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Linux Business Sun Microsystems

Lockheed Replaces 10,000 Solaris Seats with Linux 394

Posted by CowboyNeal from the move-over-mcnealy dept.
bl8n8r writes "Citing hardware and software TCO, a source close to Lockheed Martin says the aeronautics giant will be replacing 10,000 of its Solaris seats with Linux. The article mentions AutoZone, IBM, SCO and Daimler Chrysler and what may be in store for Lockheed Martin. 'Every engineer has a Microsoft PC sitting next to their Sun Blade,' said their source. 'That's for business applications, and Linux is no threat there. It's Sun who has to worry.' Wait till they find out how much they can save running OpenOffice."
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Lockheed Replaces 10,000 Solaris Seats with Linux More

Lockheed Replaces 10,000 Solaris Seats with Linux

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  • Reliable source? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by RobertB-DC ( 622190 ) * on Friday July 30, 2004 @02:08PM (#9846833) Homepage Journal
    The whole "article" seems to depend on the word of "a Lockheed employee who is close to the transition." I have my doubts about their source. For example, the source says this about Lockheed's lawyers:

    According to our source, Lockheed's lawyers "are like a deer in the headlights" because of SCO's legal threats over Linux usage.

    Are you serious? Lockheed is a defense contractor, a major government supplier. Their lawyers aren't going to be "deer in the headlights" against these or any other litigious bastards [sco.com]. More like "alligators in the swamp," if you want to use nature as a metaphor. If SCO so much as puts a toe in Lockheed's water, they're going to lose a leg.

    So after calling BS on this, can the source be trusted? He's competely ignorant of the real legal threat, but knows a lot about what's on and under the engineers' desks.

    I say their "reliable source" is the janitor. He's probably the guy who stole your lunch out of the fridge last week.

    • Re:Reliable source? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Judg3 ( 88435 ) <jeremy&pavleck,com> on Friday July 30, 2004 @02:16PM (#9846932) Homepage Journal
      Good call - a quick search of Google News [google.com] doesn't show anything either - and I'd assume that this would be a big enough switch to turn some heads and fire off a few more articles.

      Then again, it could be true and a very early report. I would of at least expect to see it on Lockheed's Press releases [lockheedmartin.com].
      • I would of at least expect to see it on Lockheed's Press releases.

        News of this level would be totally inconsistent with the rest of their press releases, which all focus on the award or completion of some government contract.

        Why would they feel a need to make a public announcement every time they buy a few thousand more software licenses? Did they alert the press when upgrading NT4.0 to Win2k?

        (Lockheed has already been a Red Hat customer for years, including delivering products on that platform. Linux

        • Re:Reliable source? (Score:4, Funny)

          by xmas2003 ( 739875 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @04:37PM (#9848287) Homepage
          Christmas Lights giant komar.org [komar.org] plans a 22,000 christmas lights migration away from Sun Solar power to Wind power, a confidential source told us yesterday. There's no word yet on how much the new Wind power deal could be worth or who the lucky vendor might be, although our source did throw out the name Santa Claus once.

          Our source - a komar.org elf [komar.org] who is close to the transition - said the migration represents only a fraction of what the future could hold. Apparently those 22K christmas lights only represent a fraction stored in the basement crawl space [komar.org] and they may be poised to switch over all of the lights, and also their Halloween Decorations. [komar.org]

          Cost is the reason behind komar.org's switch. The web site is moving away from expensive Sun Solar power, expecting to save a bundle by using Wind Power. Apparently Wind Power has no problem reliably running the fancy software use to run the Christmas Webcam. [komar.org]

          However, Utah Unix company SCO could throw a monkey wrench into komar.org's Wind Power plans. According to our elf, komar.org's lights are brigher than "a deer in the headlights" because of concern over SCO's legal threats over Wind Power usage.

          SCO of course is the company that made quite a name for itself by suing DalmerChryslerAG and AutoZone Inc for using electricity, claiming that it's owed licensing fees because they have used both AC and DC power. Our elf hinted that a SCO lawsuit against komar.org could be on the horizon, saying that komar.org was approaching "DalmerChrysler and AutoZone territory" in terms of KiloWatts used.

          SCO has also sued IBM, accusing it of also using electricity. And SCO has sent letters to hundreds more companies, threatening to sue if they don't fork over $699 for a SCO AC license, and offering a discounted price of $999 if they also obtain an SCO DC license at the same time.

          Fortunately for komar.org elf's, the heart of SCO's case against DalmerChrysler was thrown out yesterday by Michigan judge Rae Lee Chabot. The only charge that will be heard in court is that the auto maker didn't respond quickly enough to a request from SCO for certification that it was not using SCO's patented AC and DC electricity. "It's a little unfortunate that it took a lawsuit for them to respond to what was a real simple letter asking them to certify," sniffed SCO spokesman Blake Stowell.

          The Incredible Hulk, [komar.org] spokesmonster for komar.org, responded "Hulk SMASH Puny Human SCO - GGRRR!!!!"

    • Re:Reliable source? (Score:5, Funny)

      by Lacutis ( 100342 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @02:28PM (#9847089) Homepage
      See, you don't understand, the reason this makes perfect sense they needed to save some money to pay for the Satellite they dropped on the floor [slashdot.org] so they said, "Hey! Lets quit paying maintenance on solaris!"

      See, perfect sense!

    • Back around 1990 my company bid on a number of NASA jobs, and teamed with companies like Lockheed and Martin. At one of them, when we had a new team of N people working on their site, the IT department showed up with a stack of N Macintoshes, old data wiped out and cleanly reinstalled with the current software. It was extremely productive, because everybody could simply write their stuff, it would all integrate together into whatever final documents we were producing, you didn't need a manual (well, almo

  • Linux? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 30, 2004 @02:09PM (#9846835)
    But won't they lose money by not using microsoft products? I've seen microsoft's stats...

    • Serious Reply: Solaris is Deadmeat. (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Your message was intended to be humorous, but I feel compelled to give a serious reply.

      At this point, Linux should not be compared to Windows. Linux is intended for technical people like engineers. Windows is intended for consumers who have little knowledge of computer science.

      Therein lies the threat to Solaris. It is targetted at precisely the same market at which Linux is targetted. The supposed qualities of Solaris are high reliability and efficient operation. Today, Linux has both qualities -- due

  • Cool (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Crowhead ( 577505 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @02:09PM (#9846840)
    Where can I get a linux powered seat?

  • Business App != Office (Score:5, Informative)

    by kannibal_klown ( 531544 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @02:09PM (#9846843)
    Business Apps don't necessarily mean "MS Office."

    We consider business apps where I work:
    Bioinformatic software
    Data Analysis software
    specialized inventory management software

    I'm sure Lockheed uses CAD as well as a plethora of engineering apps that have no-where-near equivalent versions in Linux.

    • Re:Business App != Office (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 30, 2004 @02:13PM (#9846891)
      CAD and other engineering apps usually have versions available for linux, or solaris. They are usually very expensive.

      From the CAD and Engineering point of view, the advantage of Windows is in a cheap lower quality competition. You can often find a system that doesn 60 percent of the big system for a tenth the price. On linux, you have the choice of contorting yourself around an open source app which is free but does 30 percent of what you need, badly, or shelling out the $10,000 per seat for the real stuff.

      • Re:Business App != Office (Score:5, Insightful)

        by kannibal_klown ( 531544 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @02:18PM (#9846964)
        CAD and other engineering apps usually have versions available for linux, or solaris. They are usually very expensive.
        True, but I just mentioned CAD in passing. I'm sure they use a lot of other specialized stuff that grubs like us know nothing about.

        Don't get me wrong, Linux can replace a lot of MS workstations out there now. But a lot of companies use software that isn't available at all on Linux. Maybe it's from a small firm, maybe it's not that well known outside the people that use it, maybe nobody's released a Linux version yet.

        I'm just saying, that Lockheed probably had a good reason not to go with Linux on the "business app" workstations. They probably need to run some stuff under Windows, and want a modicrum of support (most vendors will not support their app if it's running under Wine or something).

        • Re:Business App != Office (Score:3, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward
          I have to agree.

          I switched all the servers in a law firm over to linux, but cannot switch the workstations over due to their insistance on one application - Word Perfect.

          There is NO solution to WP in linux yet, OOo does not support it, and Sun's Star Office only supports WP in Windows versions due to licensing restrictions on the third party WP algorithms.

          WP does not run properly under WINE, so unless and until I can find a workable solution for WP accessability, they are stuck with windows workstations.
          • There is NO solution to WP in linux yet

            Well, you know, you could just download the Linux version of WordPerfect. :-) Well, ok, it's an old version (v8) and no longer supported, but it works (I've used it in the past). See here [tldp.org] for more details.

    • There may not be GNU replacements, but tons of really pricy ($10,000+ per seat) engineering software now comes in Linux versions alongside the UNIX ones.

      Unigraphics is one big one, the first one that comes to mind.
      • Pro-E has a linux version, IIRC. That's a big CAD/engineering app that costs a few bucks more I've made this year.

        That said, we don't know what lockheed uses, do we?
        • And I can imagine that if Lockheed went to a CAD vendor and committed to buying a few hundred licenses for some high-end application, they might well be receptive to porting something from SGI or Solaris.
          • IBM (the big Cadence user) just went to Cadence a couple years ago and insisted that cds5.00 should be released for Solaris and Linux *simultaneously*.

            They did.

            Paul B.

            P.S. Cadence is a huge Electronic Design Automation (EDA) CAD system.
    • +1, many TRUE business apps (Read: not some excel spreadsheet that manages your 2 employee home business) only come in windows versions, because lets face it, a HUGE majority of workstations are windows, and you have to cater to the biggest source of income. The tendency toward non-OS specific software is moving along nicely, but a lot of big apps are nowhere close.
    • > Business Apps don't necessarily mean "MS Office."

      True. However, I did interview with an engineering group at Lockheed in Ft. Worth. While this is hardly a representative cross section of ALL of Lockheed, they did seem to have an awful lot of information in excel tables with a visual basic "GUI" veneer on top of it all to do data lookups. I suppose it works, but I had always thought lockheed harked back far enough to have tons of data pre-dating MS Excel. [shrug]
    • Have any of you considered the idea that perhaps Lockheed is big enough to develop the 'business apps' they need in-house, and simply have to port that from Solaris to Linux. I'm thinking that they probably can buy CAD, but their simulators, project management software, and other stuff is all done in-house.

      Plus, if they're already using Solaris, there's a good chance they can get a Linux port for it already.

      Can't stand all of these "Microsoft Office doesn't run on Linux!" posts.
    • I think you make a very good point, and it's about time someone realized that Office Apps does not necessarily mean "MS Office". There is a plethora of applications out there available ONLY for a Windows machine, and many companies use those.

      Furthmore, this article shows exactly what has been going on for a long time. Linux is a replacement for *nix, not for Windows. Sun has been steadily losing market share while Linux gains. Microsoft stays pretty even.

      OK, mods, I'm ready for my troll status. Tha

    • Re:Business App != Office (Score:4, Informative)

      by shadow303 ( 446306 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @03:04PM (#9847465)
      For a number of Lockheed employees (myself included), the business applications are Outlook, Word, Excel, and Project. I am not surprised by this announcement. A few years ago, my main development machine switched from an SGI O2 to a PC running linux. Of course, there are other sections which have quite a few custom Windows applications.

  • which flavor? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by mabu ( 178417 ) * on Friday July 30, 2004 @02:10PM (#9846854)
    Does anyone know what flavor of Linux these guys will be installing? I saw some reference to Dell - I'm not sure if they're the supplier or they use a particular brand. I know Red Hat is on NASDAQ; are any of the other major Linux distributors public companies?

    • I'd wait to see if LMCO is actually installing this before speculating too much on it. LMCO will follow it's customers lead in which platform it uses internally. Choosing a different platform than the customer is generally a bad idea. Now if LMCO is replacing the standard office PC (email, office apps, research), that might be acceptable. Somehow I doubt that they will replace on a grand scale. Sun (as well as other OS vendors) often partner with the big companies out there and offer them discounts tha

  • Man... (Score:5, Funny)

    by thatguywhoiam ( 524290 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @02:10PM (#9846862)
    Linux could be renamed to 'Eclipse' just based on what its doing to Sun...

    • Sorry, that's taken [eclipse.org].

    • Re:Man... (Score:3, Informative)

      by Sir_Real ( 179104 )
      Oddly enough, eclipse is the name of the best java ide on the planet (imho). Java is Sun's. You'd think they'd be able to put out a reasonable IDE. Unfortunately, most developers would rather be sodomized by a hot curling iron than wait for Netbeans to load.

  • It's hardly news... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ...that the real threat from Linux is to the proprietary unices and NO openoffice is not a replacement for the MS office suite. This MS-workstation-next-to-the-unix-box phenomenon is only a couple decades old.

  • OpenOffice (Score:5, Informative)

    by vasqzr ( 619165 ) <vasqzr@nosPAM.netscape.net> on Friday July 30, 2004 @02:11PM (#9846871)
    Wait till they find out how much they can save running OpenOffice."

    We've only got ~100 PC's, and we pay about $160 for Excel/Word/Outlook. I can imagine Lockheed can work something out for the few users that need Powerpoint (managers that make presentations).

    The very FIRST issue you have with OpenOffice, whether it's a formatting issue, file conversion, or other imcompatiblity, will cost MORE than Microsoft Office in the loss of productivity and IT staff.

    • Re:OpenOffice (Score:2, Insightful)

      by DAldredge ( 2353 )
      You make it sound like Microsoft Office never has any problems. Not to say that OO is better, but what is the running cost of keeping MS Office?

      • Re:OpenOffice (Score:3, Insightful)

        by wankledot ( 712148 )
        There are way more resources to deal with Office problems than OO problems. You can hire an Office trainer or expert for cheap, or find good books, etc. OO is going to be more expensive to support. Good software doesn't mean support-free software. It just changes the support from "word keeps crashing" to "I don't know how to use this." And if anyone argues that OO is transparent and anyone who uses Office can figure it out, you haven't worked with real users.

    • Re:OpenOffice (Score:2, Insightful)

      by EnnTeeDee ( 799496 )

      It would be surprising if a large organization like Lockheed were an early-adopting corporate user of OpenOffice. After all, even assuming that OpenOffice and MS Office are functionally equivalent in every way, someone has to make the decision to make the switch. And MS Office has a pedigree in the corporate world that OpenOffice doesn't, so a decision to switch to OpenOffice would be a lot riskier for the decisionmakers than a decision to maintain the status quo.

      Whenever a glitch happens in OpenOffice, th

    • Re:OpenOffice (Score:5, Insightful)

      by RobertB-DC ( 622190 ) * on Friday July 30, 2004 @02:18PM (#9846966) Homepage Journal
      The very FIRST issue you have with OpenOffice, whether it's a formatting issue, file conversion, or other imcompatiblity, will cost MORE than Microsoft Office in the loss of productivity and IT staff.

      I agree, there's a non-zero cost to moving to so-called "free" software. On the other hand, what about the cost of upgrading when Microsoft decides that your version of Office has reached "end of life"?

      It's appropriate to put scare quotes around "free" software... but the same thing applies to "purchased" software. "free" isn't completely free, but neither is "purchased" completely paid for.

      • Re:OpenOffice (Score:3, Insightful)

        by bigdavex ( 155746 )

        It's appropriate to put scare quotes around "free" software... but the same thing applies to "purchased" software. "free" isn't completely free, but neither is "purchased" completely paid for.

        I don't think so. OO is free by any useful meaning of the word free. If there's a ad in the paper for "Free Puppies", no one takes that to imply that it won't cost anything to feed them. And yet, something meaningful is completely conveyed by the use of the word free in both cases. Even if we're restricting ours

    • Re:OpenOffice (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I can imagine Lockheed can work something out for the few users that need Powerpoint (managers that make presentations).

      *Everyone* makes presentations in Lockheed Martin. It is all that most people do. After email and a web browser, Powerpoint is probably the most used software in the company, followed by Excel.

    • Re:OpenOffice (Score:2, Insightful)

      by nanter ( 613346 )
      Haha, right! And I suppose the revolving threat of viruses to Lockheed's corporate network that is vulnerable because they are using Microsoft products is cost-free?

      This is not a decision that can easily be made by any company via guidance from a bunch of flippant remarks made by armchair quarterback /.ers. This requires a detailed COTS assessment that examines technical and cost aspects of changing platforms.

    • Re:OpenOffice (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Leninix ( 740791 )
      ''The very FIRST issue you have with OpenOffice, whether it's a formatting issue, file conversion, or other imcompatiblity, will cost MORE than Microsoft Office in the loss of productivity and IT staff.``

      That`s not true: 95% of the workers will be okay after just a hour. The other 5% will surely will not cost 170$ by people for technical support. Anyway, this 5% is not too really good with MS office anyway. And for others incompatibilities, there are far less incompatibility between MSO and OO than between

    • Re:OpenOffice (Score:4, Interesting)

      by mr_burns ( 13129 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @02:25PM (#9847049)
      Instead of 2 computers on each desk (a unix workstation and a pc running office bugware) they could save money by replacing both machines with 1 G5 running their unix apps and M$ office at the same time.

      For that matter, they could run M$ office via codeweavers crossover on their linux box and get rid of the extra box that way.

      Either way, you could sell the windows box to subsidize the replacement plan and save a buttload of money.

      I guess I shouldn't be surprised that a defense contractor made the expensive choice.
    • I have to agree. I've been trying to use openoffice but can't for one simple stupid reason. The graphs in oocalc can't do error bars. Visualizing your data is worthless if you can't easily visualize the confidence you have in it. So I'm stuck with the less than ideal solution of a scripted frontend to gnuplot.

      I'd be happy to pay for a commercial solution, but office is damn expensive. Are there any cheaper suites for linux that interoperate with excel/powerpoint? (scientists make lots of presentations)
      • Not that Excel has any graphing capability worth shit either, for that matter.

        Personally, I use mainly R [r-project.org], and sometimes Grace [weizmann.ac.il] when I want a nice and simple to use GUI thingy.
    • If you plan on switching software packages on your users without giving them any kind of training, then you should lie in the bed you've shat in.

      And how would one of these issues cause the loss of IT staff? dodgy tickers?

      I think I'm not clear on your point. Could you explain a bit further? Thanks.
    • What many fail to consider is a company of Lockheads size can demand the people that work for it use OpenOffice, especially since it's free. Want to send something to Lockhead? It has to work in OpenOffice.

      When I do work for Mallinkrodt they are very specific about what file types they accept. They call the shots because they have the deeper pockets. Lockhead is in a similar situation.

    • Loss of productivity (Score:3, Informative)

      by DrCode ( 95839 )
      What about the first (and 2nd and 3rd) issue that a user has with a Windows box, like a virus or BSOD or sudden inability to print?

      I work in an engineering group with a mixture of Windows and Linux machines. The Windows boxes need virus scans and updates all the time, while the Linux boxes rarely get touched.
  • Now will they be hiring some Linux Admins with Solaris migration and Open Source familiarity? Hint hint? Right over here, boys! *waving*

    Unless of course they plan to contract it out to some consulting firms, where all the capable ones (IBM, EDS, what have you) will be grossly underbid by consulting firms using offshore admins. *sigh*

    But I'm bitter. Don't mind me.

  • Isn't Linux mainstream enough yet? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jolyonr ( 560227 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @02:13PM (#9846889) Homepage
    Haven't we got to the point where these kinds of stories aren't news any more?

    Surely we don't need to have any more "another company using linux" news flashes.

    Lots of people use linux. Lots more companies use it every day.

    In order for the Linux community to accept the level of success that we have achieved already, it's time to realise that we don't need to bash out these stories all the time.

    Jolyon
    • "In order for the Linux community to accept the level of success that we have achieved already, it's time to realise that we don't need to bash out these stories all the time."

      Why shouldn't we get to see these stories? You say that come out all the time, I don't agree. A private non-government US company as big as Lockheed is possibly going to Linux for 10,000+ desktops and that doesn't qualify as news because it happens so often? Since when? Last similar stories I recall are from the Autozone and Burlingt
    • Yes, I'm very interested in stories like this Lockheed Martin is part of the US estabishment - if they are using Linux it's interesting. It small steps forward to becoming the defacto OS.

      It's also interesting to see what Linux is replacing.

      Personally I sick of hearing about what Microsoft are doing in 7 year time with Longhorn.

    • Re:Isn't Linux mainstream enough yet? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      " Haven't we got to the point where these kinds of stories aren't news any more?"

      No. Important reference customers like Lockheed are important events that help persuade high-level execs in other companies that it's "safe" to use Linux.

      The more of these we know about the better cases we can make when educating other companies.

      Lockheed using 10,000 Linux seats means more to your average business user than "ooh someone updated KDE again".

      Also importantly, publicity around an event like this may furthe

  • "no threat there" ... (Score:5, Funny)

    by thrillseeker ( 518224 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @02:13PM (#9846893)
    'Every engineer has a Microsoft PC sitting next to their Sun Blade,' said their source. 'That's for business applications, and Linux is no threat there.'

    Oh ye of little faith...

  • Sun worry, why? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by steelerguy ( 172075 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @02:13PM (#9846896) Homepage
    They just have to convine Lockheed to use Sun Java Desktop [sun.com], aka SuSE.

  • Office Apps... (Score:3, Informative)

    by LEgregius ( 550408 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @02:16PM (#9846936)

    They may just find that it will be cheaper to run VMWare, or now the Free qemu [bellard.free.fr], to run their office apps.

    I hope that one of these days Wine will be the solution of choice.

    • Or the alternative to those, buy an Apple. Runs Unix programs, Has Office.

    • Re:Office Apps... (Score:3, Informative)

      by grozzie2 ( 698656 )
      VMWare is to spendy, it's cheaper to buy another pc for the Windows stuff, than to use VMWare as an emulator, if you only need 2 environments.

      Wine is the 'solution' that many hope will eventually work well one day, but, it's got it's share of problems. Politics and religion aside, if you want a solution that 'just works', Wine is not it, yet.

      On the other hand, if you have a desire/need to have Windows and Linux on the same box, and want a solution that 'just works', coLinux is such a beast. On my note

  • Wait till they find out how much they can save running OpenOffice.

    Wait until they see how they can run most of their Windows software under GNU/Linux using Wine [winehq.org].

    • Wait until they see how they can run most of their Windows software under GNU/Linux using Wine.

      Wait until they find out they can run all Unix applications using remote X login and significantly decrease the administration cost at the same time. That is what I found in almost all companies that had to deal with some unix applications.

  • YA know... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MisanthropicProgram ( 763655 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @02:17PM (#9846957)
    However, Utah Unix company SCO could throw a monkey wrench into Lockheed's Linux plans. According to our source, Lockheed's lawyers "are like a deer in the headlights" because of SCO's legal threats over Linux usage.

    I know an attorney (like everyone else) and if you threaten her with legal action she'll just laugh. Yes, it's expensive for us regular people, but it is not a big deal in the grand scheme of things. After all, I would coutner-sue for something and settle out of court. Yes, yes, I know, it's sad that it has to come down to this, but that's the system - sue to bury he other guy ----and if he has the resources to fight you --- settle out of court.

    That's America!

  • Netcraft Taking Sun's Pulse?? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gregarican ( 694358 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @02:18PM (#9846968) Homepage
    It sounds as if nearly every other news story I read regarding Sun Microsystems make the picture for them look progressively more grim. They have been trying to realign themselves and have changed their strategies somewhat but is it too late?

    I recall years ago working with Sun/Solaris systems alongside i86/Linux systems. I was amazed at the hardware costs associated with servicing some of the Sun product line. The prices were outrageous. Something like 5 to 10 times what the i86 servers were demanding. What's the point? I even recall when Sun started deploying supposedly lower-end, lower-cost i86 hardware. The costs were still 3 times what I was expecting.

    Can't say I'm sorry to see them hitting hard times. Java will be the only legacy they have left over looking back at this 3-5 years from now.

  • Lockheed Martin will never run OpenOffice (Score:5, Insightful)

    by stratjakt ( 596332 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @02:18PM (#9846977) Journal
    So forget it. It's not good enough, they have to interoperate with too many subcontracters, government agencies, etc, etc..

    And, like it or not, the world uses MS Office formats. OO.o isn't good enough.

    They wouldn't save anything. They'd waste a lot of time and effort reformatting documents sent to them, resending documents to others, etc.

    Seriously, it's called reality, you all might want to look into it.
    • They'd waste a lot of time and effort reformatting documents sent to them, resending documents to others, etc.

      I was just about to post the same thing.

      I've tried using OpenOffice as a substitute for MS Word in two real-life projects (joint grant applications) with disasterous results. Any embedded images were floating all around the two-column document and equations were not imported/exported at all.

      With Word, I've never had such problems before or as of today.

    • Re:Lockheed Martin will never run OpenOffice (Score:4, Interesting)

      by sloanster ( 213766 ) * <ringfan&mainphrame,com> on Friday July 30, 2004 @02:43PM (#9847235) Journal
      So forget it. It's not good enough, they have to interoperate with too many subcontracters, government agencies, etc, etc

      Sure, let's just ignore all the problems and incompatibilities that plague those using different versions of ms office...

      At any rate, I hate to break it to you, but we are finding that we like open office better than ms office - and have been using OO 1.1 to share ms docs with coworkers and vendors, as well as reports to management, for some months now without a single problem.

      This silly ms-office elitism really needs to stop. standards, not vendor lock-ins, are the key to interoperability.

    • OO.o isn't good enough. Of course MS Office isn't good enough either, unless all parties agree to buy every new release of the suite.

    • Thats assuming even MS Office is compatible (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Vicegrip ( 82853 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @03:06PM (#9847483) Journal
      I've recently had the joy of trying to open a number of MS Office documents in Office 2003. Guess what, according to Word 2003 those Word 97 documents were corrupted. Loaded fine in Open Office though. Go figure.

      So much for ubiquitous office formats.... not to mention, of course, that Word is such a pleasure with large documents to begin with. It's so much fun dropping a picture on a word page-- talk about having to bloody reformat my document all the time...
    • "never" is a very, very long time.
    • This got +5 Insightful? Sure, ok.

      Unless you are the CEO, CIO or any other CxO of Lockheed Martin, I would say your words are worth less than used toilet paper.

  • Insert obligatory joke... (Score:3, Funny)

    by rharder ( 218037 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @02:21PM (#9847003) Homepage
    [[ Insert obligatory joke about Windows and planes crashing here. ]]

  • Linux's been there for a while (Score:5, Funny)

    by CharAznable ( 702598 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @02:23PM (#9847030)
    I work in a company that does work for Lockheed, and they've been using Linux for quite a while. Even without this, they could still be targeted by litigious bastards [sco.com]. Good luck to SCO targeting Lockheed though. They're humongous and build fighter planes and nuclear submarines that could level the SCO headquarters with the push of a button!!!

  • Something doesn't make sense... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by hndrcks ( 39873 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @02:28PM (#9847092) Homepage
    "'Every engineer has a Microsoft PC sitting next to their Sun Blade,' said their source."

    Why arent they using these? [sun.com]

  • to move clients from MS to Linux on their workstations and servers. My score so far:

    Internal Mail Servers: 6
    Firewall/Routers: 8
    File Servers: 5
    Workstations: 1

    There used to be more file servers. When we moved them to Linux file servers we would find that a critical software application would migrate to some server-side-critical application (like a run-time of MS SQL) and we would have to move the entire box to 2000 server.

    Workstations are even harder. We migrate them and the users bitch about not being able to use their "favorite software". Only once, 2 weeks ago, did we find users overjoyed to get Linux. A local Aquatic Park had the lifegards surfing on their XP box until it was unusable. Since it had to be blown off anyway, I threw a Knoppix 3.4 disk into the CD and did the install, configured the users, their email, the printer and the network, and showed them where the apps were. So far they are still happy with the functionality. Plus no viruses and no spyware.

    It is very difficult to move people away from even the "standard" apps (Office, etc.). When it comes to specialized applications it is impossible; for now.
    • A local Aquatic Park had the lifegards surfing on their XP box until it was unusable.

      Seems to me it takes only a minute of surfing on an XP box in an Aquatic Park (if possible at all) to make the box unusable. Even the most rugged laptop would be ruined pretty quickly.

  • That's news to me and I work at a Lockheed branch (Score:5, Informative)

    by Fallen Kell ( 165468 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @02:34PM (#9847159)
    This is most likely a case of the one hand not knowing what the other is doing, since I work as a systems administrator at a different branch. Its always interesting to read about something this big on slashdot before getting a memo about it.

    In anycase, it sounds like they have a similar setup there as we do here with most engineers having a Sun system and a PC. I personally have a linux PC and a sunblade, both of which run open office, and I don't see any need at all for a MS PC other then for some website tools that ask/require IE (but are easily spoofed with multi-zilla plugin). It will be interesting what comes of this. I don't actually see us making a change like this away from Sun simply because there are no true replacements for the types of servers we are using from an x86 standpoint. However, as opterons become more and more available in server class systems, then maybe some of the systems will be converted over, but I don't see this happening anytime in the next 3-4 years...

    • Re:That's news to me and I work at a Lockheed bran (Score:5, Informative)

      by drxenos ( 573895 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @03:03PM (#9847455)
      I agree. I'm an SE with Lockheed. Equipment is not purchase company wide like this. Each project purchases what type of equipment it needs with its only money. We have several Solaris machines, and there is no plans to change them. As for MS, we all have PCs on our desks, but they are mostly for e-mail and the like. Most development is done on the solaris machines (we have xwindows clients running on the PCs).

  • It's true! (Score:5, Funny)

    by GillBates0 ( 664202 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @02:39PM (#9847200) Homepage Journal
    Linux seats have more leg space than Microsoft seats or Solaris seats. I'll be travelling Tux class on my next flight.

  • Our IT department gives us a choice (Score:5, Informative)

    by Boone^ ( 151057 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @02:43PM (#9847245)
    In our last upgrade cycle we got to choose from Dell/Windows, Dell/SuSE, Sun Blade/Solaris, or Dell Laptop. Previously everyone had SGI Indy/O2/that_one_purple_box or a Dell laptop.

    In engineering, I'd say 80% went for Windows, 18% Linux, and 2% Sun.

  • Maybe Lockheed Martin are wanting discounts? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mikael ( 484 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @02:48PM (#9847290)
    Sounds like the kind of sabre-rattling corporations do, when they want to negotiate a new contract with better discounts. Have other corporations threatened to move to Linux when they wanted lower license fees from Microsoft?

  • As a Lockheed employee... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Call Me Black Cloud ( 616282 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @02:56PM (#9847362)
    I can say that MS isn't going away anytime soon. Not only (in my particular division) does Exchange run the back end, but our engineers have integrated the authentication across the board. Want to check your pay stub online? Use your exchange domain\username and password. Want to check your training records? Ditto. Check the status of a referred employee? Ditto. Change health care coverage? Ditto. Pretty much the only thing that doesn't require that login is access to the 401k/pension site.

    The division I'm in is heavily involved in software development for the government. Sun gets a lot of the business here because of the massive data storage requirements we have. 10's of terabytes is not an uncommon need. The government is also pushing towards more COTS solutions so until there are ready-to-deploy applications on Linux, Sun will still be around. Unfortunately, ready-to-deploy doesn't mean easy-to-deploy. My current project is a nightmare of integration...but that's a story for another day...

  • Yeah, you can 'save money' running OpenOffice (Score:3, Interesting)

    by doinky ( 633328 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @03:23PM (#9847651)
    but you won't actually be using it. Every time I open a .doc file with the thing, I wonder in what new and exciting ways it's going to look goofy, or even be unreadable.
    • but you won't actually be using it. Every time I open a .doc file with the thing, I wonder in what new and exciting ways it's going to look goofy, or even be unreadable.

      I think the same thing when I use Word. Most of the day, I wonder when the OS itself is going to crap out and suck down an hour's worth of my work. OO is a pig, but format problems are Microsoft's fault and show up everywhere. They don't even have a consistent font set they distribute with Word, so the formating gets clobbered when you

      • I don't think we're talking about the same level of problem here. I'm just opening little flyers sent out by the office manager - one page at most, no special fonts, perhaps an image or two. That's it.

        I have not experienced that level of problem with regular Word, although I agree that Word is a steaming pile in many other respects. The problem here is that OpenOffice is even more useless. (I'd say even less useful, except that might lead you to think I found Word useful).

  • Why does EVERY engineer.... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anita Coney ( 648748 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @03:26PM (#9847681) Homepage
    ...need to run "business applications"?!

    • Why does EVERY engineer...need to run "business applications"?!

      Because every non-engineer, and a distressing number of engineers, send unnecessarily richly-formatted files. Ever been asked a yes-or-no question in the form of an Excel spreadsheet? I have.

      That, and Outlook. For some reason the suits still don't see it as the enemy.

      Amy

    • Documentation in Word. Report-writing in Word. Presenting results in Powerpoint.

      Quick and dirty calculation is sometimes easier in Excel than in your_favorite_numerical_environment_here. Most of our FMEAs are done in Excel as well, simply because its an easy table-oriented way to do it.

      Many engineers also wind up doing minimal budget work. Excel, usually.

      Then there are the non-office 'business applications', which for engineers are things that most people would call 'engineering applications' - MATLa

  • SCO FUD nonsense (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Performer Guy ( 69820 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @04:31PM (#9848252)
    It is trivial to look at the SCO claims against IBM, Daimler and AutoZone and conclude that their claims are entirely based on pre existing contracts with those entities. In fact SCO hasn't brought a genuine copyright case against anyone in their long FUD campaign, their strategy is to sue their business partners over any baseless breach of contract claim they can dream up then vaguely assert copyright infringement in press releases. It really takes a spectacularly lazy and inept journalist to miss this. The article restating SCO's blatant lie that the law suit was brought to make Daimler respond to SCO's letter when the truth is that SCO was trounced in court on everything but the letter response time just illustrates how biased the journalist was and how dishonest Blake Stowell is.

  • Another Defense Contractor (Score:3, Informative)

    by batura ( 651273 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @05:00PM (#9848482)
    As I sit writing on my PC box next to my Solaris machine, I look forward to the next project which uses PC and Linux. Its a great environment.

    I'd like to say that we don't use Windows for Word/PPoint/Excel. We use it for Outlook. A program I thought was shit until about a month an a half ago when I started using it in the corporate environment. The tight integration between contacts, meetings, scheduling really help cut down on the administration work I have to do to keep working.

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