Microsoft Asks Open Source Not to Focus On Price 461
Microsoft's supposed open-source guru Sam Ramji has asked open-source vendors to focus on "value" instead of "cost" with respect to competition with Microsoft products. This is especially funny given the Redmond giant's recent "Apple Tax" message. "While I'm sure Ramji meant well, I'm equally certain that Microsoft would like nothing more than to not be reminded of how expensive its products can be compared with open-source solutions. After all, Microsoft was the company that turned the software industry on its head by introducing lower-cost solutions years ago to undermine the Unix businesses of IBM and Hewlett-Packard, and the database businesses of Oracle and IBM."
Re:cost plays a factor in value (Score:4, Informative)
and for open source, the price point is zero.
Not always. Especially if you factor in support contracts or the average salary of someone who actually knows how to administer the software in an effective manner. Open Source does not equal free beer. Just ask Stallman. However, if you write a good open source program I may buy you a free beer.
Re:They will listen! (Score:2, Informative)
Microsoft's history of anticompetitive behaviour (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Funny but true.... (Score:4, Informative)
Warning: slanted article! (Score:5, Informative)
That quote from Ramji was taken completely out of context. It takes a bit of digging, because the distortion is already present in TFA, but here is the blog post to which TFA "responds" [zdnet.com]. Note especially:
Due to the downturn in the economy, many business users are putting the kibosh on migrations to or from open source. [...] That's why Microsoft is advising open-source partners with whom the company is collaborating not to focus their customer pitches on costs, but instead to lead their sales pitches with "value," he said.
(Emphasis mine.)
Now this may certainly be bad and self-serving advice from Microsoft, but it is still very different from what TFA makes it out to be. Microsoft isn't begging OS vendors to change their sales pitches to something it can compete with. It's telling vendors how it thinks they should pitch in a time of economic difficulty.
We now return you to your regularly-scheduled Microsoft bashing.
He's not talking to you (Score:4, Informative)
Pay attention to the source before going off the deep end:
IT departments are not cutting their spending to zero, Ramji claimed. Instead, they are focusing on strategic projects and cutting completely those they deem to be non-critical. That's why Microsoft is advising open-source partners with whom the company is collaborating not to focus their customer pitches on costs, but instead to lead their sales pitches with "value," he said.
The message is for Microsoft's open-source allies, not RedHat. Ramji is suggesting that they fish where the fish are. It's good advice.
Re:Funny but true.... (Score:5, Informative)
If you want support, you can get StarOffice for $80.
Re:Funny but true.... (Score:2, Informative)
Why?
I can see how using OpenOffice is beneficial for me, since I rarely do any work on my home PC and a $free word processor is better than $200 for MS Office, but how would OpenOffice be a better solution for a business customer if it doesn't come with any support for the employees?
It comes with as much support as MS Office does. None. Further support can be purchased, for either product. And unless the employees are already using Office 2007, the OpenOffice.org solution is likely to look more familiar and need less support. I really don't see what issue you're trying to raise.
Re:Funny but true.... (Score:3, Informative)
The nice thing about opensource is that you can pay to get support.
Red Hat, Canonical, Novell, IBM. I'm sure there are others.
Since there are multiple companies willing to support essentially the same software, you can choose the support based on your own needs.
The other nice thing is that if you know that the problem is with a particular package, you have the option of contacting the maintainer of the package and throwing some money their way to get things fixed.
Re:Funny but true.... (Score:5, Informative)
In my experience at this job, it is far, far easier to find solutions for the problems we've faced for our open-source software on Google than it is to find solutions for the problems we've faced on our proprietary systems. With open source software, chances are someone with enough coding skills to troubleshoot the software has already encountered the problem and has posted a fix. With proprietary systems, you can sometimes find a solution, but not always. In that case, your only solution is to contact the vendor...and nine times out of ten, they don't have any more clue than I or the other network admin do.
YMMV, but I'll gladly take open source and Google over a proprietary product any day of the week.
Re:Focus on quality? (Score:3, Informative)
The issue is you _have_ to update the whole system (all applications) and get used to any changes in the system just to update one single application.
That's utter nonsense. At least in apt-based distros (e.g. Ubuntu and Debian) it's perfectly possible to install any version of a package that you want. If you're using distribution-supplied packages then you make sure that the relevant repository is enabled (either via command-line or one of the many GUIs) and select which version you want. You can then set that package up to always be kept at that version if you wish. This is something that I've done with Cyrus on my mailserver because I haven't yet had time to learn the latest version.
The only time you can't do this is if the various libraries required are so out-of-date that you would need a different glibc; having said that if there's a good reason why you would want to use the newer packages on an older distro (or vice-versa) then it is usually possible to use a backport repository. These can be installed via the distribution's package manager, which will automatically track all dependencies, and usually offer to switch back to the official packages once the distribution has caught up. This is not hard to do, and most distributions that have a Long Term Support release will have a simple mechanism for installing newer versions of important packages via a backports repository.
On Windows, certain applications may require the OS to have a certain Service Pack installed, and this is a system-wide issue and very difficult to roll-back if you get it wrong, so I think Windows certainly doesn't do better in this respect. Talking about this not being "endorsed by the distribution" is silly - on Windows, Microsoft does nothing at all to help you install applications and relies totally on the third-party vendors, so it's hardly a limitation of Linux that this endorsement doesn't extend to every possible version of a package. Having said all of this, if you want to do things the windows-way, many well-know applications will have a zipped binary version that you can install in your home directory or /usr/local and manage outside of the package manager if you wish.
Re:Cost will fall flat... (Score:1, Informative)
I have used AD and linux as a server admin, and I'm not sure why you think that admining group policies is any more difficult in linux than in MS.
I agree with the grandparent 100%, and would add that there seems to be a scalability problem with MS products. Exchange is the perfect example. It may work for a relatively smallish company (e.g., 100s of employees, maybe even 1000s), but once you get to a large institution (e.g., 10000s or 100000s), it just can't cut it. I've had much more success in those situations with open source.
The secret is, a very large organization should be able to hire IT staff talented enough to make use of the open-sourced nature of a software system. E.g., the IT department should be big enough to take server software X and mod it or fix it.
Arguments about "retraining costs" and "getting people used to a new system" do make some sense for a smaller organization, where there are limited IT resources. But when you get to the size of organization I'm used to, the IT department is big enough and talented enough to write its own server software, to say the least of admining open-source software written by someone else. Altering something that already exists just eases the whole process. In the work environment I'm used to, the question isn't "should we go with MS or open-source version X", it's "should we write this in-house ourselves or go to an external developer?" Open-source sometimes gives us the best of both worlds.
Re:Value: (Score:3, Informative)
You are full of shit, mostly because you've never used Windows Media Center. Another lying Linux asshole.
I love you too, Steve. Or is this Bill? If it's Bill, tell Melinda her brownies were awesome. I definitely want the recipe next time I've over.
WMC did not record dead air. The broadcast flag simply tells the machine it's not permitted to record the content, you can still watch it.
Umm... WMC did not record anything. _Everything_else_ recorded, ignoring the spurious broadcast flag. And the people without WMC rejoiced.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadcast_flag#Current_status [wikipedia.org]
On May 18, 2008, News.com reported that Microsoft had confirmed that current versions of Windows Media Center shipping with the Windows family of operating systems did adhere to the use of the broadcast flag, following reports of users being blocked from taping specific airings of NBC programs, mainly American Gladiators and Medium. A Microsoft spokeperson said that Windows Media Center adheres to the "rules set forth by the FCC", even though no legislation actually requires following such rules.
Re:it is pretty funny (Score:1, Informative)
Re:it is pretty funny (Score:4, Informative)
You would be right, and you kind of are, except that this guy is the Director of Microsoft's OSS Lab, which means its not just one employee's opinion, because in a position like that you speak for, I dunno, the branch of the company you represent. If it was just some regular-ol'-coder for M$ ablogging away, then it wouldn't carry enough weight for a story on /. (not that you need THAT much weight here...), but it didn't, it came from the Director of MS OSS Labs, and that kind of talk means that even if it is his opinion, its one that he has now made the opinion of said labs.
Re:it is pretty funny (Score:3, Informative)
a perfect example of why many of were taught in school NOT to use an encyclopedia (of any sort) as primary source.
In what way is that a perfect example? How exactly does the wikipedia entry differ from the dictionary definition [merriam-webster.com]?
Expecting your due, based on social or other contract is not "entitlement".
Well, yes it is. Look at the definition again ("a right to benefits specified especially by law or contract").
Anyway, what contract did Google enter into when they used open source software. GNU places no limitations on the use of software, only the redistribution of it. And it is not as if you haven't received any benefit from it either, since I am sure that you have used Google products.