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Windows Cheaper When Studied by MSFT Analysts
richdun writes "Here is a study done by an independent research firm which claims that under certain circumstances, it is cheaper to develop applications and enterprise solutions for Windows than for Linux. They cite costs from more education, time developing, etc. Of course, the story is quick to state that the whole study was funded and commissioned by our favorite Redmond, WA based software giant. "
Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeh!
Windows will NEVER be cheaper than Linux or FreeBSD.
-uso.
Dreams, dreams, don't doubt dreams, dreaming children's dreaming dreams. Sailor Moon SS
It is included in the price of your new computer and it is already set up, configured, etc. All that takes time, which equals money.
SCO charges apply...
(from the article:)
The study compared applications built to run over the Internet on Microsoft's
That speaks volumes: the study is aiming at J2EE and Sun. Granted these are the "certain circumstances" mentioned but MS is taking direct aim at its diminishing server market share with this. They know the desktop is still pretty much a lock-in for the time being.
Here's a clue: don't trust studies. They are generally paid for by people with agendas.
Trolling is a art,
how come when MS sponsors a comparison, and the results favor their OS and/or software over linux, it's just GOT to be a big conspiracy? Why doesn't the same criticism hold true for the supposedly "unbiased" comparisons that are done by linux-friendly companies like IBM and Red Hat?
Oh wait, i forgot...this is slashdot.
You may make less money selling Linux apps, at least at the moment..
"You lied to me! There is a Swansea!"
... when Micosoft is donating millions of $$$ to your organisation to keep you from going to the side of the horned goat ;-).
Sometimes it's not a matter of "It's FREE!!!" but that it costs less to maintain/develop it because everyone is already familiar with Windows.
That's not saying, though, that Windows is always cheaper or a better solution. With more development, Linux will become more well-known and easier to develop/use.
the worst news I've come across ever, "Windows Cheaper When Studied by MSFT Analysts" No shit, and guess what if it was Linux studied by a IBM Analysts it would say Linux Cheaper When Studied by Linux Analysts.
Favorite... You must mean Veritas, since /.'ers are irony impaired.
Who is our favorite Redmond, WA based software giant again and will they be our favourite all week or just until the next security alert?
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
"The study compared applications built to run over the Internet on Microsoft's .NET platform to applications developed with J2EE, a development platform backed by Sun Microsystems Inc. (Nasdaq:SUNW - news) favored by the Linux community. "
.NET to J2EE development and called it a comparison between Windows and Linux?
.NET didn't run on Linux!
So, they compared
"favored by the Linux community"? Last time I checked,
Why do I h8 apple?
Although I'm not a Windows fan, I actually could believe this, until I read this part:
"Last December, Microsoft released a study that showed that Windows-based servers were cheaper to run than those on Linux in four out of five common server tasks."
You just got to love studies funded by non-biased companies!
"The world's largest software maker, which is facing increased competition from Linux -- the open-source software standard that can be copied and modified freely -- hired Giga Research, which found that licensing, associated software, maintenance, labor, and training was 25 percent to 28 percent cheaper on Windows for certain types of applications."
and
"Last December, Microsoft released a study that showed that Windows-based servers were cheaper to run than those on Linux in four out of five common server tasks."
how can anyone trust crap like this? WHAT TYPE OF APPLICATIONS? WHAT SERVER TASKS?
Did we expect them to say that buying Windows was a horrible decision and that their product was bunk?
Hey! Let's go and browse Microsoft marketing materials! I'd bet they've got LOADS of good stuff to talk about.
Analysts don't bite the hand that feeds them
An independant firm carrying out a survey funded by M$. Is this a new version of "independant"?
A woman who recently had a baby claimed that her child was the cutest one on the planet!
How can a software solution that costs money and requires fees be cheaper than a software solution that's freely downloadable, totally supported by 1000s of people, 100s of books written about it and the essence of it is taught in basic CS courses?
Perhaps the questions are answered if I were to RTFA...
"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." - John Lennon.
If you're talking RAD development then I am willing to accept that development may indeed be cheaper on Windows than Linux. There are RAD tools such as Kylix available but choice is limited.
If we're talking traditional development methods than I'd bet that Linux is faster. POSIX is a signigicantly smaller and simpliar API than Windows, and you have a choice of languages and toolkits which you can mix & match to suit your development process.
Am I the only one who read this in the mysterious future and thought the "See any serious problems with this story?" line was funny?
It was me, I did it, I moved your cheese
.NET works on Linux too with Mono. Why not compare Mono/Linux to .NET/Windows so we wont compare apples and oranges.
Never learn by your mistakes, if you do you may never dare to try again
What could I say? When you're right, you're right!
;-)
There are 10 kinds of people; those who know ternary, those who don't, and those now hunting for a dictionary.
While I agree with previous posts that Linux is cheaper than Windows in just about every respect, I'm glad that his article touches on something.
With the current development tools available for Windows, as well as all third-party utilities/db drivers/etc, development on Windows goes by much quicker.
I'm not talking about little apps that could be banged out as a perl script in a few minutes, but more robust applications that companies need internally.
However, this is just for the present. If/when more people adopt Linux as desktops then more people will learn how to develop for it and more/better tools will become available. Say what you will about Visual Studio, but the recent incarnations work exceptionally well, and they have a large user base. If we could see 1 or 2 similar development IDE's for linux that are HIGHLY ADOPTED (I know there are some nice ones out there, but the use-rate is still rather low), then things could change.
it states
Despite the difference in costs, however, the Forrester report also noted that "many organizations will adopt Linux instead of Microsoft's alternative" because of the expertise they have built up on the Unix platform, Sun's proprietary operating systems used to run computer server networks.
Unix, Sun's proprietary operating system ??
computer server networks ??
Come on.
$ strings FTP.EXE | grep Copyright
@(#) Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California.
The Yahoo article doesn't link to it; without seeing the details I'm hesitant to fully swallow any synopsis.
I don't find it unbelievable that some tasks are less expensive to produce under MS products than under Linux, but unless the report indicates other reasons, I'm inclined to believe the difference is due to the trained user-base.
The article does say they interviewed twelve firms (hardly a statistically significant amount), seven of which use Windows & five of which use *nix. I'd be curious to know the sizes of the firms involved and the level of training of the personnel in each of them.
In other words, my question is: Is all else equal? I suspect not.
Allegedly real newspaper headline from 1998:
Man Struck by Lightning Faces Battery Charge
When analysing the cost differences of Windows and Linux, the main advantage to windows always seems to be that little to no training is required, while on the other hand, Linux requires lots of training, with Expensive Admins. However, In the long term, if many companies and schools started using Linux, these cost would come down, as many more people would have experience and require less training. Also the number of qualified people would increase, making the salaries of qualified Linux admins go down.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
There needs to be an organization that establishes a set of standards about how these kinds of comparisons are made with a detailed list of what needs to be disclosed in the report. Similar to how TPC defines what has to be disclosed for a benchmark to be valid. It's about time the industry come up with a solid set of standards on how these things are measured.
... in the beginning, since the linux sourcebase is huuuuuuuge, and imho it is easier to use just a few predefined interfaces that to understand the code and to actually interface with it. but in the end, i think linux si more desireable for
a. they don't switch interfaces and so on a routine basis, linux evolves but largely keeps its backward compability, whereas microsoft sometimes changed their interfaces at will and even dropped support for them
and
b. it is better to understand the whole foundation you build on (or the part of the foundation) instead of blindly trusting foreign interfaces.
isn't that the main reason so many security bugs are found in windows applications? how can i program a secure app when i don't know what the underlying classes do (i don't get to see their source). What do you think of that?
".Sig Stealer" was here
J2EE development is slow and cumbersome and it is no suprise to me that .NET whatever that is beat the pants off of it for development efficiency. But considering that the .NET stuff will not run on anything other than windows it is a dead end road. Now do the same study using php against .NET and the tables get tipped drastically.
Got Code?
Who would have thought?
Has anyone seen the report?
I'd like to know what the 12 projects were that were being compared to
see if the comparisons make sense.
Is there any chance at all that this is an actual apples to apples
comparison?
*sigh* back to work...
When using the Q-Toolkit. The commerical licence costs $1,500 per developer. Multiply that by a team of 20 developers and thats $30,000! Thats enough money to employ at least another 3 developers. The GTK+ toolkit may be cheaper, but it lacks a lot of features such as the C++ superset that Qt uses and the lack of the more powerful widgets such as Databases, Advanced File selection dialogs. So you have a choice, you either pay through the nose for the Qtoolkit, Use the less advanced GTK+, or write your own, which will be more expensive anyway.
Ok, let's assume that within this select subset of applications, developing for Windows is 25-28% cheaper than for Linux per application. There's also the underlying operating system to consider. Windows, for whatever reason -- inherent security flaws or merely higher visibility / threat risk, I don't care -- is more likely to be attacked and infected by worms and viruses. As a result, the cost of maintaining applications and the operating system is higher. I'm fairly certain such a cost isn't factored into the study, and I'm fairly certain it's a considerable amount -- trying to keep things secured in my company's 250-user environment is hard enough.
A baised study by a company being critiqued by a biased "news" site with an agenda.
Yeah, news for zealots. Stuff that doesn't matter.
Like it or not image accounts for a large part of public perception. In order to shape the public's perception studies such as this are used.
Why don't commercial Linux companies do studies like this, albeit not quite as inherently biased? Hire some folks that do statistics, do some studies, publish and publisize them.
Why not? It probably doesn't cost much and will continue to help shape the public perception of OSS and Linux.
Who do you think funded the studies that say that chocolate is healthy? M&M Mars, of course - they've got deep pockets and can gain from the results. While it's possible they influenced the findings, it's also likely they were the only people who would fund such a project.
Privately-funded research comes from those who have something at stake. It can taint a paper, but it can also be groundbreaking. Wait until a major discovered paid for by an involved party has been verified by someone else before you believe or disbelieve it.
GL
If you consider the productivity gained by using an IDE such as Visual Studio .NET 2003.
You have intellesense statement completion, automatic code formatting and highlighting, and intelligent help that will pull full documentation on any statement you are typing with one click.
You also benefit from languages like VB.NET and C#, which are very high level and make it easy to write conceptually clear and error-free code.
It makes it possible to become comfortable with a new object model without having to flip though documentation or constantly search the web. You'd be surprised how fast and simple it is to create relatively sophisticated apps that perform pretty darn well.
Amazing magic tricks
This article really has nothing to do with Linux. It's about J2EE vs. .NET. No surprise that J2EE is expensive. The best Java developers on Linux use much better tools than J2EE and EJBs. A good open source stack with Struts, Velocity, and Hibernate will beat the stuffing out of straight J2EE for productivity. Of course there is also the fact that lots of web development on Linux is done in much more productive languages, like Perl, Python, and PHP. Amazon and Yahoo (on FreeBSD) do it, so it's probably good enough for your lame little site too.
the moment i saw the study was funded by MS.
So if the study is funded by MS it's hardly an "indepent research firm" as the writeup indicates. I like that way of thinking. I'm going to start a non-profit organization, but the donations that I receive are going straight into my pocket.
Not the same article but there is a mention of that one inside the new article but does not give a direct link.
I know I'll get modded down for saying anything positive about MS but here goes:
.NET is infact an even fresher page, intedned form the start to be an internet enabled approach to the net that embraces many different languages as well, including the java reduc C#.
It's not absolutely damning that MS paid for the study. After all who else would pay. But of course the study would not have been released if it were not positive for MS. Still neither of these makes neccessarily untrue or biased.
And its not unreasonable to believe it could be true. MS does make good development tools. And even just a few days ago there was a slashdot post lamenting the sad state of Java. It really could use a third re-do to streamiline it to a sensible coherent set. After all JAVA or as it was called "OAK" was developed to be an embedded OS for appliances. It of course became much more. And it its underlying fundmentlas and syntax were a much needed re-write of C++ (no damn *pointers and &other crap, garbage collection, better OO tools at a lower level).
MS visula studio series may noit be the best tools but they are good tools and present a multi-language interface to programming.
Finally, it is quite obvious that stupid people find it easier to program in Windows. This is not true on linux. Linux requires knowing a lot of intricate details and knowledge of unstable APIs written by other people and not maintained in a consistent or even perfectly protable format.
Poor penniless linux users? The magical fairies of operating system total cost of ownership comparison?
My study, funded by me, has shown that Windows is the most expensive to maintain (patch, patch, reboot, patch, reboot) and use.
:). Amazing that IT isn't running around chasing their tails with these new systems like they do with the Windows boxes. Help desk calls for the operating system causing another stupid error and confusing the end user have dropped off. It's more than obvious that those users without Windows have increased productivity. Amazing.
Thank you Microsoft: for security reasons it was determined here that at NO TIME will _any_ operating system gain 100% penetration to the desktops. The datacenter already runs a mix of Linux, BSD, and Netware...
Since the changes started we've rolled Linux out to some people and OS X to others (OS X is my preferred GUI of choice
Microsoft chairman and chief software architect Bill Gates gave the following comments. "Because the chances of Spontanious Human Combustion are so much higher, for non-Microsoft users, we feel that it our moral obligation to rid the earth of every other technology but our own."
In other news, a recent study paid for by a slashdot moderator has shown that CmdrTaco has the lead in the current presidential race......
Stop the Slashdot effect! Don't read the articles!
"Here is a study done by an independent research firm which claims that under certain circumstances, it is cheaper to develop applications and enterprise solutions for Windows than for Linux."
I had to go back and read this. What do you suppose are the certain cirucumstances? Is it when you have a room full of developers all clinging onto their copy of Visual Studio and sitting in front of a linux box?
I wish they had elaborated on this somewhat. I've been seriously trying to figure out for the last few minutes how I could develop cheaper on Windows and I cannot come up with one idea!
(if you don't get it, search Slashdot for it)
Cheaper (price) isn't always the biggest benefit either. However, I think it is safe to say that Windows will never be "more free" than Linux.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
My initial instinct was that this was a combination of "absurd" and "special case so specific it's mostly useless". But then I started to think of a Slashdot thread from just a few weeks ago about the big worms that started recently...
The thread discussed how much cheaper it was to hire just any person and have [him|her] maintain the "Windows Server". Of course, an affordable admin in many small business cases would be unable to keep such a server patched well enough to fend off all the attacks and the machine would be compromised. The thread continued to say that if you compare a competant Windows admin with a competant *nix admin, not only are the costs similar but so is the security-- but you could have a Windows box up, running and making money with an incompetant admin.
No offense is intended, by the way, in calling such a person an incompetant admin, just that many small businesses can afford neither a service contract nor a full time "real admin", so someone who does not specialize in such tasks part-times it. This is a rare situation with *nix, where the barrier to entry of a steep learning curve usually causes entry admins to be better than Windows (I have no real evidence to back up this assertion, only personal observation). The theory is that a small business can't afford to keep 100% uptime, but can afford to go down for 12-24 hours.
This makes me wonder about programming on Windows in a general case. I can understand how someone can develop a Visual Basic program for cheaper than a C (or whatever) equivalent on Linux. Instead of comparing .NET to J2EE, as the article does, I'd be interested in seeing a problem solved by a beginning application developer in Windows (would (s)he choose Visual Basic?), another in Linux (C/C++ plus GTK or similar?), and then someone experienced on the two platforms solve the same problem and find out where the added costs present benefits. Can we tell the difference in benefits between the two skilled solutions or the two unskilled solutions? What benefits are gained by keeping one platform but redeveloping with a skilled developer?
OK -
.NET is a kick-ass development environment. Even the older non-.NET edition is a lot better than most dev tools out there. Sure, it's pretty expensive - but say you're paying programmers $40/hour (ignore benefits, etc) - the fact you just spent $1200 on a development environment is no big deal: less than a 40 hour week of paying said programmer. And, I'm willing to bet he'll save a lot more than a week of effort by using a better tool.
First, RTFA. It talks about _developing_ applications. It wouldn't really suprise me if it were cheaper to develop applications on Windows.
Visual Studio
Say what you will about the quality of MS, and how buggy/bloated their software is. It seems to work well enough for a bunch of people out there. Their developer programs are excelent (maybe they need to be to cover up their crappy underpinnings).
In the open source area you might be able to download some open source code, and cobble a system together to do what you want... But I think I remember reading a statistic that said something like 85% of all software written is custom, internal, business software. So you might have a tough time finding something that solves your problem exactly... But since it's open source you can modify it to fit - sometimes; sometimes it's more trouble than it's worth.
With things like Eclipse for Java development in the open source arena the gap should close up in that area too (dev tools) - but don't kid yourself; we've still got a long ways to go.
The link you posted is to a completely different study covering something completely different: cost of administration.
.Net rather than Windows vs. Linux. You don't need a lot of OS-specific knowledge to write software in either environment, as long as you know the environment (though, of course, you need to make sure you don't use platform-specific extensions).
The study in this article is about cost of development of web-based applications.
Frankly, I don't think Linux factors into this study much, since the major cost differences cited are mostly related to J2EE vs
-PainKilleR-[CE]
The comparison was, as many already ponted out between .NET and J2EE, and then we have this quote from the article:
.NET development, but that J2EE is expensive is without a doubt. Long time to develop, and all those licensed experts that costs a ton. I wouldn't be surprised if MS has better tools too - for those that are used to them. Hate em myself.
.NET might hinder you from piss away as much money as J2EE would, the real question is why anybody would use either? Why don't use something that works, is fast to develop and run, and doesn't need certified "experts" to do a great job? There are plenty of such tools oy there.
Forrester said that the main difference in cost was not due to price of the basic software, but rather the price of developing the software, including labor costs.
I don't know much about
So, that choosing
A study commissioned in Detroit announced that American cars are better than Japanese cars.
I find the terminology
"Microsoft's alternative"
rather amusing...
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
From my past few years, I've found that RedHat and SuSe are much easier to maintain than the MS offerings, and installation seems easier and faster. Debian and OS X still lead on ease of maintenance.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Yeah, may be Windows more cheaper than linux in developing game (coz not all graphic card well supported by linux yet), but not in enterprise level. therefore comparing J2EE and .NET is not fair at all ... we can develop J2EE both on linux and windows, and we can use same code ... then the development cost will be equal or less in Linux (you dont need to buy Linux server right ... or buy database 'coz we got PostGreSQL inside distros)
./me --G--
My new msft inspired sh*tty pick up line:
I just did a report on myself that says I'm really f*cking good in bed.
Now sleep with me.
-n-
because of the expertise they have built up on the Unix (news - web sites) platform, Sun's proprietary operating systems used to run computer server networks.
So UNIX belongs to Sun now? Hmmm... I think Darl's gonna have something to say about this...
IANAP, but I can tell you for server apps, M$ crap sucks (it may be easier to get working, but working well (read: fast, reliable, AND secure) forget it.)
M$ general purpose workgroup server (file, printer, etc)(10 clients):
Windows Server 2003 (2000 svr comparitivly priced): $1,199
Hardware: $2,000 (rough figure, YMMV here, arbitrary)
That's $3,200 just for ten people to connect to your server (add to that the client boxen liscenses themselves, which are separate from Client Access Liscenses IIRC)
Linux:
Hardware: $2,000 (see above)
Software: $0.00
Per seat cost: $0.00
hmm, they're using some severely fscked up math.
Logistical Chaos Officer http://www.slagg.org - LAN Gaming in Sarasota FL,USA
In particular, I'd like to know where those applications were running. Did they allow communications only among systems running Windows? Were they for the LAN (an easier environment to program for and administer) or the Internet?
My first thought was how the hell VB fits into such a low level task, but re-reading the post I guess it doesn't. The rs232 bit is probably done by the component that lost them their day, which in turn will be a C++ COM component. VB then must be only the front-end.
There are probably more MS-trained people out there looking for jobs than Java or Linux experts. A PFY with an MCSE who knows a bit of Visual Basic and .NET will probably work for less than a bearded *nix guru.
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
Well, true, Windows can be cheaper to use than Linux. Imagine getting the electricity bills for a Linux server running several months as opposed to a Windows machine running on a desktop. Of course I have to compare these two situations, considering that MS has 95% on the desktop and Linux has 95% on the server (numbers bloated to show my lack of mathematical skills and unending bias). I'm sorry what was the study about again? Electricity conservation right? Or something.
Windows is a much better OS than Linux/FreeBSD/JomommaOS because it costs money!
Go Windows!
[/troll]
I don't think the report took into account time taken to recover a system that got own3d because of poor security.
99% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
SPAM solution made easy: 1 spammer, 5 cords of rope, 5 hourses, and fireworks. Be creative.
Oh sorry, I didn't sleep too well last night. I only read the original author saying "scale is tipped drastically" but didn't realize that he didn't specify the direction...
Antti S. Brax - Old school - http://www.iki.fi/asb/
One could also say that it compares native Windows and J2EE, but Java is by no means a native system to Linux, which is to say that this is like comparing apples with oranges.
Having supported a largish J2EE application, I can tell that the it's equally awful platform, whether it runs on Windows or UNIX. I'd suggest that if one compared J2EE on Windows to J2EE on UNIX, UNIX would probably win.
Software should be free as in speech, but if we also get some free beer, all the better.
But what about the whole TCO?
:-)
you've got to pay real money for the end server software, the SQL-server and all the really big latest fancy hardware to run it on a cluster (ok so the hardware might not need to be bleeding edge anymore).
You need lots of admins who need to pass their little exams and of course a company car for the remote admin
When you can all this for 1/2 the people costs with a *nix, never mind the s/w costs if you go for a free-nix.
Of course should you wish to goto big iron (SUN/IBM/HP and Oracle/DB2) alot of the skills are transferable.
Just a thought
If you don't like the biased article, why post it Taco?
-1 Flamebait for you.
Of course noone bats an eye when sweet-as-honey Apple starts spewing bullshit about how their computers are "faster than light".
BTW, I agree with the studies findings, if only for the fact that you dont have to choose between 900,000 incomplete and partially functional APIs and libraries, and research moronic licensing terms. Hippies should be planting flowers and chasing rainbows, not writing software licenses.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
We should be aware by now that any company can manufacture a TCO, even those behind Linux. The only valuable TCO is the one that your company produces and uses to make its decisions.
scott
DOES NOT COMPUTER.... DOES NOT COMPUTER.... DANGER!!!
So paying a VB script kiddie to make something shiny costs less than getting a java guru to make something that works? wow!
I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
Of course the Netcraft study shows that
only Microsoft can afford the more EXPENSIVE
Linux based server caching (Akamai)
http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph/?host=www.mic
"...a study done by an independent research firm...funded and commissioned by Microsoft..."
You keep on using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means...
Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.
Why is this even up for discussion? Why are we even discussing a clearly bogus study? Why does the media even cover these things? I feel like commissioning a study to study bogus studies like this. Why did I waste my time posting this?
"And I for one welcome our new insect overlords."
you -can- compete with free.
and you can -win-.
concentrate on arguing tco or stability/security. but please give up the sticker price rhetoric.
even when independent researchers take the measurements - the price of the box isn't the deciding factor to the business user.
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
Of course, the story is quick to state that the whole study was funded and commissioned by our favorite Redmond, WA based software giant." Uh... You sound like its a bad thing they pointed this out? The whole /. community would be up-in-arms if they didn't point it out right off the bat.
While true that there is possible bias because Microsoft performed the study, it does not mean there was definite bias.
And no, it's not the one you think.
There's a typical behavior to dismiss any research funded by someone who COULD have a bias. The only problem is, the truly unbiased people don't have an interest in the research!
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
Of course, the story is quick to state that the whole study was funded and commissioned by our favorite Redmond, WA based software giant.
That's what we call "ethics." It would have been unethical Microsoft to use a study that they funded without revealing that they funded it.
They didn't include the cost of upgrading and patching for every .Net, VB and Microsoft library you use, which will have an average of one root level security hole found per month. That raises the cost of MS development.
By the way, I've never written a program that costed me a cent.
Slashdot Syndrome: the sudden, extreme urge to correct someone in order to validate one's self.
I've coded a lot for major global 1000 corporations on Sun platforms. Enterprise for a printing environment of over 1000 high-volume printers using a variety of input systems and databases. Time to code and debug was about 2 weeks. A network management solution for another global enterprise - about a month. An X11 application utilizing everything from vax to commodores running a nation-wide application - about 9 man months. I wouldn't even try to do projects of this magnitude on a windoze environment. Use the right tool for the job.
Banjo - The more I know about Windoze, the more I love *nix
No, not the 'study' in question, but 'Tainted Truth: The manipulation of truth in America' by Cynthia Crossen, available on Amazon, ISBN 0684815567. It may seem obvious to some Slashdot readers to take any studies funded by the organisation that they favour with a pinch of salt. But it's still an excellent book about a variety of studies and how they were skewed in the favour of the organisation funded them yet somehow got press attention. Definitely worth reading.
I just finished school and by the time I left almost all of the computer science classes were using linux (red hat to be specific) all the electrical engineering classes were using hpux and linux (debian --old debian) all the programs we made were designed to run on *nix. That implies the cost of educating people to develop on *nix is dropping dramatically.
There is also a large microsoft group called dev hood. They give away free msft products so there is large support for it. But the actuall classes that require msft are all those with minor programming. Most of them use VB.
Can you ping me now?... Good!
It's really .Net vs. J2EE. I'm not sure that .Net is cheaper to develop on than J2EE, but I am sure that there are less expensive ways to engineer software than J2EE. If price is the critical factor (which it must be, since it's the only actual information in the press release) you'd think that they'd compare to PHP/MySQL.
.Net? Did they choose projects that weren't deployed on a large scale in order to minimize the per-server costs of .Net/NT (which are extremely high)? Depending on the details, the report may really be saying '.Net Server and SQL Server is cheaper than WebLogic and Oracle', which really has nothing to do with Windows or Linux.
The lack of details makes me suspicions. Did they choose projects based on very expensive application servers and databases, rather than free alternatives, in order to offset the cost of Windows and
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
I'm sure if a study came out by [favorite open source entity] citing the same general claim about Linux and open source developement, /. would have no questions, only praise. So each camp brings its own version/view of the evidence to the table - nothing new about that.
The point being, these studies are generic (at best) - every application, developement team, and environment is different. Some individuals will naturally take more time with certain elements than others (thus, they might be percieved to cost more). Some applications will be made better than others - and it's hard to put that into numbers exactly.
Sometimes there is a viable and cost-saving commerical solution.
High level training for all, and noone but M$ can fix deeper problems. Proprietary OS and noone but M$ can fix OS problems.
This is great news for M$ and their support division, but is a big red flag to companies. Why would anyone put their company in a future of unfixable bugs and support/training subscription debt for cheaper programmers. Use your own OS, software, and "qualified" programmers, and you will have a product/service that will make money. Don't feed the Empire!!!
M$ is killing the education given to our young by lowering the percieved level needed by anyone to advance computer technology. All have to spend more after schooling for M$ specific low-level training once computers "can be used/programmed by anyone". Even new M$ employees will need to blow more than they do on their cars just to get a support job with M$.
Now that's one I would like to see!
While arguing about all of this it might be well to keep in mind that UNIX code has been in court once before.
s ui t.html
When USL(AT&T) sued BSDI their first step was to seek an injunction against the distribution of "their" code.
The judge refused this injunction, throwing out all complaints except those regarding a mere six files while offering the opinion that it was likely that AT&T held no propriatary rights to UNIX at all, since they had freely distributed, and allowed others to freely distribute, said code for over a decade. ( Bear in mind that copyright law was very different then).
Oh yeah, the judge also found that there had actually been stealing going on. AT&T had, in fact, been stealing code from BSD. Very embaressing.
AT&T, the agressor in the case, was then forced to apply to BSDI for a settlement on terms very favorable to them rather than procede and have it formaly adjudicated that they owned nothing.
http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/bsdi/bsdi
This is why BSD code is free, because it's likely that the code SCO claims such strong ownership of has little to no ownership at all, upon judicial review.
The cynic might come to the conclusion that this is the reason that the only actual suit SCO has filed so far is for contract violation, not copyright infringement, since filing such a suit might well result in a determination that SCO owns squat all.
You don't have an explicit contract with SCO?
Well, as my dear old granny used to say:
"Fuck 'em."
KFG
Supposing for a minute, the statistics were accurate..
What might be the deeper truth behind them? I think that the large number of MS developers relative to a smaller number of Linux/OSS developers is key here. With a smaller userbase, and a smaller developer base, costs will be higher, as the tools are slower to evolve, and there are not as many 'off the shelf' products in a stable state to support some types of rapid development. (Key phrase, SOME types of rapid development)
The more userbase Linux develops, the lower the costs and times for development. Tools will evolve faster, and the sheer numbers of folks who know what it means when 'lpt1 is on fire' will grow. Development costs will drop as the number of monkeys grows.
Linux isn't yet as mainstream "end userish" as MS. YET. Any advantage MS has now will slip as Linux gains market share. These statistics might be interesting in two years time. (I'm betting my business on it)
Not surprisingly, the article contained no statistics comparing reliability or uptimes and their associated costs. My uneducated guess: It probably costs many more man-hours to support MS based products. If you want a superior product, you develop in Linux. Yes, you will have to invent some wheels, and adapt many other people's (often poorly documented) wheels to your particular application, which may take more time.
Which brings us to the grain of salt:
Statistics are generally cited in such a way as to favor the citer.. after all, if they were not cited as such, why would they even be cited at all.
In my experience, initial development of Microsoft-centric solutions is often less expensive than Java or even OSS-based solutions. This is especially true for the one-off or "quick and dirty" stuff so prevalent in Microsoft-centric shops.
However, the initial cost savings are eaten dozens if not hundreds of times over by higher total lifecycle costs.
Basically, for every dollar we spend writing, say, a VB/IIS/MSSQL app, we spend dozens or hundreds of dollars maintaining it and rewriting it.
The comparable development using superior technologies does cost a bit more, mainly because you have to hire better developers - people who, for instance, know how to sort an array, without resorting to writing the rows to an invisible ListBox and then setting its .Sorted property to True (don't laugh - I've seen this seriously suggested multiple times, both on comp.lang.basic.visual.misc, and among people I've worked with).
But well-written Java and/or OSS apps stay written. They don't break over time due to DLL incompatibilities or the obsolescence or poor scalability of the toolset or a decision to move to another platform or the virus/worm/trojan of the week.
If it were up to me we would allow the use of M$ development tools only for the "quick and dirty" stuff - prototypes basically - and those would be absolutely unsupported by IT. Any production system requiring IT support would need to be based exclusively on open/Free protocols, standards, and products.
Nonaggression works!
And this when they have tried their hardest to make Linux as expensive as possible and Windows as cheap as possible.
Someone could problably show that Linux is several hundred percent cheaper under the right circumstances.
Therefore Linux supports terrorism.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Cigarettes are actually good for you! They've also been linked to hot monkey sex with supermodels and free bags of money. All those stories about cancer and premature aging have proven to be nothing but urban myth.
Study sponsored by Phillip Morris.
how come they never post cost breakdowns when they do these studies so we can see how they arrived at their results?
when a local university hired Sun Microsystems to do an evaluation on server consolidation. You'll never guess what they suggested. Buy an E15K. This was after the university had major failures with an already implemented E10K. FWIW, I think that suggestion is still being considered. Sun also suggested that the university switch to iPlanet for their LDAP directory. I still think that some people at the university thought that Sun might actually suggest another companies product.
-- Charles A. Plater
Sorry for the irrate comments. Bad day at work.
When I read a story like this I always think of Gomer Pyle's oft quoted statement:
"SUPRISE, SUPRISE, SUPRISE"
All OS's cost something to sustain. It is the cost of sustainment that is the important number. Licenses, support personnel, downtime, and other such things do add up. I've been involved with MS Window's based networks. The number of persons needed to provide support seems to be more. The difficulty in adding/updating software seems to cost more time (with MS OS's it must be done at a very off-schedule time since the system MUST be rebooted). Downtime from virii, worms, and program bugs/features due to the design of MS OS's seems to be more. I lost one days work due to the recent worms on MS even though I wasn't infected by them.
In general, after initial roll-out, Unix and like systems seem to require so much less support. And they are so much more remotely manageable.
If I had numbers I would use them. As an engineer subjective is not as good as objective in making a argument. But likewise butchered objective is worse than subjective.
"There are three kinds of lies: Lies, damned lies, and statistics" - Benjamin Disraeli, Lord Courtney, Samuel Clemens
What is the cost when your developers are interupted by worm and virus outbreaks? Is that considered in the study?
Telecommuting! What about socialization?
A few other insightful headlines:
Americans say that the United States is the best
Sony claims that PS2 beats X-Box anyday of the week
New York Times denies that media is biased
President Bush states that according to his sources war in Iraq is just
Like, geez... you can say anything is better or worse than anything these days... Too bad relativism hasn't caught on that much in the real world.
~ kjrose
MSFT is making similar claims in the embedded world. They funded a "study" (supposedly at www.embedded-forecast.com, but that link doesn't seem to go anywhere except to spit out %@LANGUAGE="VBSCRIPT" CODEPAGE="1252"%). A rebuttal of sorts was written by Editor-in-Chief of linuxdevices.com and windowsdevices.com at http://linuxdevices.com/articles/AT2156107754.html .
For medium-sized companies, costs for .NET-based applications totaled $661,012, compared with $881,445 for J2EE/Linux.
One has to question the study's methodology when it quotes costs to the nearest dollar. The study was based on phone interviews. The margin of error in these cost estimates must be at least +/- 10% (or $80,000 on the $881K figure).
So what does this study tell us? Some numbers. Some are higher than others. Where do these numbers come from? Any additional infos, so i could clarify, wether this study is significant for me?!
Java is pretty easy, J2EE, somewhat harder.
Somebody educate me, but I thought C-pound was roughtly equivalant to Java, not J2EE.
The hard part about J2EE isn't the synatax but the vast number of components and services that it provides. That it's done in Java is secondary, learning that size of a framework in any language is pretty tough. If C# implemented cross-cutting or had a declarative mode, it might be easier, but I also though C# is a similar-generation language as Java.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
We have the beginnings of a VB.NET compiler (derived from the C# compiler) in DotGNU, waiting for someone interested in this kind of thing to come on board and champion that subproject. Right now it does "VB.NET syntax with C# semantics", the hard parts of building a compiler are taken care of, finishing it is a matter of plain old programming (lots of it).
Any takers?
Greetings,
Norbert
Seriously, I developed programs under many Unix flavors, and enjoyed developing solutions with Linux. But, when we needed to interface our software with Word for mail merges, or Excel for spreadsheet drop-ins, then (at least at the time) Windows programming was a necessary evil. Development of databases was done on Unix for stability, web applications using PostgreSQL and Perl, but front ends were usually Access or some VB application.
There was also a problem hiring programmers. Salaries asked for by experienced programmers were much higher (IMHO rightfully so) than salaries demanded by Windows programmers. While the Windows programmers in general were less flexable to learn new languages or stray from mainstream programming, they were quite efficient. And, the tools they were using allowed them to create and alter code quicker than us Unix-folk. That having been said, we never had to cuss-out our monitors because of a blue screen...
If I were a shop doing custom programming, it would be a mix of Windows and Unix, and Windows programmers would be about 2/3 or 3/4 of the programming population in the office. It is simply good business to sell a comfortable solution, and businesses are comfortable with Microsoft. Now, you don't have to disclose that MS-SQL will not be on the back end of that Access application...
Click here or here.
I hate this. This is business. This is what business is. This is all it takes. Just fund the study that says what you want. On its face it looks rediculous, but who'll see it on its face? What you're really buying is the references to the study. The argument that "independent studies show..." All you need is that little bit of doubt, and you'll get sales.
We need stricter rules! This is how businesses succeed, and it's awful! I hate the SCO lawsh^Huit, I hate the RIAA lawsh^Hit, I can't stand these false studies and it's just infuriating.
Any reference to this study down the line should be required BY LAW to be labeled as "funded by Microsoft." Then there would be no manufactured doubt, and the study wouldn't happen in the first place, and businesses would have all these extra resources to spend on things like research and development, instead of things like fake false lying lies that confuse people and make it impossible to know what's really real and gee while they're scratching their heads let's just reach over and take the money out of their pockets. Monsters.
Let's get rid of the "D" and just tell businesses like Microsoft, "F U."
Monsters.
resarchers find that it is cheaper to replace a fuse with a nail than bying a new fuse
oh.. and kids.. don't try that at home!
- I choked on the red pill and now I'm stuck in limbo
Just a newbie questioning authority, you understand.
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
What they totally ignore is that education and other "inital investment" doesn't apply for project 2,3 etc ...
It would therefore be interesting to see how project #2 would compare cost-wise on the different platforms.
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
is cheaper to outsource it to india
Of course, the story is quick to state that the whole study was funded and commissioned by our favorite Redmond, WA based software giant.
You take that back. I had nothing whatever to do with this.
Someone you trust is one of us.
When Microsoft funds a study that makes their platform look cheaper, we all laugh and write it off as "bogus". Even the editors are jeering at the results.
Yet when Apple funds a study that makes their G5 look really fast, Slashdot cheers. The savior is here! The headline isn't "Apple Claims G5 is World's Fastest PC", it's "G5 Is World's Fastest PC".
Sheesh. Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field indeed.
java developers have been found to have higher salaries...
It makes sense from the MS perspective to compare .NET with Java since the whole point of .NET has been from the beginning to build an improved competitor to Java.
However from our (developer's) perspective, a comparison of only two development environments is of very limited interest. Let's do some serious research into what is truly beneficial to developer productivity, and then build a Free Software IDE which meets these needs.
Greetings,
Norbert.
Contact me at: nb at cisto dot com
But it depends on where you come from.
Obviously, people who are accustomed to development on Windows platforms using MS development tools (Visual whatever) are going to have a hard time developing on Linux/J2EE.
There is also a steep learning curve to obtain "oneness" with emacs. I think once that occurs, development time using emacs over an IDE is actually much smaller, but then you are also required to learn a lot of command line tools. If you know them, and are really good with them, I have no doubt that that environment is much faster.
I am in the exact opposite situation. I come from Unix (Sun, SGI, Cray, Convex...) and my department has slowly switched from *all* SGI 8 years ago to *all* Windows 2K, and I've had to adapt - I didn't do it by learning Windows tools, I installed the latest java runtimes on everyones machines, I use Cygwin extensively, I use perl, and my ace in the whole is a small department server running Linux to create my J2EE applications (and other things, too).
Frankly, though, it takes me a lot longer to write applications now then it used to. Now, reverse the situation, and you will see TCO go up for people trying to move from Windows/.NET to Linux J2EE.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Just raise the taxes on crack.
Therefore all Chevy drivers are gay.
That's about the standard of independence, evidence and conclusion we're seeing here.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Man, with a bootleg copy of Visual Studio and Visual Basic for Dummies, I can can write mission critical enterprise level three tier stuff all day long!
It may indeed be easier cheaper to develop apps under Windows when the shop is all Windows; but is it cheaper to build cross-platform, interoperable applications that can communicate and run across the multiple platforms that may be encountered within (and outside) an enterprise? I would argue that J2EE development platform is a far more cost-effective, scalable and portable approach than .NET/COM +/DCOM/etc. Microsoft can put on all of the XML window-dressing it wants, it doesn't change the Windows-centric underpinnings.
Please put a name of the university. Else this example is as worthy as "my wife's brother's friend claims that his unnamed fortune 500 company uses linux exclusively".
This is like saying there was study commissioned that determined that North Korea was the best country on Earth. Of course, the study was commissioned by Kim Jong Il.
No trees were harmed in the composition of this; however, numerous electrons were inconvenienced.
I'm yet to see an IDE that has the power to automate the generation of web service proxy classes via WSDL ala VS.NET.
I think axis comes with command line tools for something like this, but it really doesn't get any easier than VS.NET.
But then you could argue that J2EE isn't necessarily web service based, preferring EJBs to SOAP and web services. Well, that's fine. If you only want to work in Java (and, of course - sometimes you do). But isn't that lock in?
- TL
the Linux license from SCO went to.
News Flash! Linux Cheaper When Studied by Open Source Experts!
[o]_O
4 Visual Studio licenses - $8800
2 Development Server licenses - $16000
2 Production Server licenses with CALs - $120000
Knowing that your enterprise app will be developed with the best Visual Basic traditions and patterns - priceless.
Doh. Coz some of us have memories? If someone is a habitual liar and another one is an average joe and they each pay someone to say something for them. Don't tell me you give equal weight to what is said.
I don't know about you, but I'm inclined to regard a company known for regular habitual lying and misleading actions/statements differently from other companies which aren't habitual liars.
There are plenty of big and successful companies which don't make it a habit of lying, cheating, etc.
e.g. MS's "grassroots" campaign, that turned out to be "astroturf". MS and stitched video evidence. MS and Stacker. MS and their patches which supposedly work. MS and Blue Mountain. MSN and Opera. MS and their sneaky change in licenses from just "updates". MS and their Win95 registration wizard which sent them data on OTHER companies products.
You can go dig deeper yourself, the dirt goes a long way.
AFAIK the MS bosses have hardly ever admitted that they are doing anything wrong. So what are the odds of them changing for the better?
VB ISN'T A LANGUAGE. No matter what your community college taught you...it sucks. You drag n' drop some buttons double click them and add some 'code'. Seriously a trained monkey could use VB, and developing anything besides a front-end with it is ridiculous.
On Windows, you buy one development tool (Visual Studio.NET) and one or two books to learn how to use it. There are special "learning" editions of VS available for about a hundred bucks that will get you started quite nicely.
On Linux with Java, you first have to figure out what you need. There are a zillion projects for enterprise-level Java stuff. There are a zillion books, and no two seem to cover the same thing, so you can't compare them. I'm still not clear on what I actually need to install on my Linux system to get servelets working...which is OK, because I'm not clear on what I'd want servelets for, anyway...they are just another part of this big lumpy mess that is J2EE.
When talking about development costs, the tools and documentation are probably more important thant the technology, and Microsoft is very good at tools and documentation.
You cannot compare J2EE or .Net to PHP/MySQL, that makes no sense. You would be comparing platforms to 2 specific technologies (apples and oranges).
You can compare C#/MSSqlServer to PHP/MySQL if you like, but that is not what this study was about.
No Comment.
I don't think this study is any more biased than one than a thread on /. concluding that open source is the way to go. There's more than one party with an axe to grind, and there's probably more than one right answer.
So we're not really comparing Windows and Linux. We're comparing .NET and J2EE.
Web-based applications are seen as the next step in computing that will allow software and services to be widely available on a variety of devices, not just personal computers.
What is this, 1997? This is just FUD. Linux works on a greater variety of devices than Windows.
For large companies, the cost of making and deploying applications on Microsoft's .NET standard was $1.64 million over a three-year period, 28 percent less than the $2.29 million cost for running or J2EE/Linux, according to the study.
We chose this study because, out of the dozen or so studies performed, this is the only one that came out the way we wanted it to.
For medium-sized companies, costs for .NET-based applications totaled $661,012, compared with $881,445 for J2EE/Linux.
We won't give any more detail of the cost analysis, since that will expose us as quacks.
"The primary conclusion of the study is that Microsoft offers a substantial cost advantage over J2EE/Linux as a developer platform for the applications considered," Forrester Research Inc., which owns Giga Research, said in a report by analysts John Rymer and Bob Cormier.
Microsoft told us exactly "which applications to consider."
The study was based on interviews with 12 companies, seven of which use Microsoft's .NET platform and five of which use Linux.
Thus the difference may or may not be statistically significant, depending on the standard deviation.
Forrester said that the main difference in cost was not due to price of the basic software, but rather the price of developing the software, including labor costs.
Linux developers get paid better. Microsoft weenies are a dime a dozen.
Despite the difference in costs, however, the Forrester report also noted that "many organizations will adopt Linux instead of Microsoft's alternative" because of the expertise they have built up on the Unix (news - web sites) platform, Sun's proprietary operating systems used to run computer server networks.
Trust us, it's not because Linux is better. It's just because companies like to cling to old, outdated operating systems.
Last December, Microsoft released a study that showed that Windows-based servers were cheaper to run than those on Linux in four out of five common server tasks.
They could only find four??? I could give you a dozen off the top of my head that are easier/cheaper with Linux. By the way, clicking a mouse instead of typing a command doesn't make things easier!
...just my 2 gil.
Simple counter comparison
C#
-------
for(int i = 0; i < 100; i ++)
{
cout << i;
}
-----------
Java
------
for(int i = -1; i < 100; i -= 100)
{
system.out.println(i);
}
------------------
See C# is much better
Of course, the story is quick to state that the whole study was funded and commissioned by our favorite Redmond, WA based software giant
so then why is this news?
-no broken link
If you read the report the issue is not LINUX-OS vs. WINDOWS-OS, it's app development on top of the two platforms. That automatically neutralizes the LINUX-OS advantages in terms of OS cost and stability.
The issue is the app development, which SUN has totally screwed up since JAVA was introduced. This should be read not as a dis on LINUX but on SUN. Let's face it, Scott McNeely has been desparately trying to change SUN from a hardware company (overpriced, but I did love that SPARC) to software with JAVA. Unfortunately just as the hardware was overpriced compared to equivalent INTEL solutions SUN jacked up JAVA to unreasonable levels aby charging for development tools that Microsoft was giving away for practically nothing (downloading DOES cost money, although very little). I hate to say it but basicly except for the religious JAVA shops anyone that looks at the costs are going to come back with the same figures as in this article, no matter who picks up the tab.
Don't blaim microsoft for doing the obvious, SUN just missed the boat with their packaging. Java enterprise servers will only go over when it's reasonable to write apps for them. Don't blaim SUN too much though, after all, there are still companies trying to sell DEC VT100 emulators for PCs (they don't get it either).
It doesn't matter what you wrap your emotions around, Reality is a brick wall specifically designed to scramble eggs
intellesense statement completion, automatic code formatting and highlighting, and intelligent help
You have the same thing with Java IDE such as Eclipse (free) Plus
- automatic error detection while you type - similar to Word (but without the clipper!)
- suggestions to correct your errors, like:
- import a particular class you are using
- surround a part of code with the try / catch clause
- correcting simple misspelling
- and others
- refactoring - choose a variable whose name you don't like and simply rename it - eclipse updates all references
- organize your imports
The automatic error detection and suggestion(s) how to correct it are addictive - I found it impossible to return to vi after trying eclipse! At work I use VS and MFC and I miss things like refactoring. The problem is speed - eclipse runs perfectly well under windows - comparably to VS. It uses native widgets - not Swing like Forte (which is sometimes 10 - 20 times slower - try code formatting for example). However this seems to be a disadvantage under Linux and GTK2 - it seems to be tenfold slower than windows and even slower than Swing! I am more and more convinced, that the main problem with Linux is not it's lack of functionality, but unnecessary bloat and slowwwwwnesssss.P.S. The main thing lacking is debugging - it is there in theory, however I was never able to do anything useful with it.
P.S2. Has anyone tried WebSphere, which is built on top of eclipse?
"...the main difference in cost was not due to price of the basic software, but rather the price of developing the software, including labor costs."
Hmm, while I doubt this is accurate -- M$ licenses are ludicrously/criminally -- I'd still rather go with the 25% "more expensive" (development) platform when it means running a more stable and secure system.
With a Linux app you need to make it reliable
a Windows app only has to run for 30 minutes until the next unscheduled reboot
Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana.
Like this is news? No "report" or "analysis" is ever unbiased. Every post on /. is biased as all hell.
Get over it.
The Wintel world has reduced IT to a commodity service. MSFT is advertising how cheap it is to find lowpaid workers for their platform. This is probably true.
America seems happy to sell off and outsource all their needs to the lowest bidder. The result will be that soon all Americans will be fat idiots wearing sweats and working at WalMart so they can afford their hourly dose of Pringles, smokes and a Super Big Gulp.
But corporate profits will be high.
Oh wait, we're already there.
Why are the apps for windows more expensive ?
I went the other way, 7 years of unix like embedded systems. Last week I started a job doing windows, and I've already done some major code refactoring, and fixed some bugs. Never mind that it has been 7 years (school only) since I really touched C++, as a programer I can figgure out what is going on quick enough without any training. I'm not exceptional, and good programer could do the same.
No I could not open a window on my own, but I can't do that in any unix enviorement either. I wasn't hired to GUI design though, I was hired to deal with hardware specific code, something I do know well, and that translates no matter what system you are on. If I was hired to do GUI work I expect I would have made changes to that code already because the concepts are similear enough.
Companies always seem to want to train everyone. And training has to start with a 1 hour introduction to useing a mouse, before getting into the 2 hour difference between left and right click. (I've been required to sit through several such classes) No wonder there is a hugh training cost. That isn't to say there is no cost, but if they would spend the money on books that introduce the api, it would not only be cheaper, but they wouldn't waste time showing me GUI development when I'll forget it all by the time I need it.
Note that if you are switching from windows to unix (or vise versa) I'd recomend you hire someone who is expirenced with that platform, but this isn't a cost because someone will soon leave leave your company, and the new expert can replace him. A few experts scattered around will help a lot getting over the learning curve, but it isn't very large for someone who knows what they are doing.
I realise this will gain the hate of the majority of Slashdot's posters, but I have to make the point that my company (i.e. the R&D dept - i.e. me and a couple of other geeks) has done a fairly in-depth study into moving our internal apps to Linux. Or rather to start developing onto Linux rather than continuing on the MS treadmill.
The fact is that at the moment costs for obtaining Linux skills so far outweigh the licencing costs of using MS that it is still worth using MS. This INCLUDES all the licencing costs of both the new servers and the cost of the commercial closed-source app when applied to an open-source app...
The important point here is that just about all of our IT function is outsourced - so we see costs directly rather than by using internal staff (who are "free" ).
I realise you are probably spluttering by now, but just think... You can hire a low-IQ MCSE to follow the wizards and work through the install routines for a heck of a lot less time than an expert is required to configure and set up a Linux server and add an open source platform, and then configure and sort it out.
Please remember that outside of IT firms, the driving attitude is to get the system working now, rather than working right. Apart from financial systems (e.g. payroll) you can always backfill later to fix issues - so the up-front costs really do become meaningful.
MS really do know this - and know just how far they can push us. Linux will get better - and the skilled staff required will get cheaper. That will simply drive down MS's prices. At the moment - it is cheaper to have a wizard-driver and pay the licence fees. Linux-skilled staff just cost too much and take too long.
Pimping my Karma Whore since 1847.
Qualified Linux Admins are expensive.
Well administered Linux systems are secure.
Bad Windows Admins are cheap.
Blaster, Slammer, etc roam free.
Companies loose lots of money because of security breaches.
Good Windows Admins are expensive
Well administered Windows systems are secure.
'Nuff said
(Of course, bad windows admins are cheaper than qualified Linux Admins, but stop comparing apples with oranges)
TCO isn't just a buzzword...
:)...
I know that isn't your main point but I felt like I must respond
TCO IS a buzzword. I am not taking a position in favour of Windows or Linux but the way TCO is used is biased and almost meaningless. The people who popularized that term, the business crowd, has even given up on that and started using another concept: ROI (return on investment)... Again, I think ROI is a useless concept when it comes to tech...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
There was an article on segfault, I think, reporting that some version of windows beat itself on the same hardware. Nice send-up of this kind of thing.
Too bad segfault seems to be down.
Here is cheap development under Linux (or Windows for that matter):
Load Zope on your Linux server.
Learn Python, if you don't know it already.
Build web based apps quickly and easily via any web browser that supports frames from any location that can route to the server.
Zope has built-in functionality for http server, ftp server, Berkley DB, and allows you to access external SQL databases as needed.
Using simple templates and python programs you can build sophisticated applications quickly.
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
All of these features are present in eclipse (www.eclipse.org) with Java.
it is good enough, there isn't much reason to not choose the better proprietry platform apart from kneejerk anti-MS
From a technical point of view, the better platform, on Linux at least, is undeniably Java. Given that high quality VMs are freely available from BEA, IBM and Sun, plus a vast array of tools and other products it would be absurd to pretend that Mono/DotGNU are offerings in the same league. So far, Mono consists of half-completed APIs that rely on WINE and a poorly performing VM, it currently has negligable industry support, very limited tools and a role in Novell's game plan that is far from clear.
From a business point of view, the actual decision is likely to depend on just two factors:
1) Herd instinct
The investment being made in Java on Linux is orders of magnitude greater than any other platform technology. It is probably the single biggest driver for the deployment of Linux beyond the web-server tier, so it is no surprise that MS has taken aim at it.
2) Risk
Dotnet is proprietary, patented and is not licensed for use on Linux (only the CLR is "shared-source"). No company in their right mind is voluntarily going to make itself a hostage to MS indulgence, particularly given Ballmer's stated position against clones and for retaining all rights to Dotnet.
Gadzooks. You mean the Win32 proprietary API with all it's arcane, unwieldy, undocumented features right? You can't possibly be talking (with any knowledge) about Unix/Linux, when there are *great* libraries such as TrollTech's QT, or GTK that you can use to program circles around those using that MFC monstrosity. Granted .NET is an improvement, but they've only caught up to where Java was 5 years ago.
"Protable" format? Dunno - Linux seems to be ported to just about any device imaginable from PDA's to Mainframes.
It's posts like these, oddly defensive of MSFT that make me wonder whether Bill hasn't sent a decree out to his employees to logon to Slashdot and post crackpot stuff about how great MSFT is.
Championed? Prodded warily with a long stick, more like.
RMS doesn't have to be paranoid to be against Mono.
Note this article mentions that .net development takes less time that j2ee.
.net training may take longer.
.NET all you need to do is buy Visual .NET Studio.
.... but... .net requires more memory.
I heard that
IMHO, it takes a lot longer to actually set up a J2EE server.
IBM Websphere usually takes like 4-5 days to install and that is for a development system.
With
So, it seems to me that they are probably do it something like this.
40 hours * $100 / hr = an extra $4000 bucks
I mean an extra $4000 bucks doesn't even come close to the $400,000
What about hardware.... Generally java software needs more memory.. I don't know if
I hate microsoft too. But, this independant research firm MAY have some real data that we can use. Maybe instead of slashdot microsoft haters bashing the data. Maybe we need to take the data to sun and say see LOOK your J2EE sucks... Fix it!
NEWSFLASH: Sex doggie-style is much more enjoyable for women
(Reuters) -- In a study paid for by men, analysts determined that frequent doggie-style sex, including anal intercourse, provided women with much greater pleasure than alternatives.
"Clearly, the women preferred bareback to positions usually thought to be more stimulating for women," said a senior analyst. "Traditional favorites, such as cunnilingus and vibrator usage, were surprisingly found to have no stimulating value whatsoever, in our research. We're also absolutely certain that the funding for our project had no influence in the outcome."
seriously...
What's next? A study paid for by McDonalds claiming to discover that fast food makes you skinny? It must be really, really hard to get a journalism degree today when you run "dog bites man" slop like this.
BUT... As Linux becomes more popular and there are more Linux people out there and maybe you already have Linux people in your shop, Linux becomes cheaper.
"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro" -- HST
...and Oracle uses Java. Mostly. My point is that these arguments are irrelevent. Use the tool for the job at hand, the one that dovetails best with your existing technology, and the one your own people are most comfortable working with. All of 'em work fine, in their own niches.
Above all, don't get yourselves all wound up, only to be spun like silly little tops by Microsoft's spinmeisters (or anyone else's). Techies are supposed to be smart, and certainly like to think of themselves that way. But every day the PR flaks prove themselves to be smarter...
So what happens when the underlying OS to your superb application becomes unusable?
What happens when the underlying OS subverts your data integrity and leaks your classified information?
What happens when redmond needs to take the heat of off themselves and fingers your application for being at fault?
1) No specifics are given about the companies. What industries are they in? What kinds of applications are built. Are there apples to apples comparisons? A company managing their supply chain is going to spend more than a company building a web site. How large is "large?" Someone like IBM is going to spend a great deal more on an application deployed worldwide than Mary Kay will spending on a national application.
2) 12 samples is a very small sample size. Statistically not really valid.
Really if you wanted to compare costs, you would get 20 of Linux and 20 of Windows in the same industries for the same applications for the same sized companies so that all your variables are minimized. Then all you really comparing are actual TCO.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Every time someone includes a 'cost of training' or 'cost of learning' in such a study they are being dishonest, because they don't include the cost of learning Microsoft's sytsems - they just assume everyone already knows them. While that is probably true, it is still a lie to state that this means the Microsoft solution is cheaper. It just means it's been partially paid for already. Using that to claim it's cheaper would be like me claiming that go-karts are more expensive than cars, based on the fact that most people already own a car. It would be like claiming that television is a cheaper form of entertainment than a boardgame of Parchesi, based on the fact that more people already own TV's than Parchesi games.
There is a distinct difference between claiming "X is cheaper" and "X is already paid for", and it would be nice if these studies had the honesty to be more careful with their statements like that.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Don't like the behavior of a system class? Doesn't let you do something you'd like to? Then override the implementation and do your worst. It's just that easy.
Five years ago, perhaps. Back then, a second-rate developer might have taken home 90% as much as a first-rate one. Today, half the second-raters are lucky to have jobs at all, and those who do are unlikely to get anywhere near what a good guy with a proven track record will command. It's an employer's market now.
It is about the number of lines of code you write, in part. I suspect your point is that it's not just about that, it's also about what you can do with those lines. Obviously one clear and maintainable line of code might be worth more than two lines of spaghetti that achieve the same end result.
Both volume and quality increase with developer skill, and the latter (though not the former) tends to increase with more powerful programming languages.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
for a company similar to the subject pool, this study would seem to be an accurate comparison.
True. But the dishonesty is that the company that paid for the study usually (as in this case) tries to make the claim that the study applies to the general case. They bury the admission that it only applies to a specific case very deep down in the text, where if sued for fraud, they can claim they disclosed it, but far enough buried that it won't stick in people's minds. Somewhere in the body of the text it admits "Windows is cheaper, under the circunstances of the study, which were as follows", but up in the summary at the top it will just say "this study proves Windows is cheaper." and in the headline it will just say "Windows is cheaper."
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
So... let me see here- they're saying windows programmers, on average, aren't as educated/knoweledgeable and don't take as much time to ensure quality before releasing? That doesn't sound like news to me.
- gcc 3.2: FREE - java sdk: FREE - gdb debugger, libefence, and other debugging tools: FREE Not having to use Windows: PRICELESS.
I'll admit, most studies done are worked within parameters that will deem the sponsors product more favourable. In a lot of cases studies are done where the results are unfavourable and the results never turned into a press release, but used internally to create a better product.
However what Linux devotees fail to see time and time again is that businesses are often (but not always) run by business people, not technical types. Now if I'm going to recommend a deveopment platform I'd want damn sure I had some back-up from an "independant" group stating that this is part of the reason why I'm putting my butt on theline recommending this development platform. I can't just go up to my superiors and go, well it's Linux and it's open source and it's cheeper. "Show me the proof" will be all I will get back.
Linux distributors and software vendors need to be able to match this marketing. Sure call it FUD, but when I'm buying a car I'd like to know what milage I'm getting or the saftey standard. Microsoft knows this and so creates proof points that aid in decision making. No different to any other industry.
So while the Linux community is in-fighting around SCO or what distributions is best, Microsoft is quietly (or not so quietly) pumping out proof points that help cover people's asses when they go to the board or directors or the head of IT.
Let's stop being nieve about the way business is conducted and start running with the big boys.
I can believe this study; it is probably similar, or even cheaper, to bolt together an ASP/VB/SQL serv. app that does a few not so complex things. Boring web apps, middleware, and database backends make up a lot of 'enterprise' development, and Microsoft has a decent platform for doing that.
What I care about, in my company, are not little apps but something huge and complex: massive transactions systems, query systems, data mining, and so on. For that type of thing, the platform is not all that important - it's all in the developers, though Linux, BSD, or Sun tend to be
the systems of choice.
And there is indication to believe that water is also affected by gravity.
/.?
Oh, and light makes the darkness go away.
Green is a color, and dogs bark.
And honestly, this is not funny.
Why does something like that story get accepted on
--- Hindsight is 20/20, but walking backwards is not the answer.
I can show you three companies like that. And last I looked, Intel's budget for support was one IS person per 20 desktops, so in this situation 2.5 IS people.
WRT cost of MS software, have you included all necessary "internet connector" and similar licences? Do any of your boxes have more than one CPU? How does the licence cost fare on a hyperthreaded CPU?
Not so, for two reasons. The first is that you'll have to train some of your Windows users. Seriously!
The second is that you haven't costed in any routine downtime, lost documents etc from run-of-the-mill Redmond reliability.
On top of the above two, there are some other ongoing costs which are negligible for Linux and FOSS in general.
How many MSBlast/CodeRed/Nimda/whatever style invasions a year are you allowing? I'd make it at least one every two years, even with reasonably diligent patching. How much does one of those cost?
How often are you allowing a user to completely bork their machine through fiddling? Yes, I know you're not giving them admin privs, even though some software requires them to work, but I've watched users bollix their machines up anyway. And sometimes the machines spontaneously bollix themselves, even with XP. In a 50-user site, I'd be allowing one or two spontaneous suicides a year, and perhaps three to five user-driven suicides. Cost...? Remember, we're talking about knock-ons above and beyond admin time.
I'm glad someone got it :)
You can even freely download it off of the Oracle Technology Network for free and try it out for non-commericial applications.
Next they'll be telling us that the G5 is faster than the Pentium 4...
Oh, let the bullshit flow. Give me some examples! If you don't think .NET can compare with J2EE - especially making the comparison between Access and Oracle similar to .NET and J2EE, then you truly don't have a objective viewpoint.
.NET! Fools - and I only thought that now that I'm cranking out apps with .NET I was much more efficient. Damn, time to break out the C++ ATL COM bible.
.NET compact framework on your precious Java enabled hardware soon.
Of couse, enterprise applications (SAP, JDEdwards, etc...), which have the highest TCP ratings were on the Win32 platform - but they must have taken a step back with
Now, if you're only talking about code that can run on a VM anywhere, then you might have a point. That's the only place where J2EE/Java has an advantage, and I'd argue the reason is it's an older technology. Don't be surprised when you see the
I have respect for both technologies, but you made a very unfair comparison, just wanted to point that out.