Nobody Ever Got Fired For Buying Microsoft

Used to be NobodyEverGotFiredForBuyingIbm?.

Perhaps it should be NobodyEverGotFiredForBuyingFoo? because it is a general concept, "smell", or whatever you want to call it. It implies that one goes with the safe-but-expensive choice. This in turn props up the "safe" company, allowing them to further eat up the competition. It is in essence a self-fullfilling prophecy, or at least a self-reinforcing feedback loop.

It happens with Oracle also. Oracle is expensive, but the chances of it not being able to handle the load or going out of business is small.

But this is not a general phrase; the exact phrase "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" was an extremely widely used cliche in the 1970s. The modern use of substituting "Microsoft" or some other company is (a) nowhere near as widely used as the original was, back then, and (b) when it is used, is largely used in conscious imitation, with the speaker typically knowing that the original phrase was with "IBM".

The youngbies don't remember. Thus, if we make it a generic topic, then we won't get into generational issues.

"IBM will always be there."

My first job with a company of more than 100 personnel was with an "AllBlue?" outfit (partly because their major customer was a BigBlue shop). We bought everything from them that could be used to satisfy (more or less) our requirements. Including a software component that handled all our screen forms.

One day we got the notification from IBM that 1) they would no longer sell the component, 2) they would no longer support the component, 3) we could not make an EndOfLife purchase, 4) we could not purchase the product (neither rights nor source code), 5) we could not structure a license or royalty deal with them for the product, and 6) they were not replacing the product with anything else.

From this we derived that security != buying from "big company that will always be there".

We shopped around until we found 1) a product adequate to the job, 2) a company that would sell the source code.

The ProductSecurityFallacy? of "it is safe to buy from a company so big that the TruckNumber is larger than we are" is ... just that, a fallacy.

All by itself that experience makes me lean toward OpenSource.

-- GarryHamilton

Very good points, but this was always part of the truism, because the point is that, even if you get screwed like that, you wouldn't get fired for it -- whereras if you got screwed like that by a no-name company, you might well take the blame.

One way around it might be to put "allows source-code escrow" into the requirements. This would greatly reduce the chances of being left high and dry. IBM would probably reject escrow, allowing you to pick a smaller company. It is hard to fire somebody for wanting such a requirement. In other words, use the requirements, not specific company selections, to get better products approved.
- True story: I once worked for a company that used a semi-relational DBMS product called "Ambase", for DEC Vaxes. The vendor went bankrupt. However, another company created a clone written in VAX-Basic, and sold the source to our company. With some occasional tweaking, it worked just fine. Nobody was worried about copyright lawsuits because the original company did not exist to sue. (As far as I know, the rights were not sold to anyone.)

And after all--it's only the company's money.

At least from a cynical point of view. "Nobody ever..." is in large part a CYA ploy. Buying from a no-name company might seem like the "right" thing to do, but can be a CareerLimitingMove.

The first time I encountered the statement (it was about IBM), it was in an article which described someone as knowing it wasn't true "because he fired the guy".