Posted by Philip Hallstrom on 08/24/05 19:12

>> It's too bad you have to use Windows and IIS. Just curious but why are
>> they not wanting to use Linux? Do they know it's free and way less likely
>> to be attacked?
>
> I've made this argument numerous times. Management seemed to be receptive,
> and I thought they were starting to change their "Microsoft only" attitudes,
> so the statement from my boss that management said it "has to run on IIS"
> really caught me by surprise.

I think you might be going about this the wrong way...

If I understand this thread correctly, your app *works* on linux/php. It
breaks on windows/php.

So it's working, right?

Which is all they should care about, but they don't?

So, write up a little document showing how much time (which equals money)
you're spending trying to fix something that really isn't broken except in
the eye's of management.

This thread's been going on for a couple of days now. Assuming you've
done nothing else for those several days and I've seen mention of
discussing it with other engineers and sysadmins...

just how much money has the company spent on this non-problem?

Then since it also seems like you're not that much closer to solving the
problem, estimate how much additional time it's going to take to fix it.

Then show them the bottom line. That the company has "spent" $2,000 so
far and will probably spend another $3,000 until it's fixed.

Not to mention all your other projects being delayed. That's another
$5,000.

Ask them if this is worth spending $10,000 to fix something which isn't
broken.

Then be sure to tell them you will be happy to revisit the problem when
there is *nothing else to do*


I've had issues like this.. usually they want to know how long it will
take to port our application from FreeBSD/PHP/PostgreSQL to
Windows/ASP/SQLServer and when I tell them at least six months, probably a
year, they decide maybe it's not worth it to satisfy someones need to say
"yes, we run on windows!"

(and yes, I know php,postgresql is available for windows now, but that's
not the point)

Anyway, might work... then again it might not. But it changes it from a
technical discussion to a financial one which is how they think.

good luck!

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