but at a certain level you simply think twice. In fact they even reconize that people might want to surf random websites or use some personal accounts and provide a secure virtualized extra browser (restricted from the internal network) but still no way in hell people even think about using it for something so simple such as WhatsApp.
To be fair, this way of thinking might be the best. Just assume people will want to have a personal messaging app, email or whatever on the side and deploy some virtualized / restricted local or remote solution so they can do it without creating risks for themselves or to the company. At least this way you’re still under control and people wouldn’t be trying to bypass your security everyday…
Linux in corporation fails in multiple ways, the most prevalent is that people need to collaborate with others that use proprietary software such as MS Office that isn’t available for Linux and the alternatives such as LibreOffice aren’t just good enough. It all comes down to ROI, the cost of Windows/Office for a company is cheaper than the cost of dealing with the inconsistencies in format conversions, people who don’t know how to use the alternative X etc etc. This issue is so common that companies usually also avoid Apple due to the same reason, while on macOS you’ve a LOT more professional software it is still very painful to deal with the small inconsistencies and whatnot.
Linux desktop is great, I love it, but it gets it even worse than Apple, here some use cases that aren’t easy to deal in Linux:
People who need the real MS Office because once you have to collaborate with others Open/Libre/OnlyOffice won’t cut it;
Designers who use Adobe apps that won’t run properly without having a dedicated GPU, passthrough and a some hacky way to get the image back into your main system that will cause noticeable delays. Who wants to deploy GPU passthroughs for others? Makes no sense;
People that run old software / games because not even those will run properly on Wine;
Electrical engineers: Circuit Design Suite (Multisim and Ultiboard) are primarily designed for Windows. Alternatives such as KiCad and EasyEDA may work in some cases but they aren’t great if you’ve to collaborate with others who use Circuit Design Suite;
Labs that require data acquisition from specialized hardware because companies making that hardware won’t make drivers and software for Linux;
Architects: AutoCAD isn’t available (not even the limited web version works) and Libre/FreeCAD don’t cut it if you’ve to collaborate with AutoCAD users;
Developers and sysadmins, because not everyone is using Docker and Github actions to deploy applications to some proprietary cloud solution. Finding a properly working FTP/SFTP/FTPS desktop client (similar WinSCP or Cyberduck) is an impossible task as the ones that exist fail even at basic tasks like dragging and dropping a file.
If one lives in a bubble and doesn’t to collaborate with others then native Linux apps might work and might even deliver a decent workflow. Once collaboration with Windows/Mac users is required then it’s game over – the “alternatives” aren’t just up to it.
Windows licenses are cheap and things work out of the box. Software runs fine, all vendors support whatever you’re trying to do and you’re productive from day zero. Sure, there are annoyances from time to time, but they’re way fewer and simpler to deal with than the hoops you’ve to go through to get a minimal and viable/productive Linux desktop experience. It all comes down to a question of how much time (days? months?) you want to spend fixing things on Linux that simply work out of the box under Windows for a minimal fee. Buy a Windows license and spend the time you would’ve spent dealing with Linux issues doing your actual job and you’ll, most likely, get a better ROI.
From a more market / macro perspective here are some extra reasons:
Companies like blame someone when things go wrong, if they chose open-source there’s isn’t someone to sue then;
Buying proprietary stuff means you’re outsourcing the risks of such product;
Corruption pushes for proprietary: they might be buying software that is made by someone that is close to the CTO, CEO or other decision marker in the company, an old friend, family or straight under the table corruption;
Most non-tech companies use services from consulting companies in order to get their software developed / running. Consulting companies often fall under the last point that besides that they have have large incentives from companies like Microsoft to push their proprietary services. For eg. Microsoft will easily provide all of a consulting companies employees with free Azure services, Office and other discounts if they enter in an exclusivity agreement to sell their tech stack. To make things worse consulting companies live of cheap developers (like interns) and Microsoft and their platform makes things easier for anyone to code and deploy;
Microsoft provider a cohesive ecosystem of products that integrate really well with each other and usually don’t require much effort to get things going - open-source however, usually requires custom development and a ton of work to work out the “sharp angles” between multiple solutions that aren’t related and might not be easily compatible with each other;
Open-source requires a level of expertise that more than half of the developers and IT professionals simply don’t have. This aspect reinforces the last point even more. Senior open-source experts are more expensive than simply buying proprietary solutions;
If we consider the price of a senior open-source expert + software costs (usually free) the cost of open-source is considerable lower than the cost of cheap developers + proprietary solutions, however consider we are talking about companies. Companies will always prefer to hire more less expensive and less proficient people because that means they’re easier to replace and you’ll pay less taxes;
Companies will prefer to hire services from other companies instead of employees thus making proprietary vendors more compelling. This happens because from an accounting / investors perspective employees are bad and subscriptions are cool (less taxes, no responsibilities etc);
The companies who build proprietary solutions work really hard to get vendors to sell their software, they provide commissions, support and the promises that if anything goes wrong they’ll be there. This increases the number of proprietary-only vendors which reinforces everything above. If you’re starting to sell software or networking services there’s little incentive for you to go pure “open-source”. With less companies, less visibility, less professionals (and more expensive), less margins and less positive market image, less customers and lesser profits.
Unfortunately things are really poised and rigged against open-source solutions and anyone who tries to push for them. The “experts” who work in consulting companies are part of this as they usually don’t even know how to do things without the property solutions. Let me give you an example, once I had to work with E&Y, one of those big consulting companies, and I realized some awkward things while having conversations with both low level employees and partners / middle management, they weren’t aware that there are alternatives most of the time. A manager of a digital transformation and cloud solutions team that started his career E&Y, wasn’t aware that there was open-source alternatives to Google Workplace and Microsoft 365 for e-mail. I probed a TON around that and the guy, a software engineer with an university degree, didn’t even know that was Postfix was and the history of email.
They’re just creating a situation where people forget how to do thing without a magic tunnel or whatever. We’ve seen this with other things, and a proof of this is the fact that you’re suggesting you’ll require a static IP while in fact you won’t.
Yes, mostly gpt4all.io only to find out that even the “uncensored” models are bullshit and won’t even provide you with a Windows XP Pro key. That’s kind of my benchmark for models nowadays. :P
WINE comment, because you can go into the dialog that selects which version of Windows it “emulates”.
Until the emulation fails at some basic Window API feature like window tabs with multiple rows that any Windows version from 95 does just fine. Or… until you try to get MS Office 2016 working and it requires dozens of hacks to end up with something very slow to startup and have graphical glitches… or 2019 also not working, or not being able to install 2021. Or… until you find out that Wine is still unable to just tell applications the screen size fucking up everything that depends on it. Wine is far from perfect and it isn’t that good.
As for can’t collaborate, that depends on the industry
Yes, you are lucky you got NX CAD for Linux, because for most people that’s not the case. Adobe products are a no go, AutoCAD is a no go, same goes for Multisim / Ultiboard.