You have to both admire and laugh at zealots and extremists no matter what guise they come in. Whether it be religion, politics or technology they find God's hand guiding you towards their position in every event, good or bad. A perfect example was brought to my attention by Michael Farnum. Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, the resident Cyber Cynic and Linux zealot at ComputerWorld, has taken the current state of our economy as a message from God that Linux is on a messianic mission to save us from high gas prices, high food prices, the mortgage and credit crisis and those satan's in Redmond. Vaughan-Nichols says that by switching to Linux and other open source products you could save your company, your job and be more secure to boot!

Michael who is no Microsoft fan boy points out some obvious pitfalls with Vaughn-Nichols strategy. I am far from a Microsoft shill myself (now my friend Mitchell might be another story). I personally think it is ludicrous. One thing obvious is the cost of the switch. Economic cycles being what they are, by the time you actually planned and implemented this switch the economy would probably be back on the upswing and the economic reasons for undertaking this drastic a move would be gone. Than you would have the expense of moving over including training and downtime. I think by the time you are done with doing all this, if the economy hasn't killed your company, the cost of switching will!

I guess that is why Vaughan-Nichols is just a fanatic on ComputerWorld and noone has nominated him for any Noble prizes or confused him with John Kenneth Galbraith.