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Details of Linux-in-Munich Deal Revealed
An anonymous reader writes "USA Today is running a piece about the lengths which Microsoft went to in order not to lose the government of Munich's account to a Linux-based proposal from SuSE. Interesting to see how these types of contracts are structured, and just what Microsoft is willing to give up to prevent losing to Linux."
Nice writeup (w/ movie) here.
Share and enjoy!
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
Actually, if you read the article (What? on Slashdot?!?) you'll see that Microsoft's final offer didn't come in soon enough to be reviewed by the Munich Council's tech/contract experts, and that they didn't take the offer seriously.
I like you, Stuart. You're not like everyone else, here, at Slashdot.
Yes, linux distros (e.g., SuSE and RedHat) will support their products for a long time, if you're willing to pay for it. This is good news for their business models.
The bad news for us hobbyists is that, to encourage companies to buy support contracts, these same distros have greatly shortened the support lifespan of non-enterprise products (e.g., Redhat 9).
ummm, actually even before MS started their discounting, the linux solution was more expensive - blows you're theory out of the water
the reason why linux was chosen over MS was because MS' approach was viewed as being somewhat deceptive, and because linux wouldn't leave them in a lock-in situation years down the road
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
The decision was based on a study made by a consulting firm in which the upgrade solution to winxp was cheaper than a pure linux solution on the time base of 5 years ! In the longer run the study claims that linux is cheaper than m$. also a solution with vmware was compared which was the cheapest of all ! The study claimed that for the pure linux solution they would have to buy a lot of new peripherials (card readers, printer etc) which makes the linux solution more expensive. a big problem for the winxp solution was that they would have to buy a lot of new hardware (new processors, more ram) which they wouldnt have to using linux. a short version of the study is available online:2 7.06.03-0 03/e _kurz.p df
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/anw-
(sorry in german, use the fish)
the study is here:
http://www.muenchen.de/aktuell/clientstudi
Or rather a local economy member. It's nothing to do with anti-US feelings but rather keep the money rolling under the same GNP umbrella.
Mi domando chi à il mandante di tutte le cazzate che faccio - Altan
Umm they are probably paying for the cost of support and rolling over all their machines (14,000 I think).
Major IT purchasers like to have someone they can rely on for support so they pay for it. The other cost would be the storage and distribution costs allowed under the GPL.
A great deal of that price is most likely for the cost of installation, training and support for Linux, not the OS itself. It takes an enormous amount of work to roll out a new OS to 14,000 machines. Then train the people how to go about their daily work on the new OS, and to set up the support for all the users.
Amongst others, this is one of the reasons why the study commissioned proposed a solution that comprises Linux, OOo and VMWare.
What the hell is this myth that some magic switch gets thrown that makes all of your computers stop working, forcing you to put a new version on? Don't want the new version? Keep using the old one!
.Net sucks. If I had to go back to writing OLE code today I rather shoot myself. Though at the time, OLE was lightyears better than doing it all by hand.
The progression from OLE->COM/DCOM->.Net wasn't done to turn everyone's world upside down. Rather, OLE compared to COM sucks. And COM compared to
Yet, scary thing is, OLE apps still work, COM apps still work. Gee, what a shock. What EVER were they thinking. If you don't like the new stuff (or there isn't any benefit to using the new stuff), don't use it. If you think you can do your old stuff better using the new stuff, use it.
Also, as a side note, COM was not a replacement for ActiveX, and DCOM is not a replacement for COM. ActiveX is based on COM, and is a way to write reusable GUI controls. COM is a technology to allow one component to talk to talk to another component (invoke methods with parameters, get results) in a completely different process space. DCOM is a way to allow one component to talk to another component on a different MACHINE (DCOM is basically an COM->RPC wrapper).
This comprises technology and its economic/social
implications.
Moreover, Lochner-Fischer (the candidate who had
printed the poster) actually has been a C application
programmer, so she understands the issue and her
stance in this is credible (I also saw her personally).
For bipartisan balance:
Former Fortran programmer posing with Jon Maddog Hall, also a good thing.
And that doesn't even get into compatibility issues....
Sig:Why copyright isn't a fundamental human right
Since when did IBM became a German company? Think before you speak. The deal is done by IBM & SuSE an American gaint and a German upstart.