SUSE recommends that companies should run on FOSS – but an accidental revelation from a company exec, live on stage, reveals it doesn’t practice what it preaches. It’s not alone.
For this vulture, the single most amusing revelation from any of the industry speakers at this year’s Open Source Policy Summit was from SUSE’s Dominic Laurie, who moderated the final panel discussion of the day, “Sovereignty and Procurement.”
The panel ended a few minutes before the scheduled time, and he closed it with a surprising comment:
We’ll give you three minutes back, as they say on Teams meetings!
First, Teams works well on Linux. I have been a desktop Linux user since the 90’s and I use Teams every day (week days at least).
Second, that does not mean they use Teams as their preferred collaboration software.
Even on Windows, you use what the meeting organizer used to schedule the meeting. And if you interact with external companies, you are going to be joining Teams meetings regardless of your preferences.
And, if you had to make a reference you thought everybody would get, Teams or Zoom seem like your best bet.
So making reference to something someone one would say in Teams is not exactly Ronald McDonald admitting he eats at Wendy’s.
If Teams IS their preferred solution, I think the bigger deal may be a European company relying on a US cloud provider, even more than proprietary vs FOSS. At least, that is my view.
I would love a great Open Source video conferencing option to emerge and become popular though. As above, this kind of software has network effects and I would rather get invited to Open Source meetings if possible.