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."
Focus on quality? (Score:5, Funny)
it is pretty funny (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Now, I could say that the Linux community wants more don.net integration just because Icaza, one of the most active contributors to the Linuzz community advocates this on his blog.
Of course if you want just another inflamatory article on /., just go on...
Re:it is pretty funny (Score:5, Funny)
ah, seriously, /. must learn to separate one of MS employers opinion from the company's opinion.
Now, I could say that the Linux community wants more don.net integration just because Icaza, one of the most active contributors to the Linuzz community advocates this on his blog.
Of course if you want just another inflamatory article on /., just go on...
Stop ruining our Microsoft bashing with sensible comments.
Re:it is pretty funny (Score:4, Insightful)
Nah, seriously, /. must learn to separate one of MS employers opinion from the company's opinion.
Now, I could say that the Linux community wants more don.net integration just because Icaza, one of the most active contributors to the Linuzz community advocates this on his blog.
Are you angling for BadAnalogyGuy's job?
What you could say is that Novell wants more dot.net integration just because Icaza, one of their employees and a VP of the company, advocates that on his blog.
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: (Score:3, Interesting)
Lets talk about raising a family. I have told my children, "do not do business with a company that thinks going to court is a form of casual entertainment."
Re:it is pretty funny (Score:5, Insightful)
"Open source your software, then spend development time porting it to our platform so we can use it for free!"
My favorite example is Chrome.
"Companies should open source their code so the community can port it!"
Google open sources Chrome.
"Google doesn't care about Linux! They won't port their OPEN SOURCED code for us!"
Google ports Chrome to Linux.
"I'll stick with firefox until they release adblock for Chrome, thus circumventing their primary revenue stream!
Step 4: Profit?
Oh you guys are too funny...
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:it is pretty funny (Score:5, Insightful)
I always found the OSS crowd's sense of entitlement even more impressive
"Open source your software, then spend development time porting it to our platform so we can use it for free!"
My favorite example is Chrome.
You would have a much better point if your favorite example wasn't ~90% OSS to start with, such as WebKit.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Google shouldn't be building a Windows only web while using Linux to do all of their heavy lifting.
Even if they refused to make a Linux version of Chrome, it's still only one (barely used) web browser. There are plenty of others out there, and most of them run on Linux. Google couldn't build a "Windows only web" if they tried.
The community expecting something back is not "entitlement".
The community getting something back, but constantly insisting that it's never enough, even when they get back exactly what they asked for in the first place, is most definitely a sense of entitlement.
Re: (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.
Funny but true.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
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?
Re:Funny but true.... (Score:5, Informative)
If you want support, you can get StarOffice for $80.
Re:Funny but true.... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's also important to add:
Open office is included in RedHat, Oracle, Ubuntu and several other commercially supported systems. With MS Office, if you are unhappy with your support provider then you are stuck. With open office, you can shop around until you find the support you want. Right now getting full support might well cost a little more, but if that were true long term then more competition would enter the market and keep prices low. No such thing exists with MS Office where nobody but MS can actually fix problems.
Re:Funny but true.... (Score:4, Insightful)
With MS Office, there is an incompatibility risk in merely updating to the latest version.
Re:Funny but true.... (Score:5, Insightful)
how would OpenOffice be a better solution for a business customer if it doesn't come with any support for the employees?
Closed source software support is basically either
1) Read the help file or try it and see, so the user doesn't have to be able to read or think
2) Third world script reader
3) Real support is huge $$$$$$$
So, overall, you get a better support experience using google and open source than script reader in india and MS office.
Also, there is more to support than answering "how do I print?" ... Such as the enormous cost of security / virus / worms plus the enormous cost of licensing documentation plus BSA audits that are only relevant for closed source products.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
1. Google your support. It's every frickin' where.
2. Go to the support forum for the closed source software. They usually have ones that don't have any real tech support helping. These are often as good as any open sourced ones I've seen.
3. Go to the support forum that you have access to as a licensed customer. This has developers and tech support on it. Often much better than #2.
4. Call, email, or live chat.
Get over the crap people, and
Useful support (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Funny but true.... (Score:5, Insightful)
but how would OpenOffice be a better solution for a business customer if it doesn't come with any support for the employees?
Your employees need support to use a word processor and spreadsheet? I think your money would be better spent hiring component people over support contracts.
Re:Funny but true.... (Score:5, Insightful)
But that's only if you purchased it outright. AFAIK it doesn't apply to OEM software since part of the reasoning for the decreased cost of OEM software is that the system builder is agreeing to provide tech support for that software.
I'm not commenting on the quality of the tech support for the end users though. I've never called them personally. So that 90 days of free support could be crap.
Re:Funny but true.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Funny but true.... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Funny but true.... (Score:5, Funny)
but as value is roughly modeled as utility/cost
If the Open Source solution costs $0.00 doesn't that lead to an undefined value in your equation?
Managment is stupid but even they won't fall for non-real numbers.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"Training" here means : "To access the program you need in order to do you work you click here and here".
Switching from WinXP to Win7 would constitute a jump in familiarity for them as big as switching from WinXP to Linux.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
In my exprience though, a significant number of problems that occur in my Windows box end up unfixable short of a format, regardless of how documented they are. (Not most, mind, but enough to be frustrating.) In many cases error codes are generic and meaningless.
With open-source software at least, error messages and info are more intuitive, and while fixes are sometimes more complex (one personal example was having to recompile mplayer from source to work around a bug in Ubuntu 8.10), fixes have also exis
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Funny but true.... (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
How is open source a better solution when your only source of troubleshooting is Google?
Google is all the support I have ever had for Microsoft products, too. Sure, I could have paid to speak to somebody reading off a script somewhere that labour is cheap if I'd got into real trouble with a Microsoft product. As opposed to open source, where for a lot of products you can get straight through to the development team.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Indeed. That's my constant point. How many people out there actually phone Microsoft support? I've never actually done it myself, but was in the room once when a guy I was working for phoned them up over an issue with PPP connections in NT 3.51. It was a damned expensive call, but the problem was solved. Myself, whether it's an issue with a Linux box or a Windows box, I head to Google, or subscribe to some of the newsgroups out there, which are still, at least for now, filled with pretty bright people.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Just here to toot my own horn I guess but I usually find the opposite to be true. I have rarely found support to be overly helpful in solving issues. I trust the Internet before I trust a support contract.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I trust the Internet before I trust a support contract.
You must have a lot of products from the company formerly known as BEA.
Nah - if that was the case, he'd be currently consulting his oracle.
Oh wait...
Re: (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, Interesting)
There are plenty of companies out there that provide contracted service for open source projects. I personally for 12 years have provided paid, per-incident support for Apache, Nagios, Cacti, Amanda, Sendmail, Postfix, Spam Assasin, and Snort\IPTABLES (IDS) firewalls. I have since retired from geek work (I work at a bank now) but I had no problem meeting ITIL severity SLAs including 15 min response, 2 hour fix windows for most production issues.
On top of that in 12 years I've only had 3 sev 1 calls come in on linux\bsd systems I built and all 3 were hardware failures ultimately. There are plenty out there, just, well ... Google them :)
Here I help:
http://www.nagios.org/support/servicepartners/ [nagios.org]
Start there for Nagios. ISP and VM hosts can often provide Nagios pager\cell\SMS support for servers you host with them also. Just ask.
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:Cost, quality and... (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know about you, but when someone asks for a change to one of my apps and I tell them "It's open source, make the change yourself," what I'm really saying is "**** off."
If you're business this is only possible:
- Assuming you have the budget for a development team.
- And the time to become familiar with the code base before the feature is needed.
- And a repository maintainer who is willing to accept your changes, or an even bigger team and budget to track security and bug fixes from the original developer and incorporate them into your modified code base.
- And a silver tongue, so you can convince your investors that it's totally worthwhile to spend their money improving a product that anybody can use for free with absolutely no way to profit directly from the improvements you made to the software.
Or if you're a home user, in which case you probably don't know C, and if you do you're probably too tired from writing C all day to fix someone's code for them.
The ability to make contributions is far from the main benefit of open source software. The main benefit is the fact that someone can't shut it down for selfish reasons. The code is essentially in the public domain. Apache or MySQL will never enter a "vault" like The Lion King or Sleeping Beauty; the Linux kernel will never have its "support period" expire. The real benefit is social, rather than technological.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Getting an ubuntu VM doesn't require approval like a windows VM does, because of the cost
If it's something I can do that way, the saving of half a day (not having to get approval) of my time is worth it to me, completely ignoring the difference in cost.
That's value.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Value in this context is just synonym for cost-benefit analysis, which is a concept people are already quite familiar with even if they do not always apply it. The reason Microsoft wants OSS vendors to change their vocabulary is that they are aware that they have lost the cost-benefit fight under the old vocabulary and they want OSS marketeers to help them re-open the same debate under new ter
Re:Focus on quality? (Score:5, Insightful)
After we got it all set up, got the multimedia stuff from Pacman, added malware and tracking sites to the hosts file, installed No-Script, configured his firewall, and loaded his music so Amarok could play, and gave them a tour of all the stuff Linux could do right "out of the box" and without costing a single cent, all of the educational programs and games, etc, they were floored.
They had a chance to explore yesterday and said they liked it so much better than Windows it wasn't funny. They regret not having switched before.
The simple fact is that Linux really does work beautifully for most people's purposes and with all the applications available for it and included in the distros, I don't see how people aren't flocking to Linux in droves. Maybe the word just needs to get out. I know my neighbors are planning to tell all their family members about it.
Re:Focus on quality? (Score:5, Funny)
The reality is that every operating system I've ever used can be a pain, and damned near every software package I've used has problems. I'm having consistent problems with one user using Office 2003, where I have to go in every few weeks and toast his Office registry keys. Nobody else has the problem. I've wanted to just kill his roaming profile, but he has panic attacks about that, so, dutifully every few weeks, I go into regedit and burn out that chunk of the registry. Another user seems to have problems with our login scripts, the printer mappings work fine, but the drive mappings never work. Again, I expect it's likely something in her profile, but considering how massive even the HKEY_CURRENT_USER hive is, I'll probably just wipe out her profile.
And there's the difference. A lot of the time, the "solution" in Windows is start from scratch, whether it's a profile or the whole damned operating system. Only those guys who hire themselves out as "anti-virus/spyware cleaners" or whatever actually bugger around for three hours with various shitty packages weeding out the evil. For guys like me, we have slipstreamed installs and hard drive images, and just go "Fuck it" and reinstall Windows, because it just isn't worth the time and frustration to actually properly diagnose things.
Re:Focus on quality? (Score:4, Insightful)
She keeps griping at me because my Linux boxes always seem to be working, but her Windows PCs never do. It doesn't help that my answer is, "That's why I run Linux."
Re:Focus on quality? (Score:5, Insightful)
>They had a chance to explore yesterday and said they liked it so much better than Windows
>it wasn't funny.
I'll bet you forgot to tell them that a few months down the road he will have no way to install an up-to-date application unless he updates the whole system. And that he will have to update (aka reinstall) the whole system every few months, since thats the usual duration his applications officially are up to date.
Free Software is usually nice and all, and I'm using it exclusively on my desktops, but inability to install newer or older software on "stable" distributions kills it for Windows converts. You really can not talk someone into linux with a calm conscience without warning him that his system is considered "obsolete" by application makers the moment its published and a new development cycle has begun, and that there will be no way to install any older versions he might be got used to.
Re:Focus on quality? (Score:4, Insightful)
I and the GP were not talking about ourselves, but about possible Windows converts trying out linux first time.
>Or you could run a LTS of Ubuntu if you care about that?
Which means no way to install an newer application comming out after the LTS.
> Or compile your own local packages if you want different versions?
No Windows convert is going to do that and I dont like it either since theres no nice and clean way to uninstall them.
> Or use backports if you want to upgrade just a few packages?
Theres no "standard" (i.e. endorsed by the distribution) way to install backports, so anything you do is at your own risk. Again, not something you really would tell a Windows convert to have to do.
> Or, most importantly, don't run a stable distro if you don't want to run a stable distro.
So which one would you recommend a Windows convert then? And when you cant official "stable" distributions to Windows converts, what the heck are they then good for?
>That said, the upgrade process is quite painless (as is Windows update (including SPs)
>and Mac OS X's system update). I really don't see the issue.
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.
The fact that application versions are so tightly tied to system versions on Linux in general absolutely sucks. Upgrading and downgrading single applications is a pain in the ass, or practically impossible. If youre talking somebody into Linux, sooner or later he WILL find this out, and then you practically only have to hope that he is so clueless that he either never updates anything or doesnt mind his applications changing every few months without him having any say on this.
Re: (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
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
>And that's different from Windows how?
In the fact that I still have to find an application I cant install under XP three years after Vista came out. With Linux this in general does not work because the underlying dependencies change too often and too much.
>Seriously, that's a load of FUD.
No way.
>I've had far, far less trouble getting old/obsolete software to run on new versions of Linux
You may have had no trouble, but without a proper package built and available for the new version and for the new
Re:Focus on quality? (Score:4, Interesting)
Sure what it sounded like to me. Ubuntu seems to do all of that at the specified price.
However, what pisses me off most about Microsoft is the in-your-face WGA assumption that everyone is a thief. No, just because we are forced to use your trashy software, that does NOT mean we want to steal it. This week they installed a new and more intrusive in-your-face version of WGA. Pile it higher and deeper? Sorry, Microsoft, no kudos to you.
Actually, there are lots of reasons to hate Microsoft. I think my deepest reason for hating Microsoft is that Microsoft is anti-freedom, and I like my freedom. The meaning of freedom is that you get to make meaningful choices, but Microsoft interprets that to mean "We don't have to show you any source code, so you don't really know anything about what we are offering, but the only choices we feel like offering are minor variations of the same garbage. Now send us more money. NOW. And we Microsoftians still assume you're a bunch of thieves. So what are you twits going to do about it?"
P.S. What I did is switch to Ubuntu and Redhat as much as possible. Unfortunately, my work still requires me to use Windows much of the time.
They will listen! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Not just "other people", generally, but specifically telling competitors how they should market products against Microsoft's.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
eating grass (Score:3, Insightful)
Sorry, but the commons MS could have joined is already well aware that letting MS anywhere near our grassy field would leave it a muddy field. There would be no grass left to eat and MS knows this, thus you see why MS cannot be convinced to act in other than their own narrow immediate interest. Sadly, MS's herd must be allowed to die off so that the rest may survive.
cost plays a factor in value (Score:2)
and for open source, the price point is zero.
this gives open source a boost in value instantly.
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:cost plays a factor in value (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
But that's also true of closed-source solutions. It isn't like a Windows server miraculously runs itself. You still need someone who knows how run the thing.
Obviously there's tons of wiggle room here... It may very well be that the average salary of a Windows admin is lower than that of a *nix admin... But *nix gives you better automation tools, security, and stability - so that one admin might be able to do more real work on a *nix box than a Windows box.
You can't just look at the sticker price when determining which piece of software is going to cost more or get you more bang for your buck... But you can't ignore the sticker price either.
The purchase price is NOT the "cost"... (Score:5, Insightful)
OSS software is a total boon to developers. I'm a developer, and we use OSS everywhere possible. Since we can easily support our software when something goes awry, we jump quickly and confidently.
But not every company has their own staff of developers. Companies that don't produce software have little incentive to hire developers if they don't contribute significantly to the bottom line. And for companies in this boat, OSS does, indeed, have costs that far outstrip the purchase price.
Windows Server licenses for needed servers might cost a grand or three. If this is sufficient to avoid the cost of hiring a developer (at around $100k/year) or an admin, (at ~ $60k/year) it's money very well spent!
Sure, I use OSS because it lets me sleep very soundly at night, with perhaps 1 significant unplanned incident per year in our hosting cluster of 14 servers. But part of that is that we already have paid the price of having developers on hand to maintain and understand our OSS-based servers.
And don't think that just because it's Microsoft, you can assume it's safe to laugh. I remember when MS Word was laughable. I remember when Windows was laughable. I remember when Excel was a toy compared to the "meat and potatoes" competition.
As a corporate culture, Microsoft learns how to dominate markets. They're losing right now, and maybe they won't turn things around in time. But they have massive assetts, they still have a monopoly in the desktop computing marketplace, and with Vista, they've shown a willingness to take risks if they are necessary to improve their software.
I know this is unpopular to state here on Slashdot, but many (most?) of the problems with Vista have been centered around making the changes necessary to more properly secure Windows. Software that was badly built that did bad things broke on Vista, and that's a necessary step to take in order to preserve their long term market share.
Don't laugh. Keep your head down, keep improving the OSS software, and be wary of Microsoft - they still have everything it would take to continue to dominate.
Re:The purchase price is NOT the "cost"... (Score:5, Funny)
I remember when Windows was laughable.
Well, yeah. I can remember back to yesterday, too. No big feat there...
Re:The purchase price is NOT the "cost"... (Score:5, Insightful)
Companies that don't produce software have little incentive to hire developers if they don't contribute significantly to the bottom line.
They can, however, get a contract with a company that does employ developers. This company can then dive in and fix any bugs that they encounter. They can do the same with proprietary software, but only from the original seller, and unless they are a very big company they are unlikely to get bugs fixed in, say, Office or Windows.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Typically the only "value" microsoft offers is compatibility with other ms products someone is already locked in to...
Well . . . (Score:2)
In this case, once the foot is in the proverbial price door, anything can and will happen.
Re: (Score:3)
Synergies and Value Add Branding... (Score:5, Funny)
I can see the ads! (Score:5, Funny)
This is Lauren. She told us she wanted a stable OS with an Office Suite and some photo editing software for $0. We told her, you find it, you keep it.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Wait, is this an ad for open source software or for The Pirate Bay?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
That's the thing about Windows that really shines through in the ads - "Lauren" is the Windows version of "hot". You could do better, but you just don't feel like putting in the effort.
Cost will fall flat... (Score:2, Insightful)
You can tell most Open Source advocates have never had to make costing decisions in large businesses.
Businesses are a lot more interested in the total value of something than its price tag.
Linux might be "free" but if you include the support contract, [re-]training, only then do you start to get close to its real cost in a business.
To get ever closer you have to look at how efficient it is for people to get their work done on that platform when compared to the competition.
I personally find getting almost an
Re:Cost will fall flat... (Score:5, Interesting)
You can tell that most Microsoft apologists haven't had any sort of role in supporting or managing IT in business.
Been there. Done that. Have the faded t-shirts to prove it.
Although this isn't just about the fabled "business case".
This is also about the bargain conscious consumer that might
see various bits of commercial software and get a sudden case
of sticker shock or try something that claims to be free but
is really just an open door to malware and spam.
This is about taking Microsoft's own marketing approach and turning it on them.
Re: (Score:2)
I personally find getting almost anything done on Linux much more time consuming than either OS X or Windows...
If we're talking about desktop work, I'll grant you that. But once we start talking about network administration tasks, there's really no comparison. Linux is far easier to manage than any windows box i've ever used.
Re:Cost will fall flat... (Score:5, Insightful)
> Businesses are a lot more interested in the total value of something than its price tag.
I'll go you one better: businesses, or more accurately, managers in charge of making major spending decisions, don't often understand the difference between value and cost.
If a typical empty-suit gotta-wrap-this-by-2-so-I-can-get-to-the-golf-course middle manager looks at open source software (priced at $0) and then Microsoft software (priced in the thousands or tens of thousands, for company-wide use), he's probably going to make the decision in favor of Microsoft because if it doesn't cost anything, it must not be worth anything.
Small business owners have always dealt with this mindset. If they want contracts from big companies they usually have to inflate their prices (even beyond what they would consider a fair profit margin) in order to even be considered as a potential vendor. This is especially true when trying to do work for governments or Universities.
You might not understand value, the managers do (Score:3, Insightful)
Usually, that is....
The thing is, it isn't about cost at all. The issue is that you are trying to position one package against another, and this is the wrong approach. The manager will compare it and see if, out of the box, the extra features are worth that extra cost, whether it fits into what they currently have, etc.
Instead, you need to take the time to understand what the management NEEDS and see if you can offer a more complete set using FOSS plus some optional customization or extension. Maybe you
Re: (Score:2)
Which is a good, justifiable reason for you to stay with Windows. I am the opposite. I am much more productive using Linux. Which is a good reason for me to stay with Linux. "Each to his own." I don't personally care what people use. I do care if other people try to take away my right to choose. Which MS often does via their "proprietary lock in" on a number of things.
Re:Cost will fall flat... (Score:5, Interesting)
That may be true on the workstation, though rather than pay even $150 a pop for 23 licenses for Office Home/Educational or whatever its called, I threw in OpenOffice. My manager was a little nervous about this, and even tentatively put money in the budget for the licenses, but allowed me to "experiment". There have been a few problems, to be sure, but nothing so earth-shattering that, after a month, when we discussed it, it was agreed that OpenOffice was the obvious solution for these workstations. For what they're used for, if there wasn't XP licenses to be had, I'd probably just have installed Ubuntu.
But on the server end of things, it's quite different. I see no reason to pay thousands of dollars for the operating system and CALs for a fileserver, when Samba does the job quite well. In these harsher economic times, the value of a GUI drops pretty substantially when you're talking about licensing costs. What's more, because of Microsoft's insane licensing system, it's not just costs, but making sure you've got the right kind of license. Oops, that was an OEM license, so sorry, you can't put that copy of Server 2003 on a new server, you naught boy. Buy a new one! BWAHAHAHA.
We just went through a software-licensing-review-that-wasn't-labeled-as-a-review with Microsoft (likely because, once I was on board, I stopped paying their crappy, useless and expensive Software Assurance), and it was the first time my organization had gone line by line through our licenses.
Microsoft is absurdly expensive and restrictive, and believe me, so far as I'm concerned, OpenOffice is thin edge of the wedge. Next up is Exchange. Everything is going web-based anyways, and the only real "Exchange-y" feature we use is shared calendars. I can either use one of the open source groupware packages, or as some have suggested, just look at Google's calendaring.
I'm telling my rep flat out once the review is through that with the next round of purchases, the only thing likely Microsoft on the computers will be the operating system.
Re:Cost will fall flat... (Score:5, Interesting)
I think you're mostly right but it's clear you're not using AD beyond an authentication system for your workstations. Start putting group policies to use and you'll quickly see that Linux/Samba can't compete.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Linux might be "free" but if you include the support contract
Are you telling me that none of your Windows software has a support contract of any kind?
We support a number of clients... Just what they call 'critical' varies from one place to the next... Some of them are very concerned about their accounting software, some of them are more worried about their inventory software, some of them have electronic medical records... But all of them have support contracts of some kind on the software that they consider critical. And most of them are running on Windows.
[re-]training
Train
Re:Cost will fall flat... (Score:5, Interesting)
You can tell most Open Source advocates have never had to make costing decisions in large businesses.
Businesses are a lot more interested in the total value of something than its price tag.
Linux might be "free" but if you include the support contract, [re-]training, only then do you start to get close to its real cost in a business.
To get ever closer you have to look at how efficient it is for people to get their work done on that platform when compared to the competition.
I personally find getting almost anything done on Linux much more time consuming than either OS X or Windows...
1. We have anecdotal remarks, at the very least, that have found retraining costs can be surprisingly low. In any event, those costs are non-recurring, as opposed to keeping up with Microsoft's upgrade treadmill.
2. On support costs between Linux and Windows, I think there is sufficient evidence available to show that the cost difference is either a wash or favourable towards Linux. Microsoft-sponsored studies claiming otherwise have been largely discredited.
3. Efficiency. True. No tool drives in a nail as efficiently as a hammer. In some cases, proprietary applications either outclass or have no Open Source competitor. However, the less specialized the task, the more likely that a Free/Open Source solution is "good enough", or even the better choice. Cases in point: OpenOffice.org, Firefox, Apache, Asterisk, the Linux kernel, various GNU utilities. And one more thing, just because you *can* have lots of eye candy doesn't mean that you should.
4. Another consideration that affects how products work and attitudes of business is that many proprietary products are built assuming that the user is a thief and should not use the product. As a result, you pay Microsoft for software that can decide to downgrade your multimedia playback, for example.
Further on this point, the culture of user as probable thief spawns the BSA. As long as you use software by BSA members you risk a costly license "audit", whether your licenses are 100% compliant or not. Productivity loss during these audits has a real bottom-line cost to a business.
So? (Score:3, Insightful)
Attn: Sam. (Score:2)
And the definition you aren't looking at *is* one of the most important value measurements of open source.
Turnaround (Score:2, Insightful)
Ok we can do that (Score:2)
BIG VALUE small cost
Dialog (Score:5, Funny)
Microsoft: Please compete with us on our terms??!?! Pretty please?!
Open-source: No.
Microsoft's history of anticompetitive behaviour (Score:5, Informative)
Compare Microsoft to Microsoft first. (Score:4, Interesting)
Ah, before we start looking for the "value" in comparisons with Microsoft and Open-Source, perhaps we should look to have Microsoft justify its "value" behind the Office suite being $60 for the average student, and $360 for the average office worker...
Microsoft Asks Open Source Not to Focus on Price (Score:2)
Value: (Score:2)
Re: (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.
Sure, let's examine the value: (Score:5, Interesting)
Open source
Pros:
1. (Generally) free up front costs
2. A multititude of versions readily available, all the way back to early alpha, and will likely always be available, accompanied by the source code
3. (generally/often) cross-platform support
4. A huge support base made up of both paid professional support and "community" support
5. If you have a nagging "must fix" bug that affects you and only you, you have the option of fixing it or hiring someone to fix it for you
6. 0% risk of violating "per-seat" licensing
7. Development might be in someone's bedroom, or backed by a big company. YMMV, batteries not included. This could be a "con" if it's the former.
Cons
1. No warranty
2. Programs are often buggy or incomplete
3. Some projects are run by arrogant BOFH/RTFM types.
4. May require administrator training, in the form of self-study or tutorial videos on youtube, or time spent on messageboards.
Proprietary/Closed Source
Pros:
1. Shrink wrapped package and professionally-replicated DVD (oooh, SHINY!)
2. Development backed by a professional company
3. Program is usually relatively complete and bug free
4. Training i$ generally available for a co$t - where your sysadmin will receive a year's worth of information in 3-5 days and will remember precisely none of it, so he'll be asking you for funding for books, time for self-study and will be spending time on messageboards and/or watching tutorials on youtube
Cons
1. High up-front costs
2. High risk of copyright/license violations if you install more seats than "allowed" by your "license"
3. Support is generally expensive
4. Only the latest version is commercially available
5. If you have a bug you and only you encounter, you're SOL. It ain't gonna be fixed. They have your money already, so why should they care?
6. You are tied to the one and only one platform the software runs on
7. Support is paid support only, and in many cases, if you need support on an older version, they will require you to upgrade prior to providing support. Some community support may be available.
6. All warranties are expressly waived/disclaimed.
Re:Sure, let's examine the value: (Score:5, Insightful)
[Open Source] Cons
Interestingly, those are some of the exact same reasons why I dislike proprietary software.
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.
Certainly (Score:4, Interesting)
I run a Linux server. It has the same hardware cost as if Windows were on but no issues with client access licenses, activation or any artificial limitation brought on by segmentation like Home, Pro, Ultimate etc.. It has comparable but slightly lower cost. I find greater value in it.
Do they want to continue? The value argument is a very poor one from MS. Ubiquity is the best card they've got to play.
Cheers,
Ian
It's not about cost (Score:3, Insightful)
For me the biggest selling point of OSS is not its being free-as-in-beer, but being free-as-in-speech. The biggest selling point of OSS is _control_. You buy a proprietary program, it has a bug that bugs you and nobody else, and you are toast. In OSS you can pay somebody to correct the bug. At least you have the option. If you want to extend the program, you can do it. Difficult and costly, perhaps, but possible at least.
When you buy proprietary, and work to integrate your business's data flow in the proprietary solution, you are in fact a hostage of the software company that has the source code. If Microsoft decided now to start charging 10.000 dollars per Windows license, many people would be forced to pay. It would surely spell doom for Microsoft in the long term, but 'long' is the operative word here. The fact is that if they could do it, and you would have no practical alternative to paying, if your business processes are deeply integrated in Windows.
Remember, it's not for the money, it's for the freedom.
Please Don't Focus on Price (Score:4, Funny)
Please don't focus on quality or security either.
Please focus on... customer support! We heard Linux didn't have any of that. We tried logging on to #linux this one time but someone told us to RTFM and banned us from the channel.
What about Microsoft's free software? (Score:3, Insightful)
Microsoft really has no basis for griping about other people giving away software for free, when they've been doing it themselves as a competitive strategy for many years, from Internet Explorer to Visual Web Dev Express.
Have you stopped beating your wife? (Score:3, Insightful)
Microsoft is a marketing company more than a software company. This is a deft stroke of shaping opinion. Why?
Because the tacit assumption is that Open Sourcers focus on price, not value. They want to provoke the predictable "Microsoft software is too expensive" response. It lets them cast Open Sourcers as not being able to bridge the gap between technology and product.
Technology does something specific. A product solves a problem. All that this line of commentary does is to underscore Microsoft's message that Open Source isn't ready for business. Railing about expense without attacking the core problem of value only plays into Microsoft's hand.
What's more tragic is that they may be right. There are precious few Open Source technologies that are developed and focused to the point of being a product.
There are many types of cost (Score:3, Interesting)
If you are starting from scratch, Windows and Linux are fairly competitive. Linux includes support for more things out of the box. Windows has better help files. Good Windows admins are probably easier to find and pay for. Windows systems are designed based on the assumption that the user is stupid and needs to have everything done for them, and thus results in a "one size fits all" product. Open source is usually designed with the assumption that the user will want to tweak everything imaginable in to software, even though to process for doing so is poorly documented. Windows has better support for brand new devices; Linux has better support for older devices. Windows has much more antivirus software available because it NEEDS it!
In conclusion, Open Source _should_ compete on value; for embedded devices and servers, I believe it has a better value proposition. For desktops, assuming all your users are already familiar with Windows, it isn't as competitive. If I was going to start a bunch of people who know nothing about computers out, I'd train them on Linux. But the Windows legacy is a fact of the industry, so the correct approach is to use the correct tool for the job and to strive for interoperability on all sides. Microsoft is at least giving lip service to interoperability lately; and that is something that actually does provide value to customers. Lock-in does not.
Here goes my Karma (Score:3, Insightful)
It's times like this, we should take a step back and honestly evaluate FOSS solutions and how they compare with commercial offerings.
I do a LOT of network admin, in a mixed Windows, Linux and BSD environment. I can't really say that one is better than the other, because they all have their strengths and weaknesses. Windows can be a pain with its disjointed admin apps (hate AD), but it's pretty easy for our developers to VNC in and twiddle checkboxes in IIS. Linux is my favorite, because I know it well, but many things are needlessly obscure (like openssl command lines).
Windows costs money up front, but for non-CLI people the TCO could be lower due to the often self-explanatory interfaces. Linux is free, but I've invested quite a bit of time writing touchy-feely scripts to bridge the usability gap, and that time is money. Hell, half of my billable hours involve supporting clients' Linux servers. I haven't billed Windows support time in over 6 months.
Regarding Microsoft's marketing attacks on FOSS, we should see it as a challenge. We have the advantage of zero up-front cost, now we need to focus on reducing maintenance costs. Don't leave it up to individual distros to write the touchy-feely front-ends, we don't need 15 different network config apps, just one but a good one. I shouldn't have to learn contorted, error-prone MD/LVM commands just to set up and monitor disks, how about a little wizard to do it for me ? Thinks like that have a far greater impact on TCO than any sticker value. Enterprise deployments have a lifetime measured in years, it doesn't take a huge difference in maintenance costs to catch up with the difference in sticker price.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
All I'm saying is that if you want this to be the year of Linux on the desktop there has to be first, better software for Linux and better open source software (and that means pretty GUIs and good graphics) available for consumption, and then you have to sign on enterprise level companies and make them make an investment into it.
You are correct in many ways - to the extent that this post made me irrationally angry on some level.
I'd actually take a small hit in productivity if it helps me avoid using a proprietary system. If our company buys a system that "integrates" with a proprietary solution, I'll go a long way to learn an "open" workaround. Or try to get by without the service in the first place. People have survived without flashy services for ages, why would they suddenly need those? Complicated "integrated" tools are a distr