Companies, guts and Opensolaris

Interesting article at ZDNet Asia but they get not certain points:

In addition, because Sun does not track the profiles of users who download OpenSolaris, it is uncertain if fans of the operating system are technology hobbyists, or decision makers in their IT departments. This would be an important piece of data because it is in Sun's interest to lure IT head honchos with its support and maintenance services, should they choose to adopt OpenSolaris.

Every technology hobbyist works somewhere or will work somewhere really soon. Even when they didn´t make decision makers, they are decision influencers. When they get fluent with the Solaris Operation Environment, Solaris is a part of the decision process. A “Hey, Joe, why do we not use Solaris. It´s free and at least equal to Linux” instead of “Hey, Joe, let´s use Linux”) in an early project phase is priceless. And besides of the wide-spread misinterpretation: There is no lone pale decision maker in an IT department. Never underestimate the power of gut level decision and never ever underestimate the buying power of the collective gut of an IT depeartment.