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Microsoft in Peru, Living Room
Two pieces of Microsoft news today. tfofurn writes "According to this AP quickie and this Reuters story, both on Yahoo, Microsoft is donating 'about $550,000 in money, software and consulting services to the Peruvian government for educational and "e-government" initiatives' to Peru. The AP story mentions the conflict of this with Edgar Villanueva's proposal to have the government use only open source software. Villanueva (/. interview), you may recall, wrote a famous letter to MS Peru a few months ago." And many people have submitted stories about Windows XP Media Center, coming this winter to a living room near you.
I say Peru go along with only using Open Source software, but keep Bill's gifts anyway. I don't see anything in the article about them being obligated in any way to use the stuff for a particular purpose, and I'd like to see him go into Peruvian court and try to sue to get it back.
It's easy to stand out when the general level of competence is so low.
Let me tell you all the horrors of a capitalistic economy.
I own a lemonade stand that sells $5 lemonade. I have about 50 customers every 2 hours, giving me a nice customer base.
You see how I'm gouging people, so you open a lemonade stand for $1, and attempt to show people how to make lemonade at home for under $1.
I'll see what you are doing, and sell my lemonade for $0.50, which is less than it takes for you to make lemonade. For you to compete is for you to lose money. I can afford it, because I have capital sitting in a bank account. You go out of business, and I raise my price back to $5.
This is what MS is doing!
Its basic economics, people.
Now, don't give me the "linux is free" angle. Use the anology, but instead of money, use familiarity with the product, and the popularity with MS products vs open source ones.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
It's no different then scheduling the MS Sales Reps to come in for their 1hr long presentation, 45mins after you schedule the Oracle guys to come in for their presentation.
The two end up meeting in the hall, and notice each-other. Within literally hours you get phone calls and email saying to the extent "We really want your business, and well beat anything they offered".
Linux has to be prepared for this. Don't expect companies to back down from Linux competition simply because Linux is free. And don't expect companies not to use Linux as a expendable pawn in negotiations for better rates from existing vendors.
This is after all, how the free market works.
-malakai
-Malakai
A Dragon Lives in my Garage
Ah I wish I could find the earlier comment were I said this is exactly what would happen in Peru. Well, no matter, this the usual Microsoft tactic. It worked in Mexico, now Peru. Will it work in Norway, a wealthier nation?
Must be nice to be able to print your own money like that: here's 1,000 CD copies of MS Foobar Pro, each worth $5,000 !! So we just made a donation of $5,000,000 and it's tax deductible (not that we pay taxes). And they'll still have to pay for upgrades. Beautiful! Let's see Open Source beat that!!
Thats very true. It's not like other manufactured products where it actually costs a company money to make each individual copy. I.E. if Ford donates a car there was actual cost involved in making that car above and beyond R&D. Whereas when MSFT donates 10,000 copies of office, there is no real cost involved as I'm quite sure the R&D for office is paid for. The real cost to them is actually very nearly nothing, not even boxes and CD's because they probably give them like 10 cd's and 10 manuals and 10,000 liscences.
They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty nor security
It would seem that the cost of Linux is no longer zero. Instead it is effectively negative because in order to compete with it, it seems, Microsoft has to give organizations a bunch of incentives. It says something that in order to create a reasonable value proposition for their software they have to, not just give it away, but actually pay people to take it.
So the question for organizations now is, is it worth the upfront money Microsoft gives you to possibly be hooked into their products in the long run. Certainly you can use a possible linux move as leverage against MS prices, but in the end, is it better to use the leverage or to take Linux.
You have to presume that Microsoft has a plan of how they intend to make back this money in the long run. I can guarantee you that they aren't cutting half billion dollar checks at a whim without thorough belief that they'll make up for it. I'm sure that 5 years down the road Microsoft will be coming around to collect on those incentives. They'll collect by increasing licensing fees, further invading privacy, etc.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
And if you were a company 100% on Linux or some other Unix flavor, you think switching to MS would not be "terribly painful and difficult".
Well, uhm... No. At least, not AS difficult. You see, Linux uses well defined standards and file formats instead of proprietary, constantly changing ones.
If it works, and does what they want it to do, why switch?
The business case for switching isn't JUST saving money. It's weening yourself off of said proprietary formats. Being locked in to a certain format might not be expensive RIGHT NOW, but using open formats means that it will never be any more expensive.
Okay, I'll bite.
So what if your $5 lemonade is awful? It gets sour quickly and has a terrible aftertaste. A few times you buy this lemonade and the glass you got it in has a hole in it and your lemonade spills out. Since this $5 lemonade company has removed all other competition through "hard work" and now demandes that instead of charging for every glass, now you are charged for every sip you take.
Not only that, but in the future this $5 lemonade company won't let you but anything else except for their lemonade in that glass. So your stuck, paying for every sip of lemonade and then being forced to drink more and therefore buying more.
Yeah, that great. Because this lemonade (with that extra sugar that you can't remove from it) has given you cavities. And since you live in a non-socialist country that allowed the lemonade maker to thrive no matter how corrupt their practices are they have destroyed all other alternatives. By now they also own the water stand and are probably your dentist.
So thumbs up to you dude. Great insight on it all.
sin(6cos(r)+5A)
Peru: We've decided to check into a drug rehab center.
MS: Here, have some more drugs -- for free.
Those who would give up liberty in exchange for security and DRM should switch to Microsoft Palladium!
How about MS Word, Access, Excel and Powerpoint?
How about how Word 95 can't open any Word 97 docs. (Before you say, everyone does this... what was the necessity for this. If the upgrade was dramatically diferent, and it wasn't possible to use the same format, I might go easy - in this case, it seems really hard to make that argument.)
How about Access 97 vs 2000...
How about MS SQL Server, and your "special" extensions to SQL.
How about Active X, C#, HTML that only works on IE.
How about Kerberos?
How about breaking the OS/2 3.X compatibility mode every time they did virtually anything to Windows.
How about the totally bogus error messages you got in the beta versions of Windows 3.x when you were using DR Dos?
(Some of these are not propriatary file formats, but clearly demonstrate the capability and willingness to use despicable acts to maintain their power - and keep you by the short hairs.)
MS probably has one of the worst records of ANY company in the history of the computer industry. Locking you into a specific "hamster wheel" is their specialty.
If you like being MS's "hamster" go ahead. Many of the rest of us don't really care for it. For many reasons, money out of our pocket being one of them.
Cheers!