Sunapsis.org

So, imagine you’re a programmer at Microsoft and this week you’re taking email from customers with technical issues. One particular piece of email is from someone with a website that was running on a Windows-powered server but it has crashed. The screen now says the site isn’t working and happens to reference Microsoft as the Operating System. The guy sending the email is hot and he’s demanding to know why Microsoft has “invaded” his website and is blocking anyone from accessing it. He’s demanding that you (the programmer) remove “the Microsoft program”. Ponder for a moment, what good would a Windows-based computer be if you uninstalled Windows?

The story is real, except that we’re talking about Linux instead of Windows. The guy sending the email is the city manager and he’s calling the FBI if you don’t remove the program (in this case the operating system) within 12 hours. Obviously he doesn’t understand what he’s asking for.

This must be the best real-world example I’ve ever seen of what happens when uninformed people are in charge, don’t have informed advisers, and start throwing out accusations before they’ve researched something thoroughly. Here is the dialogue to this true story: http://www.centos.org/modules/news/article.php?storyid=127

epilogue:
I’m a network administrator by day and a Linux hobbyist by night. Just for clarification for any of you that don’t understand what Linux is, it’s an operating system — software installed on a computer to make it usable by humans with the knowledge to use it. Linux could be referred to as an alternative to Windows or Unix, in fact, it’s based on Unix. Linux is a popular operating system that is used to run a vast majority of web sites and email servers on today’s Internet. Don’t let this next bit throw you: Linux comes in many different configurations, called distributions. Think of it similar to the way Microsoft has various versions of Windows (Home Basic, Home Premium, Business Edition, etc.). One such distribution of Linux is “CentOS” (as referred to in the story above). Other distributions you might have heard of are “Red Hat Linux”, “OpenSUSE Linux”, and “Ubuntu”.