Government Cheese

So today at work, I get the news that the software I'd requested to be installed would not be installed because it would be hard to configure. We have a whole group of people who are your typical sys admin/IT types that do have a lot of weird things to juggle due to that nature of our work. But this software I want is free, open source, and used everywhere. It is almost as ubiquitous as McDonalds. And I had to jump numerous bureaucratic hurdles and approvals to get to that point, which all cleared breezily, only to be stopped by, "sorry, too much work for us." I have downloaded and installed it on both Mac and Linux at home, and aside from the download time, configuring takes minutes. And I know that the situation is not much different at work. So why would the group whose job it is to manage our computer systems not want to install this software that shouldn't take but an hour to get up and running? This is what baffles me. I have answers I'll keep to myself for now. I had to walk away from the reply button to avoid one of those venomous emails that one usually regrets sending at some point. I'm still struggling with a response that is appropriate and sadly sometimes I want to give up and relax into the fold of apathy that so many seem to have adopted as their only long term job goal. Ranting is not one of my visions for this blog, but sometimes it's good to vent, even if it is to the blogosphere.