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Why are Microsoft Customers Scared of Criticising Microsoft?
gsfprez asks: "This article documents the stories of three Microsoft customers (organizations that voluntarily buy Microsoft products) who are clearly unhappy with the product offerings of Microsoft - but are simultaneously petrified of this fact being made public. My question to the crowd is not regarding the subject matter of the article: rather, I want to know what is it that could scare a company away from telling a product vendor that they are unhappy and merely *considering* not buying their next product? Fear of reprisal (in the form of a software audit) is simple extortion...no? More ethereally - do we actually live in a world where MS not only 'demands' you buy their new products, but appears to have people pissing their pants at the thought of doing otherwise?"
There is one big rule: do not draw too much attention .
Microsoft is a big company that is known to play its business a bit dirty from time to time. When you criticise them too much, they might just try their next trick on you. Since they are bigger and have more money, you can be sure you won't like this.
E-Week is a magazine for CIOs and IT administrators. If you get your name printed disparaging any of your suppliers, you can be sure that your sales rep and tech support rep aren't going to smiling and saying 'wow, what a great and effective way to deliver feedback to me.'
I don't use a single byte made by Microsoft, and still I'm scared of criticising them. Why? They're evil, that's why! I usually don't criticise Satan as well. Hey, they're all great! Now, that's why I really don't criticise! Yeah, that's why!
root@aio:~# nmap -sX -iR -p1- # Ho, ho, ho! Merry Xmas, everyone!
I don't live in the US so i'd like to know : How could MS force a firm to do a software audit ? Can they decide themselves to pass the door and have a look at the licenses, or do you mean they can "influence" which enterprises should be audited ? :-) is probably using alot of not so free software.
Anyway, what would they have to fear if they were using OSS ? The law is on their side...
Yeah right, Even an "OSS enterprise" (see, american humor
The article linked is not a long one; it talks about Microsoft's recent announcement that Office 11 won't run or won't be supported (I'm not entirely sure which) on any MS OS older than Windows 2000. Three people were quoted in the article as saying unhappy things about this announcement.
I think the submitter of this article is reading too much into it. I've done some interviews with the mass media on a few subjects-- most recently on last month's brief but entertaining controversy about Microsoft's fake testimonial ads-- and it's very common for people like myself to agree to speak to reporters on background, or to say things that are not for attribution. "On background" and "not for attribution" have very specific meanings to reporters. If you tell a reporter that what you're about to say is not for attribution, that means the reporter can write about what you say, or even quote you, but mustn't identify you in any way. That's obviously what happened here.
So... why? Well, the first possible reason that springs to mind is that the people being interviewed didn't have the authority to speak officially for their company, even though they were being asked about company reactions to the Microsoft announcement. Rather than having every statement run through corporate public relations, the reporter simply agreed that the interviews would be "not for attribution." That way the reporter gets his quotes, and the interviewee doesn't have to cover his ass.
In other words, just because the author of the story used the phrase "requested anonymity," don't jump to the conclusion that this is some Deep Throat situation, some big cloak-and-dagger thing. It's not even unusual.
There's basically nothing interesting going on here.
I write in my journal
You might as well as, "Why are /. posters afraid of criticizing Linux?". Because if you do you will be "audited" (modded into oblivion) by the Slashbots, of course!
It's the PHBs, too. Microsoft FUD has so completely blown over the non-technical that anyone espousing an anti-MS thought is considered clueless. And that goes double if they don't have an MCxx certification. Catch-22? Yep. And Microsoft loves it that way. For 99% of the companies out there, the only right answers are "Yep, we can buy that from Microsoft." or "We're going to have to buy that from someone else...Microsoft doesn't sell anything that does that." And the list for which the second answer is true is getting smaller every year.
Do not confuse duty with what other people expect of you; they are utterly different.Duty is a debt you owe to yourself.
Content of the article aside, many companies are afraid of scaring their customers, by telling them "Hey -- we do YOUR business using a product even WE don't like!"
Would you be happy knowing that your health insurance, stocks, etc were done on a system that your insurance company, stock broker, etc didn't feel comfortable with?
Unfortunately, migrating from M$ to a *nix platform is not easy -- it takes time to migrate your services and data. So many companies are stuck in the M$ rut.
10b||~10b -- aah, what a question!
It seems reasonable to post links to an article that shows that Microsoft customers could possibly have serious need to criticize the company, even in cases where the software works: Windows XP Shows the Direction Microsoft is Going.. If Spanish is your native language: Windows XP muestra la dirección que Microsoft está tomando.
Those who criticize Microsoft face a lack of sympathy from people who are not well informed, which is most people. Typically, Microsoft users attack each other, rather than examine the issues. My research shows that this is a phenomenon that is common. Human societies do not deal well with an abuser that tries many, many small abuses, and gives up any one abuse if the opposition is too strong.
Some history: Microsoft has made huge positive contribution to the world by creating an operating system that the world could adopt as a standard for small computers. Earlier there were more than 200 versions of Unix, each with small incompatibilities with the others. Versions of earlier Unix operating systems also were too powerful to run on affordable small computers. The Unix system would boot for the first time and expect that it would be attached to a network of typically hundreds or thousands of other computers. The manuals assumed that the reader was a professional Unix administrator.
The alternative to Microsoft operating systems was the OS known as CP/M. Those who designed CP/M-based personal computers used more than 68 diskette formats, making it impossible to interchange data between different systems by diskette, without using a conversion program. Digital Research, the company that made CP/M, sometimes provided manuals in which the original was printed using a dot-matrix printer with an old ribbon. To say that DR was insufficiently attentive to business is an understatement. It was crazy, and Microsoft delivered us from that craziness.
At the same time that Microsoft was making a huge positive contribution, it was making a negative one, also. The company has a history of the kind of abuse psychologists call "testing the limits".
Q: How many Microsoft Customers does it take to replace a light bulb?
A: None. They all bought into Licensing 6.0, and can't afford to buy new light bulbs until the next budget year. Maybe.
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"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Hmmmm....Isn't that the service pack that introduced the "you agree to let us do pretty much whatever the heck we want to your computer" clause in the EULA?
Is MS planning to "leverage" the still-existing popularity of their Office software to push upgrades to "controlled" versions of their OS?
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
I'd venture to say that the majority of MS users have to use it, either for work or because that's what came on the PC when the shiny box was opened.
Most people are used to MS products, ranging from Word to PowerPoint to other programs that are business-specific but only run on Windows platforms. Because these people don't really have a say in what they run, they just use the stuff they're used to.
Similarly, businesses which run MS products on Windows boxes aren't going to suddenly switch to, say, Linux platforms just because. That would cost a lot of money in training all the employees. Also, some programs they used to use (I know of several small business-accounting programs and chemical drawing programs) are not available for non-Windows machines.
Costs run businesses. Habits run costs.
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." -- Albert Einstein
So why is it that I don't see an example of either coming form Microsoft customers? Many people have already made a good point: that working thru your rep would be the first step, but what happens when said rep isn't working for you, or isn't serving you as well as could be because of company mandated policies?
Please do not discount this question because there seems to be an obvious answer when you look at the extremes. Everyone with a clue can figure that bit out. It's legitimate criticism that concerns me. Microsoft is deserving of a lot of it, yet aside from places like Slashdot (and other, more extreme sites), it's rarely given.