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Microsoft Delays New Licensing Terms
Reader tempestdata indicates this CNN story, writing: "It appears Microsoft is facing quite a bit of opposition for its new licensing program." It looks like Redmond is granting a one-fiscal-year reprieve to the many companies who were caught off-guard by the announcement of new Microsoft licensing plans. Perhaps some of those companies would be interested in the new KDE 2.2.beta1 -- at least KDE and GNOME don't seem likely to institute monthly subscription fees.
Uh, isn't that because you have to actually be charging money before you can "work the beancounters"?
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
""Never in my career have I seen the customer base so angry at Microsoft," says Rob Enderle, an analyst with the Giga Information Group. "They were calling Microsoft things you wouldn't want your family to hear."
Obviously not a visitor of Slashdot, now is he?
There are many organizations who haven't yet fully deployed Win2k and have no plans to deploy XP. The 4 year cycle cited in the CNN story sounded typical. The outfit I work for probably won't be in a position to deploy XP for at least a couple more years. The developers despise using NT/2k. A skunkworks development environment already exists using non-MS OSes. If MS turns the thumb screws, things could get interesting.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
The Microsoft Algorithm:
1. Float trial balloon with extremely controversial idea.
2. Observe public reaction.
3. If people are sufficiently upset to consider switching to Linux, tone down the idea and go back to 1, looking like the public-sensitive hero. Else implement the idea and make a bundle of money.
4. Go to 1.
This is Microsoft. They're competent programmers. They know the best ins and outs of writing good programs. This skill is what has kept Microsoft on top all these years.
So any Microsoft programmer knows you're supposed to add new line numbers by TENs, so that you have room to insert bug fixes later.
So that's:
... and so on.
Get with the program, guys!
[
The next time you sit down to your Windows PC at work, remember that these sorts of licensing fiascos cost your company real cash.
The company has to make up for the increase in expenses somehow, and we all know how most companies are doing that these days.
And then ... the pitch: "Tired of being pushed around by your software? There's an alternative ..."
> "Microsoft is saying 'we made a mistake,'" says
> Chris LeTocq, principal analyst with Guernsey
> Research. "They listened to IT executives."
> Those executives were saying they could not
> afford the new licensing model this year.
Any IT manager out there worth his or her salt should ask Microsoft for an extension, begging and pleading for time. Then immediately put together a task force to reduce their company's dependance on Microsoft's products. Maybe not completely (they do have a monopoly, you know), but be able to put your company in a position where you have a second vendor for any product Microsoft makes. That way you have a second vendor to keep Microsoft honest. That means instigating policies such as "all company documents should be stored in an open format like RTF or even PDF, but not like DOC."
That way, the next time Microsoft floats a trial balloon, your company can have a credible alternative to give Microsoft in response.
Remember, your first responsibility is to honor your fiduciary duty to your company's shareholders, not to Microsoft. A simple concept, but something overlooked in all companies I've worked for.
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
I don't think that they planned on this, nor do I think that they realize how much this will hurt them. However, they don't really have a choice at this point. Microsoft has backed themselves into a corner (as far as business models go) and can't get out.
Open source would not be where it is without one very positive thing from Microsoft. They came into an industry which was dominated by players who were interested in selling a few copies of their software to businesses for several thousands of dollars per copy and realized that most of their expense was in development. So they undersold their competition in order to dramatically increase the market size and take advantage of this economy of scale. This tactic has helped to make the personal computer as affordable as it is today and such operating systems as Linux possible (the development of the internet has also helped this dramatically).
This model is only sustainable in a growing computer market. If the market ceases to grow, then it becomes harder and harder to maintain the revenue streams necessary to pay developers and still sell the software at insanely low prices. Microsoft executives know this and they know that their stock will tank or worse if they don't do something.
So here is their plan:
- Cut down on piracy. This helps with the immediate cash flow.
- Try to dominate the middleware market with
.NET (given that their plans to, in their words, "pollute" Java failed to some degree.
- Force people to pay them subsciptions for their software.
These strategies hinge on #2, dominating middleware, and I doubt that they will be able to pull it off because #1 will alienate them from some customers and induce a lack of trust and they will be facing competition from a variety of sources, both comercial and open source. So they will have trouble collecting royalties.Anyway, this indicates that Microsoft is becomming aware of the problems that it will face with these companies but still has yet to grasp its full impact.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Why would using GNOME or KDE cause all productivity to stop? I have been able to use these desktops to get work done. Can you give an example?
Get real folks. KDE and Gnome are nice for the tech crowd but they ain't for the business crowd.
What features that are needed for business are missing from either of these desktops that Windows has? There are database apps, office suites that are not so bad to use that people can not get work done with them. (Hint if DOS is still used by many buisness out there as I have seen then how would GNOME or KDE on Linux be worse?) You offer no examples, have no evidance and in a latter post complain that you got modded down. Unfortuanetly I have probably been trolled but if you can give some answers to my questions then I might change my opinion of you.
Molog
So Linus, what are we doing tonight?
So Linus, what are we going to do tonight?
The same thing we do every night Tux. Try to take over the world!