Re: robust software

["John S. Denker" <jsd@MONMOUTH.COM>]

On 03/11/2003 10:13 AM, Edmiston, Mike wrote:


> I consider 100% control as
> unnecessary as long as we agree on a few assumptions.
....
> (2) The company can insist you use standard software for inter-office
>  work. When I write documents that have to be distributed in
> electronic form, I have to get them into Word format either by
> drafting them in Word or by drafting them in WordPerfect and
> converting them to Word. There are sufficient glitches in the
> conversion that I cannot distribute WordPerfect documents and expect
> others to open them with Word and have them appear okay. Therefore I
> accept the responsibility of sometimes working with Word as part of
> the conditions of my freedom to install WordPerfect on my computer.

Rather than converting them to Word format, I
recommend converting them to an industry-standard
open format such as html.  There are many good
reasons for this.

For starters, note that in addition to the usual
form of communication from place to place, you also
need to communicate from one time to another, i.e.
to store information.  It is an unsound policy to
store anything in proprietary formats.  It incurs
large and unnecessary risks (especially when the
purveyor of the proprietary format has openly stated
that backwards compatibility is not one of their
goals).

Even in the short term, you don't want to be held
hostage to the "upgrade virus" i.e. the situation
where if _anybody_ in the organization buys a new
version of the software, then _everybody_ has to
upgrade in order to handle the new file formats.

> (1) The company cannot support everyone's whims for specific
> software, but can tolerate choice as long as it doesn't cause
> problems. For example, I happen to prefer WordPerfect even though my
> college is a Word shop. The college allows me to purchase WordPerfect
> with my own money and install it on my office computer. If it doesn't
> install properly or if it causes glitches within itself or other
> applications, the tech people cannot assure me they will be able to
> fix the problem at all, let alone on a timely basis. I accept this as
> a condition of my freedom to install whatever software I want.

In other words, there is a huge difference between
"unsupported" and "disallowed".

My favorite definition of totalitarianism is
"everything that is not required is forbidden".

Any sysadmin who is not a complete jerk will have
some policy that provides for installation of
 -- supported upgrades and extensions
 -- unsupported upgrades and extensions.
Ask nicely and see what happens.

====

At the other end of the scale, it is not good to have
a free-for-all software installation policy.  There
needs to be due diligence to screen out stuff that
compromises organizational security, due to trojan
horses or simply due to vicious bugs.

In ordinary situations, the policy should be to make
sure the new stuff is at least as trustworthy as the
incumbent stuff.  This criterion is, alas, quite easy
to meet at present.

For high-security situations, the policy is of course
much stricter.  Nobody (not sysadmin nor anybody else)
installs anything without multiple layers of review.
I've been in situations where I could have installed
software without review, and I made sure I didn't.