Oh how I wish I could get another internet provider. I live in the middle (literally) of a major Canadian city (Ottawa) and my options for high speed internet access (anything above 'Lite') requires the purchasing of cable internet. Which is supplied by only one cable company, Rogers. Who then traffic shapes and caps the hell out of the connection. Sure I can download at 8Mbps but my cap space runs out in under 48hrs if I do that. Try seeding a linux distro back to the community, nope sorry that is traffic shaped, no seeding. Not to mention like clock work every year or less I get a notice in the mail that prices are going up on my tv and internet because of all the great service they're providing me... which really, hasn't changed at all. So I'm now paying more for the same level of service that I've had for the last 5 yrs... and next year.. I'll pay more. They say, it's not a monopoly, you have options.. yeah, if I pay to get fiber strung to my house from an independent ISP at $200 a foot, or use my phone line with a 56k modem. End rant.

nail on the head.

It sounds more like you have an issue with management and leadership in your IT department than issues with OSS.

That would be great, however the cost of several developers to create a system that rivals existing systems that we can buy would be prohibitive. If there were a middle ground.. hire a developer to tweak an existing 'almost there' system.. that would be doable.

Good point.. I guess that's why I'm the only one allowed on /. Actually, the interesting part is that no one else in the company understands *nix environments, nor how to add or remove what can or can't be seen. It's a real problem with cross training... but job security for me.

Yes, but if I hadn't done it, I still would have been paid for researching and saying 'it can't be done for less than $$$'. Then going back to telling users they need to restart and jiggle the cord.

We also use Open Office for our Mac Clients, Filezilla for FTP transfers, 7zip for zipping and the like, and a number of other smaller simple applications for specific tasks.

I'm with you on this, for certain uses OSS is just not feasible without coding it yourself. If I could find an MIS that would run all of my companies manufacturing operations in OSS that would be phenomenal and save us mad cash.

I've implemented Dansguardian webfiltering with a squid proxy on an unused Mac OS X server to placate my bosses need to control everyone's surfing habit and keep the cost of doing so at $0.

..will we get a good internet service provider in Ontario/Canada, I have my choice between bell or rogers, or someone else who is supplied by bell or rogers. Also because my neighbourhood phone lines are old and crappy, I have my choice between rogers and rogers... if only there were a second cable provider. The good ol' CRTC loves keeping Canadian's choice to a minimum. (insert 85% Canadian content here)