How do you get open source frameworks past the red tape?
From an e-mail I received earlier this month, with a subject of "Acceptance red tape":
After requesting permission to use the Spring Framework for the business logic and data access layers of an application, how do you fight something like this? Spring is not an approved Framework for the ********** environment. We understand the benefits of the framework. However, we have not certified it in our environment. Additionally, we have concerns that this framework will not gain long standing traction among the J2EE community. We would like to reduce the number of frameworks used in our environment, and do not want to be left with "legacy" frameworks that have little acceptance or support as is the case with the pico container. This is a response from one of our clients after asking about the use of a framework in our development after another vendor had used the PicoContainer without their permission. We have Spring experience and we love it. My responses have been to ask what they have certified that we could use and to ask their business staff to override their tech staff. I'm caught needing to redesign an aging J2EE application with an awfully over-architected original design confined to EJB 2.1, JSP 2.0, Servlet 2.4, and JDK 1.4.X in a very short amount of time. The additional responses were that they have only certified Struts and although both the business staff and the tech staff admit they know the benefits of Spring, neither of them are allowing us to use it.
My response:
Wow - I don't know what to say, especially when they say
"Additionally, we have concerns that this framework will not gain long
standing traction among the J2EE community."
They're probably using Struts and they thinks it's wonderful, eh? 
I could compose a long response with lots of details, but the fact
that they prefer EJB over Spring is baffling. Spring is so much
easier to program with, it's not even funny. Granted, EJB does have
its place, but it's often used as a hammer for a problem that doesn't
exist.
Have you experienced similar "Acceptance red tape" in your company? If so, how did you work around or work through it?