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MS Tweaks Ill-Received Licensing Plan
ahooton writes "C|Net is
reporting that
Microsoft has updated it's
Software Assurance licensing program. The company has admitted that it's initial approach angered a large number of customers. No huge difference in pricing or terms -- changes are comprised of bundling some training and support. The one interesting concession is that corporate licensees of Microsoft Office can now use that suite on a home computer as well." What a concession. (Paddo points to this similar article on Australian IT via News.com.au.)
I think linux might be getting on their nerves. See a little competition does work.
I didn't use the preview button, so get over it!!!!
Mike
Microsoft seems to be getting the picture. While it looks like they are making just a couple of strategic concessions to try to maintain their stranglehold on the market. However, I don't think that they can stem the tide so easily. Eventually, they will have to make concessions to just about everyone -- i.e., they have to reduce their price pretty much across the board, because the market, having real competition, won't sustain their artificially high prices anymore (how do you think they got their $40 billion, not to mention Gates' 40?).
a lot of the reason that firms stick with ms is the huge cost associated with moving away from ms and retraining your whole staff
if you already have loads resources using windows and office and moving them to linux and teaching all you staff to use it takes time. i feel it is worth it in the long run though. a school district here (canada) did started that migration a few years ago and there was a huge fight at first and still is (i know teachers and many don't like it) but people are learning to use it and the district is saving major coin
ms is just trying to prevent firms from realizing that savings
"Maybe this world is another planet's hell"
Aldous Huxley
Borland used to have a 'like a book' license for their compilers. The rule was that you could have the compiler on as many machines as you liked, but 'like a book' it could only be 'read' on one machine at a time. It made a lot of sense, particularly with developers who might do tweaking and debugging on multiple target machines.
My boss asked me to take home some work that was all compiled in various Word, Excel, and whatever that PDF-like Microsoft format is (Visio I think). I lied and said that I only have Linux installed at home and use Star Office (which is 2/3 true). He asked me how I could afford to pay for a Unix workstation and not Windows, which he thought was "free" with each PC. When I showed him Redhat.com and explained what Linux was to him, he was truly puzzled. He had no idea that there were any other operating systems other then Windows, Unix, and Apple/Mac. This is coming from a guy that has been in a management position within a rather large tech company for 6 years.
From the article:
I love this sh*t. Here we have an open confession that 'we want to do a great job communicating that'. This is great proof that the only serious change is that microsoft is goining to add an 'added value' and then ramp up it's PR engine, something they are very skilled at doing. I can only hope their PR failure with this matches the PR failure of .NET, where by nobody has any idea what the f*ck is going on.
Microsoft and the other huge software companies have a real problem on their hands - they sell nothing. They sell air. Apple has an interesting twist - they sell user experience. We can't pick these things up with our hands and feel like we have something. And really, though a spreadsheet or word processor enables us to potentially work faster and easier, there's nothing special under the hood. Mmmaybe compatability from program to program is a plus with one package, but let's face it. The program is being marketed like it does the work all by itself, when it's just a tool, a very expensive tool that has no material value.
Everything common should be open source and free. The OS first, then programming languages, then communication tools, then office tools, etc. A strict licensing program for any of these is laughable and backward, unless it's truly innovative and unique. MS Word? Excel? Please.
People love to blame piracy for lost sales. I call it comeuppance. It's like living in a world in which we have to buy air, being charged too much, and stealing air so as to not die. Company X didn't invent the stuff; they just exploit it. Common computer programs should be treating as air, owned by all. But, of course, one day someone will own the air too, and we'll be here arguing whether the air thieves are pirates.
IIRC (which may not be the case since I was young when I read an old,and short EULA), not only were you permitted to transfer software to another machine after uninstalling it, but also included a provision for installing software on one desktop and one laptop if both were owned by the same person. I suppose back in the 386 days a laptop wasn't considered as much a computer as it is today and needed an accompaning desktop.
$cat
...of Johnny Cochran in the South Park episode where he's talking to the jury and then pulls out a monkey?
"Look at the monkey. See the monkey? Look at the monkey."
None of this addresses any of the things that people really had a problem with regarding their licensing scheme. None of this is going to make a bit of difference to our shop. We're getting open source alternatives lined up and mapping out our "Escape from Redmond" plan with the idea of getting it done by the end of 2003. This simply couldn't be less relevant to us.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
1. Besides packages like MySQL and Open Office that are dual-use meaning can be used in the home, name me five "business" open source packages out there? Better yet name me this elusive "strong open source CRM."
Um. OK, so there hasn't been a drive to do this type of open source work, granted, and the original claims were too strong. But what's wrong with companys teaming up, paying some developers to get a good open source package eveyone can use, and then they can all go back to living life without worrying about license audits. Just because the software isn't out there right now doesn't mean that it wouldn't be worth creating it.
P.S. - My undergrad university switched to peoplesoft, and it was a nightmare. I don't know why everyone raves about it - our experience was uniformly bad. Nor are we the only college to experience problems. Their web interface, which was suppoed to be a big improvement, was a piece of crap - one of the worst interfaces I have ever seen. The cost of the system was staggering for all the colleges involved. Now why didn't they hire some open source coders, do things the open academic way and develop a system themselves that wouldn't cost so much and suck so bad? For most universities, postgresql and php will do the job cleanly, simply, and successfully. Certainly a hundred times better than that joke we had. It wasn't just the student interface either - the teachers had issues with it too. Schools need to stop thinking like businesses - a home made solution here would have been many times better. Heck, they could have made senior design projects around designing interfaces, APIs and components. Imagine the advertising a CS department could get by saying "our school runs on a system developed by our students!" Then, when the universities have ironed out the kinks, businesses can start to take a look at it. I know this is a "how it should work" rather than a "how it does work" but blast it, someone's got to dream the dream. Business in the modern world has some very serious shortcomings, and I wish the schools would try to fill in the gaps rather than emulate the business mindframe.
Hmm, the single-user license for Office (excluding OEM) already allows the use of two simultaneous copies of Office on separate computers, one for his workstation and another for his personal-use computer (e.g. laptop).
Apparently, licensing in bulk used to remove that right, and now they're putting it back in. In effect, they're simply shifting the favor back to its original, equitable state.
At least MS is getting a clue.
Pet peeve: Profane people propagating perfunctory pedantry.
"Large companies end up paying tons in license fees for a plethora of different software products that fit individual needs. They could instead find a few open source products and pay the salaries of a few programmers to customize them to their needs, or outright integrate them."
From my experience in IT, trying to change anything based on rational arguments of cost efficiency are useless. Microsoft solutions are "good enough" no matter how kludgy, no matter how balky, no matter how expensive. Management won't change anything until it all blows up in their faces, and then they'll blame their underlings for not preventing the inevitable consequences of their own chain of decisions.
--Fesh
Kill -9 'em all, let root@localhost sort 'em out.
Corporate customers finally being able to legally use MS Office at home is a great development. Now employees can use the software they are used to using both at work and at home, instead of having to use some crappy MS Works or rip-off Openoffice.
Diabolicalness? Diabolicism, perhaps. Diabolicity?
[fx: checks dictionary]
Ah. Diabolism. Or even diablerie. Easy once you know, innit?!
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