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From: Chap Harrison <clh@pobox.com>
To: cygwin@cygwin.com
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Subject: Selling management on Cygwin
Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 15:27:31 -0500
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Hi,
First time post.  Believe I have read and carried out all specified  
"do this before posting" guidelines.

Ok.

I work for a 5-person company whose IT infrastructure is exclusively  
Windows Server-based, and whose mindset is very narrowly  
Microsoftian.  I prefer *nix.  Four months ago I quietly created a  
Windows Server 2003 machine running in a VM on a test box, installed  
Cygwin, and have been successfully writing & running tools (mostly  
Perl) all this time.

Now I want to persuade management to let me install Cygwin directly on  
the "main" Server 2003 box.  This is not only for better interactive  
performance (I work remotely and need to go through one extra screen- 
scraper layer to get to my current Cygwin command line), but also to  
access some directories on the "main" box that aren't being shared  
and, consequently, can't be accessed from my current Cygwin.

I expect to be met with plenty of FUD.  I honestly don't know what  
kind of concerns & arguments will be raised, but I feel certain they  
will be "garden variety".  However, since I'm not a management or IT  
type, nor a Windows expert, nor a Cygwin expert, I am unprepared to  
argue the case.

If someone could help, perhaps by briefly explaining what it is  
they're worried about, and why they needn't be, I would greatly  
appreciate it.  Alternately, a link to an article would be nice (I  
haven't found any so far).

In some ways this is more of an issue about open source software in  
general, but I'm sure there will be questions specifically about  
Cygwin and the extent to which it "touches" Windows OS innards.  Any  
guidance would be helpful!

Thanks,
Chap Harrison

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