From: johnsonm@amcl5.math.stolaf.edu (Michael K Johnson)
Subject: Re: Linux - the future?
Organization: St. Olaf College; Northfield, MN  USA
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1992 19:34:05 GMT


In article <1992Nov11.020232.9608@ksmith.uucp> keith@ksmith.uucp (Keith Smith) writes:
   In article <1992Nov8.202550.13831@mo.hobby.nl> hans@mo.hobby.nl (Hans Oey) writes:
   >keith@ksmith.uucp (Keith Smith) writes:
   >
   [...]
   >>don't mean niche work either.  Visit 5 lawyers offices, and 5
   >>accountants office at random in your area, and see what they are using
   >>for Word Processing.  Wanna take any wagers you won't find *ANY* that
   >>are using roff or Tex?  (Yea, I'm sure there are exceptions, but I'll
   >>make the bet with anyone willing to roll the dice with the yellow pages.)
   >
   >I know of at least one law firm were they use GNU emacs and LaTeX.

   I said *RANDOM* selection out of a phone book.  Like start at A and work
   your way down.  I DID say there were exceptions but I'd bet less than
   10% even have a *IX based system, and less than 1% would be using a Text
   Processing System on ANY enviroment.  People are generally lazy, and
   don't want to learn this stuff, even if it is the best thing since
   a post hole digger.

Well, this whole discussion does not belong on c.o.l, IMHO.  But,
since you bring it up, you might want to read "Why UNIX Has Endured",
pp 22-24, and "UNIX --- The Way and the Light?" pp. 26-27 in
_Law_Practice_Management_ Nov/Dec 1992 issue.

Yes, I'm not only a hacker, I am also a legal-firm info tech
consultant.  You both have points.  There are quite a few law offices
(since we seem to be talking about law offices...) where lawyers wrote
their own software, 10-15 years ago, and have stayed on top of
technology since.  My main client has chosen to stay with dos, with an
understanding of the limitations of DOS and the good points of *nix,
because he doesn't want to change word processors in mid-stream,
because of conversion issues as much as anything else, and because
good time-and-billing software is cheap under DOS, and the same is
true of title-work software.  He would love to go to unix, if these
apps were available, but he has a medium size network running under
DOS, and it (usually) works.  The cost of computerizing has been
offset well by the benefits.  He recognizes the benefits of going to
unix, but they do not currently offset the costs.

When I set up his system, Linux was not even thought of, much less
available.  If it were at version 1.0 when he bought his first 386,
things might have gone differently -- who's to tell?

The point of all this is that if you are a consultant, you have to do
a cost-benefit analysis of the different options.  If *you* choose to
advise your clients to go with DOS, you had better be prepared to
defend yourself.  If *you* choose to advise your clients to go with
*nix, you had better be prepared to defend yourself.  And either way,
when you defend yourself, your defence will not be built on platitudes
about which OS(1) is better, but on how the benefits of the OS you
recommend will offset its costs *relative to his needs*  Different
law offices do different things -- It is /really/ true.  So in any
case, it is a decision that is not reached in the abstract, but in
relation to the concrete facts of *what business the office does.*

This whole article can be generalized to any service industry, and
probably to others as well.

michaelkjohnson

(1)  Sorry to imply that DOS is an OS, but I am doing so for the sake
     of brevity...
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux