A few key points:
- The key words are their own equipment. Would you let someone tinker with your thing? Basically, it's the "golden rule", they paid the gold and they make the rules, on the equipment that they paid the gold for.
- Your point about virii is irrelevent. Anti-virus software usually creates wierd bugs in the developer's environment. Personally, I've never run A-V software for more than the time it takes to prove that it fscks the environment. I've also never had my own development equipment wyrmed. Developers workstations, due to the nature of their jobs, are substantially better protected than anything an A-V program can do. SW development is dangerous and a developer can create their own virus by accident. Ergo, they have to protect their dev environment from themselves and IT/S can't possibly do that for them.
- If you've ever tried to run a programmers IDE (Jbuilder4 or Kylix, or MS-VC++), ERwin, Oracle test RDBMS (locally), Outlook2K, WinWord2K, Excell, Hummingbird X-server, and Photoshop, simultaneously, I guarantee that you wouldn't say that.
- The may not deserve preferential treatment, but they also do not deserve anti-preferential treatment or outright antagonizm.
- Yes, they are not as familiar with your standard images. But, you should also allow those standard images to be altered for developers, contractors, and others with special needs, that have a mandate to complete their projects. Often, this is not allowed or severely resisted. You can't develop software without installing a compiler and most images specifically disallow compilers. IT/S are incompetent to judge what developers need, or they'd be doing that job themselves.
- You're right, but the improper planning may not be on their part. They're on the hook for deliverables too and IT/S usually is a hinderance, not a help. IT/S usually forgets that developer success is also IT/S success and an adversarial relationship is usually counter-productive for both.
As I said, the spirit is helpfulness and I do not intend to make an offence. Therefore, I request that you not take the defence.
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