I think for a lot of companies, “open source software” is a huge unknown and holds with it many liabilities. If a person is installing Windows XP, Office 2007, and Visual Studio 2008, all without paying for licenses, then that company can find itself in huge trouble if Microsoft ever visits (which has happened to a number of companies, and caused problems when the company had a valid license for one computer for software that wasn’t wiped from an old hard drive when a computer was replaced with a new one). If a company had software “illegally installed” on computers, whether approved by management or not, if they get caught, someone is getting fired over it. Maybe not the manager, though ;)

In my case, though, my manager isn’t the one deciding. He’s the one who communicates with the one deciding. The status so far is “If it’s not too expensive, we’ll buy licenses for the other three computers that need this software.” They’ll be looking into the price. The fine line I walk is that if I were to sneak in open source software myself, I can get in trouble for it. (We can’t have people just randomly injecting random software into a system which holds patient medical information.) If my manager approves it by himself, he’s held responsible. If the IS guys allow it, we’re good.

Oh yeah, and you made me look something up.

All that said, I wouldn’t have any problem with Ayumu as my manager. If I weren’t lazy, I’d start a screenshot comic with her as a manager. Yukari would be the VP of the company.