Slashdot Mirror
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. "
(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.
"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?
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.
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.
This study takes into consideration more than just the price of the OS. Things like support, salary for developers etc.
This study is sponsored by Microsoft, so it's probably biased as hell, but a Linux system is never absolutely free for a corporation.
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.
Why is it so hard to believe that developing on Windows could possibly be cheaper than developing on a Linux box? For you, as a developer of an open-souce, I code because I enjoy it, project, you are right. Developing under Linux (or FreeBSD) will always be cheaper than developing under Windows... for you.
However, the corporate world is quite often very different. When you have preasures of deadlines and QA, quite often you don't have the time to work with a somewhat less feature-rich, but free, tool. Some tools just make developing certain kinds of applications more efficient, take VisualBasic for example. There's not much else that can compare to the RAD capabilities of VB. Sure, you might argue that there is no long-term viability for a VB app, but long-term viability isn't always needed. Neither is peak performance. Greater development efficiency directly translates into greater profits. Greater profits may quickly overcome any savings that you may have gained from developing your solution on an open source free OS with free tools.
Take for instance a relatively simple GUI application. Say that it takes two weeks to develop the application under a free toolkit like GTK. Now say that it takes only one week to develop that same application under VB. If we use a $60k developer salary (which is only about half of what it actually costs to employ a developer), then we see that one week of time is worth ~$1154. After one month, the license for VB and Windows has quickly paid for itself.
So, for certain kinds of development, yes, you certainly can beat free.
something clever
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.
installing Red Hat Linux on a server or a workstation is quick and will only need a small tweaking, while the same is far from truth on Windows
Look, I use and like linux like the best slashbotter, but lets be real. Either OS you end up using in a corporate environment is going need a lot of time for tweaking and customizing. I wouldn't let a virgin Windows or Redhat install just rollout to an entire enterprise.
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.
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 ...
.NET and Java will all become dated. I'm not particularly worried about .NET but Microsoft appears to be particularly worried about Java.
Right, but this is irrelevant in Java. Also, Java suffers from history hangover. It had some growing pains but most of those have long since been corrected. Also, MS seems to have a penchant for comparing unoptimized Java code with highly optimized C# code, hardly unbiased. Finally, with Java 1.5 due out in early 2004, current comparisons between
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
Duh, did all the PHP fanboys just moderate the parent up to +4 Insightful? Get a life...
Antti S. Brax - Old school - http://www.iki.fi/asb/
No, but most of the "costs" that are assigned to Linux presume an existing greater knowledge of Microsoft Windows; it never includes the money spent training these people to use Windows originally nor does it try to compare costs of complete training: how long does it take to get an admin for *nix and Windows (respectively) to go from 0 to 60?
Despite what people say about the "learning curve" of *nix, I believe most of that is due to breaking bad habits they learned in Windows. I picked up Unix exceptionally quickly, in part because I never knew Windows very well. So, if one were to remove the costs of Linux training that they have ignore WRT Windows training, the cost is significantly less. Realistically, the costs should be counted for both, not discounted for both...
Someone asked if I had patched against MSBlast; I said yes, I installed Linux.
J2EE development may seem slow, but this is because you are expected to do some serious analysis of a project and write scalable portable code: The time spent is a worthwhile investment. Comparing MS products with something like J2EE is rather like comparing Access to Oracle - you can write apps very quickly with the former, but you would not want to run a business with it.
Why not compare Mono/Linux to .NET/Windows so we wont compare apples and oranges.
.NET really does not work on Linux. Only a small subset does, and that is with Microsoft's toleration (for now).
Because
Conversely, there are full-blown fully-sanctioned-and-supported J2EE implementations for Linux distributions. In fact, there are several full-blown J2EE implementations available. From different and competing vendors.
Funny how proprietary lock-in isn't a criteria in these "studies".
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
dude, this just doesn't make sense:
.NET Ent 2003: $4657.86
.NET & Windows server ACLs and Windows Clients, we come up with this:
"Take for instance a relatively simple GUI application. Say that it takes two weeks to develop the application under a free toolkit like GTK. Now say that it takes only one week to develop that same application under VB. If we use a $60k developer salary (which is only about half of what it actually costs to employ a developer), then we see that one week of time is worth approx. $1154. After one month, the license for VB and Windows has quickly paid for itself."
Let's really look at company A (the GNULinux company) in a real world example, because like always, when people cite Windowze development-office stuff, they only present part of the picture.
First off, let's use a office with 50 people, of which there are 2 full time developers and 3 full time IS people. The below are current prices from MicroWarehouse at their non-discounted prices.
Now, for office B, first, the Windoze office (I'll leave hardware out of this cuz, especially with Exchange, that's a whole other cost issue):
* 50 copies of XP Pro: $21,747.50
* 1 Win2k file and print server with 50 CALS: $3018.72
* 1 Win2k with Exchange Ent. with 50 CALS: $12,107.44
* 2 copies of VS
* 50 copies of Office XP Pro: $21,747.50
This doesn't assume any consulting fees, whatever, since we'll assume the 3 IS guys are Windoze experts and know how to set up everything.
Total just to get office B up and running so that said developers can develop code: approx. $63,279.02
Now, let's look at office A, the GNULinux office. For basic comparisons, we'll use Redhat 9 deployed.
* 50 copies of RH 9: $0 (cost of 3 cd-r's: approx. $1.50)
* Samba for file and print for all 50 users: $0
* Kroupware (I know, not the best Exchange equiv, but the only free thing really avail strongly for GNU/Linux that delivers scheduling that works) for 50 users: $0
* 2 copies of development environment for GTK-Java-whatever: $0
* Ximian XD2 with Ximian Open Office: $0
Cost (not including hardware or labor) to deploy office B to make snazzy app: $1.50
Cost diff between office A & B: B: $63277.52
Now, plugging in your formula of $1154 for two weeks of development which supposedly pay for VS
Office A has no deficit, since their software didn't cost them anything. In fact, they probably had one less sysadmin, so they might have already saved $60k.
Office B has a deficit of $62,125.02. Their developer, to make them money to cover said expenses will need to work an additional: 2118.71 hours.
Obviously, company B should call M$ or MicroWarehouse and try to get deals on this stuff, but regardless, they're still going to need more people, more licenses, which translate into more costs to even start a system where 2 developers can program something.
So, I call bullshit on this entire forumla and the like because they only take one fraction of the puzzle in to play. This is typical with most Windows vs. GNULinux comparisons. I've seen it happen in the real world over and over.
The analogy really doesn't fit, since we're talking about Software Development. Developers should know basic operating system principles and have some knowledge of how to use Unix(Unless the college they went to was brain-dead). *nix systems aren't anything dramatically different either(Like laser controlled what-not), the details just aren't hidden as much. Granted GUI on *nix systems is frustrating since GTK on one system won't always work on another. But you can either do Java GUI, or just make a Perl, etc. front-end. Not a big deal...not nearly half the trouble as many of the MS advocates are making it out to be. And for individual users who use the software that was developed there doesn't have to be a learning curb at all. KDE is almost exactly like Windows, just point and click.