Microsoft Audits UK Council To Prove Cost Effectiveness

A Masquerade writes "When Microsoft's market position was threatened by projects within the UK government evaluating open source solutions, it chose an interesting way to fight back. Computer Weekly has a piece by a Microsoft manager explaining they're paying for an external audit of the IT services for a specific UK local authority, Newham Council, to provide a cost justification for Windows and Office on the desktop, as opposed to an open source solution. The Register comments that 'if Microsoft succeeds in holding on to Newham, it will have knocked a considerable amount of wind out of the pilot schemes before they've even kicked off properly.'"

Comments

This is what we all want.

[bl1st3r]

I want to see an unbiased proof that "MS IS SO MUCH CHEAPER" like they keep ranting about. If it actually proves they are, I want it HEAVILY documented. This could be the deciding factor to stop hating MS's apparent FUD tactics. They might really be more cost effective than Linux and other Open Source solutions...

*cough* if you tack on the 699$ SCO tax *cough* ;)

Re:This is what we all want.

[Deusy]

I want to see an unbiased proof

That's what we all want to see.

The problem is that there is really nobody unbiased to do this type of analisys.

You have pro-Microsoft (including themselves), Free Software zealots, and normal people.

Obviously, pro-Microsoft peeps will always interpret and flip data to make it look like it's by far the best option.

Obviously, Free Software zealots will favour Free Software although their reports tend to be more realistic due to the fact there usually isn't "the collective" ensuring that it has to be ridiculously favourable.

Then there's everday, normal peeps. They quite simply don't care. Microsoft software, for all it's problems, gets the job done and is familiar. Moving to Free Software may solve many problems, but the move itself will be months (or even years) of hassle and the new software initially unfamiliar. It may be cheaper but, hell, so is cycling into work.

Before you can get decent reports you need interested people who are genuinely impartial. How many of them are there in the IT world?

Anyway, that's my ANALisys of the situation.

Re:This is what we all want.

[FatherOfONe]

Ok, here is my beef.

Microsoft must make money to pay for marketing, sales, developers, accountants, lawyers and support. This cost isn't insignificant. Free software is... well free. Now if you consider that you need internal I.T. people for either solution how can Microsoft or any software maker compete.

Yes I know that a vendor can "add value" by making things easier, thus needing fewer I.T. people but aren't we talking about governement workers here. In the U.S. most of these people are the most basic of users. One or two tasks is all they do. Heck most of our people here use dumb terminals.

Lastly I would argue that even if Microsoft buys this ONE government off, it cost them significant time and resources, that only hurts them in the long run. This appears to give government agencies a choice. So Microsoft looses it Monopoly. That forces them to have to lower their prices. Either way they loose. So in the long run they have less dollars to combat FREE software. This makes it harder and harder to buy off other people.

So in short I guess I am saying. It is hard to compete with free.

Anyone selling expensive browsers now days?
Anyone selling expensive web servers now days?

Soon...
Anyone selling expensive office suites?
Anyone selling expensive NOSes?

Possibly later...
Anyone selling expensive databases?

Re:This is what we all want.

[drooling-dog]

Microsoft is going to cite (and probably exaggerate) the costs of re-training employees who are already familiar with their own software, and likely they'll also make fat assumptions about how much software has to be rewritten to replace arcane features that aren't duplicated in open-source solutions. Some of these points will be valid, but then they are points that will always favor the existing regime and if we weight them too heavily no change would ever take place.

They will also leave out long-term costs that arise from their market dominance and their ability to control their customers. As we all know, you don't pay just once for MS products; you pay again and again and again, just as frequently as Microsoft decides you should. If not for the open-source alternatives, things would be considerably worse for all of the MS shops out there, so they should at least be grateful that the alternative exists, whether they might consider making the leap or not.

It's a little beyond me why anyone on principle would prefer closed to open source software. Even if you'll never look at (or understand) the code yourself, others certainly will. This in itself guarantees that the software will continue to serve - and not manipulate - its users. It is a Good Thing to know verifiably that the software you are using is not really serving another master or out-right screwing you behind the scenes. Governments and corporations should seriously consider open-source solutions on this point alone.

The Microsoft-vs-Linux debate is only partly about short-term costs. Maybe the bigger issue is whether you feel more comfortable in a regime of centralized or distributed power. The MS partisans aren't merely reluctant to learn new tricks, as some have said here. They are also greatly disturbed by a world with no central, monolithic, and hopefully benevolent authority that they can (wisely or foolishly) trust without question. Most of the FUD we see comes precisely from that dark, scary place.

Re:This is what we all want.

[Daytona955i]

I'll start by saying I am an open source fan. I've been using linux for about 7-8 years. A couple years ago I bought a mac laptop and for the past 2-3 years I've been using Linux and OS X exclusively. Only delving into the windows world occasionally to fix family members computers...

That said, my feelings are that it would cost more initially to switch from an existing M$ environment to an open source environment. My reasoning is that you will need to train people to administer their new linux boxes as well as train the workers to use linux. This is vs. people continuing to use their windows machines which they are used to so there is no real training involved.

Now what you have to look at is how much will it cost to upgrade to XP (if you are still running 2000 or 98) or if you are already running XP, to Longhorn? Is there going to be a significant learning curve? I know Microsoft has a habit of changing where things are from an administrators point of view but not as much from a users point of view. So you will need to train your administrators some to deal with the new OS. Now if you had switched to Linux, the location of things usually stay the same. (Of course different distributions place certain things in different areas but we'll assume you aren't switching distrobutions) There may be some new functionality that you may need to learn but the basic structure is the same. So I'd say moving from 98->XP->Longhorn would be more costly in terms of training than moving from RedHat 6 -> 7 -> 8.

Setting up your linux desktops may take some time. You need a word processor, probably a spread sheet, and whatever other programs you will need in your office environment. Most likely if you are using windows you already did the reasearch and purchased all the things you need. This same research would need to be done for linux. The biggest disadvantage you have is that the program you need may not be available for linux. Of course you also have to ask yourself is this really necessary? The dependancy on Word is created by people using word. Is there another solution? Of course so sometimes alternatives need to be researched. The advantage of using linux is that there are more open source programs available for linux than there are for windows. As a result, you are more likely to find an open source solution that you can use which will cost you nothing to purchase. Training your users and support will cost you but you would have the same problems if you are using windows. (as most people who have worked for a help desk will tell you)

So really I see that the initial investment will be costly in terms of training and evaluating/deciding on new solutions. However, you will never need to pay for an upgrade ever again (for your OS at least) as well as no per-sear licenses. So in the long run you will make your money back. When will this happen? I don't know, I haven't really tried to put numbers on these things. The values will also change depending on your needs. I'd guess that most companies will make up this cost and start seeing a savings in about 5 years, especially if M$ goes to a leasing scheme. Now if you are a company starting from scratch, since you still have to evaluate solutions for whatever OS you go with, the costs here are roughly the same. Training people may cost more because most people have word and excel at home. However I don't think it is significantly more because most word processors and spreadsheets and categories of software are roughly the same. All word processors deal with formatting text and unless you plan on switching from word to LaTeX, there isn't much of a difference. As for administrators, you can hire people with Linux/UNIX experience as opposed to someone with Windows experience. Thus the training is probably going to be less because my experience has typically been that Linux/UNIX admins generally know more than the HighSchool dropout you have maintaining your windows box. Plus with linux you can use the terminal to effectively administer another lin

Follow the money.

[secondsun]

If I am paying someone money to make me look good, they damn well better make me look good.

If M$ is paying a metric assload for them to look good they are going to look fscking fabulous.

Re:Follow the money.

[signals42]

I think it's something like 1.18 imperial assloads.

Newham?

[KillerLoop]

So Microsoft pays up for the audit and they got to choose the place the audit takes place.

Is Newham some kind of poster-boy location for Microsoft? I mean hey, hell would freeze over if this "audit" shows anything than a clear advantage in costeffectivness for Windows.

Re:Newham?

[Builder]

Newham is actually quite an open-minded borough, well at least as far as their IT services team go. They have been quite instrumental in pioneering new IT technologies including Open Source solutions in the UK, and many other boroughs look to them for guidance.

Pity they're also the leaders in deployment of citizen surveilance solutions as well, and many other boroughs look to them for guidance on that too.

Re:Newham?

[TomV]

Is Newham some kind of poster-boy location for Microsoft?

According to the Register story cited in the slashdot article above, Newham's more of a poster-boy location for properly audited financially responsible public sector IT in the UK. Hence the interest in what they find, as they have a reputation for actually doing this sort of exercise properly.

We'll get a reasonably trustworthy temperature reading on hell when Cap Gemini Ernst & Young complete the audit and provide some figures.

Whichever way the result goes at least it'll give us some real objective figures to compare rather than the assumptions from both sides which are about all we have to go on at the moment.

tomV

Newham?

[Sci_Fox]

Somehow, "Today Newham, tommorow the world" doesn't haver the same ring to it.

Here's

[Pingular]

the original article about the 'UK test(ing) open source waters'.
Paticularly of interest is this: 'We can be sure that there will be lots of meetings going on inside Microsoft, because that is just what happened when the German city of Munich decided to use open source software in preference to Windows. The result was a secret offer of massive discounts.'
In Munich they offered discounts (although still failed), now this... If it isn't anti-competition I don't know what is.

Re:Here's

[thenerd]

In Munich they offered discounts (although still failed), now this... If it isn't anti-competition I don't know what is.

MS offering a discount in response to not being chosen is, in fact, a prime exame of competition. It is competition at work. Whether it is 'secret' or not is immaterial.

Re:Here's

[nordicfrost]

MS offering a discount in response to not being chosen is, in fact, a prime exame of competition. It is competition at work. Whether it is 'secret' or not is immaterial.

No. Competition would be if the playing field was dominated by many small companies adjusting their prices to find a common, sustainable price. If you are an actor with oh, say 90% of the market and lower your prices drastically when a competitor enters, it's called dumping. The fact that they did it in secret is probably due to the stricter competition rules in Germany.

Re:Here's

[Daniel Phillips]

MS offering a discount in response to not being chosen is, in fact, a prime exame of competition. It is competition at work.

When profits in one market segment are used to subsidize sales in another it is called "predatory pricing" and is illegal, particularly when practiced by a monopoly.

The only way to win, really

[Dancin_Santa]

If you want to compete with Free Software, the only way you can truly compete is at the cost of use level. As far as operating systems and application suites go, the alternatives are all pretty much equal.

But once you take the fight to cost, the winners and losers get separated right quick. Mac, out. Linux, in. AIX, out. Windows, in. Solaris, way out. HPUX, out. Herd, it's almost there, any day now.

And so with the finalists Linux and Windows you have a neck and neck race. Linux wins in the licensing part, but Windows wins out in the cost of use. The total TCO is pretty much equal, so it's really a toss up at this point.

It may seem like a huge win for Microsoft if they can pull this TCO win off, but it's only one government department and the reality of the situation is that every office is different and has different needs. A company based on hacking and running high-powered servers needs Linux. A company based on being productive and interfacing with customers and customer data needs Windows.

So you can't judge the fitness of an OS on TCO alone, especially as TCO is variable among application domains.

Re:The only way to win, really

[Anne Thwacks]

If you want to compete with Free Software, the only way you can truly compete is at the cost of use level.

If you really want to compete, you have to explain how a closed file format that changes every 18 months is a good thing. That will take some serious explaining, or serious bribing. Particularly in government.

Re:The only way to win, really

[malsdavis]

Why is the cost of use less for windows?

I study at a university in the UK where they have a lab full of about 600 Linux desktop PCs, in a lab down the hall there are about 100 Windows XP pc's.

Being quite friednly with the support staff I have on a couple of occasions asked them whether they prefer Linux or Windows and they ALL say that the 100 Windows PC's take up about 80% of their time and the 600 Linux comps only about 10% of there time (the other 10% is persumably spent doing what IT support staff do best ...sitting about whinging about dumb newbies).

From personal experience I have never once had a single small prob with any of the Linux computers ...wish I could say the same about my WinXP computer at home which just 3 days ago suddenly decided logging in was a minimum 20 minute operation!

Re:The only way to win, really

[Anonymous Coward]

A company based on being productive...

Every company is based on "being productive". You can be productive in Linux just as easily as in Windows.

...and interfacing with customers and customer data needs Windows.

This is the government. If they get Word documents they can't open or something, they can just tell people to use RTF. What are the customers going to do - go to a competing government?

This isn't a news piece...

[canfirman]

...it's a PR piece. The whole article puts a "Microsoft is better" slant on the whole issue of Microsoft vs. Linux. Also interesting to note who the author is..."Matt Lambert is director of government affairs at Microsoft"

Since this audit is being paid by Microsoft and being done in conjunction with Ernst & Young, you know for sure it will not be an unbiased audit (which goes against auditor independence).

Personally, I'm not holding my breath on a fair and independent audit.

Efficiency of UK local councils

[Burb]

I know nothing about Newham specifically, but the perception in many parts of the UK are that many local councils are not well run. It might well be that a half-decent audit would find potential savings whoever the sponsor and whatever the IT system in use.

My local authority caused a stink when it bought expensive laptops for all the councillors - because it was later suggested that these machines were hardly ever used. Small example, but such is local politics.

Also, and I mean no disrepect to anyone in local government IT in the UK, but it's not well paid compared to the private sector - there are plenty of PHBs I guess.

Its only cheap if your time is worthless.

[Anonymous Coward]

Machines at my organisation (can't say for obvious reasons) were recently upgraded from Windows NT to Windows 2000, and Windows 2000 takes around three minutes to boot up on a Celeron 500 with 128 Mb of RAM. Windows NT on th eother hand takes around 20 seconds. And at 6 UK pounds an hour that adds up after a while. Mandrake 9.2 is the fastest booting linux I have used so far, which is faster than Windows NT so hopefully I can convince them to switch (It has all the apps we need, and I don't have any LG drives either).

It might be a cynic

[rf0]

but how do you think this is going to end up? Of course MS is going to be shown to be more cost effective as all they have to do is lower the cost of licenses and then make some noise about TOC.

Of course it doesn't matter that the people who are in local goverment already know open source solutions so support wouldn't change a huge amount but at the end of the day we all know how this is going to go. I would like to be surprised but I somehow don't think I will be

How can the people doing the audit really be truely independent if paid by the larget commerical software house in the world?

Rus

What will probably happen. Not.

[pubjames]

I can just imagine the scene in a few months time:

A meeting between representatives of Microsoft, Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, and Newham Council:

Consultant: We have finished our audit, and our conclusion is that it would be cheaper for Newham Council to use Open Source Software.

MS rep: What??

Consultant: Yes, the situation is quite clear. It would be cheaper to use OSS.

MS rep: Oh! We weren't expecting that! But fair's fair I guess! [Shrugs]

Newham rep: This meeting has been quicker than I thought it would be. Shall we go to the pub for a lunch-time pint?

Don't Worry - Be Happy!

[Alkarismi]

Newham is not the only (or even the biggest!) Council involved in the UK's trials. Even *if* this report can be *manipulated* to make Microsofts solutions *appear* cheaper, they have many, many more headaches ahead of them.

There are a *lot* of behind-the-scenes developments in Open Source deployment in the Public Sector in the UK. They *will* be hitting the news in due course. When they do, Newham will be the *least* of Microsofts problems.

Everyone stay calm...

Bit of background

[Anonymous Coward]

Some background to this:

This is about Linux on the desktop. Newham are (for example) already running their website (and intranet) on RedHat CCM (APLAWS) on Linux.

I believe Newham's IT Director is an OSS fan. Linux on the desktop across an organisation is still pretty radical; one of the main drivers is security. Newham have been sold the idea by the great Eddie Bleasdale (UK 30-year I.T. veteran and Linux evangelist) of Netproject, who have also sold it to South Yorkshire Police. Netproject is a 2 and a half man outfit taking on Microsoft and doing a lot of damage. M$ response to South Yorkshire was deep discounts.

So, unless M$ have an in with someone higher up than the I.T. director, it's not clear this audit will achieve its goals.

Disclaimer: I don't work for Newham or Netproject.

Price was not negotiable

[PizzaFace]

Computer Weekly reported that Microsoft refused to discount its pricing for Newham beyond its usual government discount. Microsoft was multiply stung when its deep-discount offer to Munich was rebuffed, making the press coverage sensationally embarrassing and giving every government body in the world the idea that it should bargain hard because Microsoft would compete on price against open source.

Microsoft evidently decided, What good is having a monopoly without enjoying monopoly rents? The Newham audit allows Microsoft's handpicked shills to report that "TCO" is lower if Newham's desktops continue to use what the vast majority already uses. Even if Microsoft loses the Newham sale, the audit report will be ammunition against open source in other government agencies, and it will defend Microsoft's profit margin.

Re:Price was not negotiable

[timeOday]

Know why Ford doesn't offer 70% discounts to people considering a Chevy? Because they CAN'T. Their profit margin isn't that inflated in the first place. The main problem with monopolies is that they can charge whatever they want and people have to pay. No competitive business has 70% profit margins, like MS does.

They're spinning this for Joe Suit, not Slashdot

[dunstan]

What's going on here does matter.

Local councils in Great Britain are not IT innovators. They are deeply conservative (small C, sadly) bodies whose IT directors are terrified of appearing on television or in the press with projects which have failed. Hell, some of them only recently stopped doing their word processing on green screens attached to their mainframes.

They have now arrived at the "nobody got sacked for buying Microsoft" mindset, and the elected members who they serve are as nervy about IT projects as their IT staff. They are happy to tip loads of local taxpayers' money into Microsoft because that's what everybody else is doing, and there's no safe alternative. This, well, fear, uncertainty and doubt guides IT procurement in Microsoft's favour. But for cash strapped councils, the attraction of leaving Microsoft behind is great - the money saved could go directly into local services (most likely some pet project which would be a waste of money, but I digress).

So the emerging possibility of basing council desktop IT around free software causes mixed feelings in these people - if they save lots of money they will be heroes, but if the project crashes and burns they will be zeroes. They have done a good job so far of scaring IT directors into thinking that they are taking a big risk going with non MS software: now they are addressing the other part of the equation, and demonstrating that there won't be a big saving.

It doesn't matter that the study is rigged and being paid for by MS: "The Newham Study" will be often quoted as a "professional" study by CGEY, who are a tier 1 player in local council outsourcing in GB.

The question is, can the study be neutered? Sadly this is unlikely as it will be printed on glossy paper and widely circulated. The best outcome is that there will be another study showing a different outcome, so the viewpoint on cost savings will be "mixed".

This is precisely why MadHatter is so significant: Sun are trying to still show major cost savings (though not as much as using a generic free software stack), while reducing or eliminating the possibility of the project crashing and burning.

Dunstan

Re:Linux cost of use

[bogado]

Also it is important to remember that if your requirements is something like a "windows+office" sorta of thing, all you need is a few clicks default instalation of almost any linux dist.

Any person that is compeent enougth to install windows to a clean machine is able to that. Is not that hard.

Who cares about TCO?

[jotaeleemeese]

People that support and promote FLOSS very often loose sifgt of the most important characteristic of this kind of software: transparency, accountability (specially when software is GPLed) and avoiding to be locked in by software providers.

I would not care about paying twice as much for an open solution if after a few years my institution is sued for millions because a watchdog comes and finds impossible to audit our internal procedures.

Or after some years come a propietary company and changes the licensing schemes (because that is what is in their interest, not mine) and I am forced to pay extra money that was not in my budget.

Or waht about the propietary software company decides that my version of X program is not going to be supported enymore and all my main processes are using that software perfectly fine and I would prefer to rather no upgrade or migrate to the latest and shiniest?

MS will emphasize the TCO when they can put forwad cases in which it would appear MS stuff is cheaper. Well, at this stage of the game TCO is a red herring, since there are many other considerations far more important, specially for democratically elected bodies, I would glance at such study and ingonre it it completely since closed source software companies are to be considered only as a very last desperate resource.

Sorry, It's my fault.

[Moderation abuser]

I get paid lots more than the guys (yes, 3 of them) in the Windows team.

However. I look after 110 systems while they look after around 15. My 110 systems are centrally managed, highly available, load balanced providing massive computing power to the engineers in the department, while the windows boxes are barely highly available and have no credible way of distributing processing.

The engineers use a thin client (X11) to access the Unix systems and no longer have a desktop Unix workstation, meaning changes for all users can be done in seconds the windows guys put a PC on every desktop meaning changes for everyone take hours, days, weeks and require a whole separate team of 4 people (yes over and above the server guys) *just* for the desktop support.

Tell me again why Unix/Linux is more expensive?

eEurope 2005 specs rule out consideration of MS

[SgtChaireBourne]

Given the current state of MS-products and the fact that Longhorn is 3 years away if at all, MS products are pretty much ruled out by the specifications set in eEurope 2005.

eEurope 2005 hits hard by not only requiring a secure infrastructure by 2005 (automatically ruling out the current line of MS tools), but also by ensure that there is competition and interoperability. The latter, interoperability, requires use of open standards, some thing which Microsoft could do but has consistently chosen to corrupt or pervert. See its treatment of HTTP, LDAP or Kerberos for three of many examples. In the former, MS is the subject of numerous anti-trust, anti-competition and anti-freemarket cases.

Of course on a less serious note, the UK could get out of this one by secedng from the EU and joining the U.S. That woud have the side benefit of Tony Bliar becoming a natural born U.S. citizen and thus eligable to replace Bush.

What matters to the public

[linuxbikr]

The public does not care what their government runs on. What they do care about, as others have said, is being able to access data that is important to them freely.

Despite being a Linux user, I have mellowed over the past few years and I really don't care what an organization uses. If it gets the job done, so be it. My issue (both at home and in the corporate world) is being able to share data. As long as I can read the document, data file, database, spreadsheet, etc, using the tools of my choice and provide that data to my peers in the formats they need it in, what one uses to make use of the data is largely irrelevant. It isn't a Microsoft vs. Linux debate.

In government, the public has the right be able to access their data freely and fairly. Corporations can impose limits on the tools used to access its data (i.e. everyone must use IE on the Intranet). In the public domain, cost is secondary to interoperability. You cannot dictate to the public that every MUST use IE or they are out of luck in dealing with the government. They must support all, IMHO, at least 95% of the populace. That means supporting IE, Mozilla, Linux, Opera and Mac users, to name a few. And it isn't hard, kids. Just don't use browser specific extensions.

Use commonly available formats. Use HTML, PDF, XML. Offer documents in MS Word, StarOffice/OpenOffice (SXW), ASCII text, RTF and XML formats, to name a few. Offer data in CSV, text and XML formats. Do that and the public can choose their favorite tools, be it Windows, UNIX or Linux. Governments have a civic duty to do this if they want to offer their data electronically to the public-at-large.

Microsoft's true crime is the control of file formats. Break that one monopoly and their Windows desktop monopoly will start to come apart. Education eventually triumphs over ignorance. That one ruling in the antitrust suit could've changed the world. Break their lock on the data and the rest of their business won't be able to compete except on merit.

I use OpenOffice on Windows daily for document production despite the fact I have Office installed. Just personal preference. Only my immediate co-workers know the documents aren't being produced by Office. The rest of the business couldn't care less. As long as the data is transparent and sharable, the world doesn't care how it gets produced and prcessed. That has always been the key in the enterprise and should be priority one for any e-government initiative. Run whatever you want, just make sure anyone and everyone can make use of it with the tools of their choice.

Matt Lambert and I

[Open Council]

Matt Lambert and I were, until recently, elected members of the same Council, one that was contolled jointly by Matt's party (Liberal Democrats) and the independents (of which I was one). Despite some of you thinking that all MS people are the devil's spawn, he is a really nice guy.

I had the unenviable responsability of overhauling the Council's IT structure and of introducing e-government. Although i was able to ensure that the contracts for document management, financial and GIS systems included guarantees that the suppliers would support their software on Linux desktops, I totally failed to get Matt's party to support my requests for the resources to run trials of OpenOffice on Windows and of a Linux Desktop.

Matt Lambert took absolutely no part in these discussions but I was supprised to be accused by a Councillor from his party, in a public session, of wanting an open source trial because "I hated Microsoft". I definitely don't hate Microsoft.

It was partly because of my experience that i set up the Open Council site to push the case for Open Source in local government. Microsoft's willingness to pay for this audit only goes to reinforce my assertion that local government is a critical area in the campaign to popularise Open Source and deserves more attention and support from the open source movement.

Knowing the way that local government works, my worry with this Newham situation is that it may just be a ploy to get cheap software from MS and that, in exchange for a big discount, the Council will agree that Open Source is too expensive. The results of this audit need to be closely scruitinised.

Re:This is what we all want?

[Ogerman]

Note that the only people not getting paid in open source are the techies. The developers and to a lesser degree the more technical support staff are conned into doing charity work to pay for the Porsches of the non-geeks. All profits go to the non-technical people almost in directly inverse proportion to their tech skills. At least in the commercial world, somebody besides the PHBs gets a cut.

You may or may not have been trolling, but you certainly don't have a clue what you're talking about. Companies like RedHat are not the only ones profitting from Open Source development labor. In fact, they aren't even a significant percent. The real people making money on Open Source development are the consultant-developers who go out and meet real needs by adding to or customizing existing Free Software. I am one of said people making a living this way, so I can speak with some authority on this matter. Open Source is an opportunity for developers to take home a far larger piece of the software income pie than if they worked for a traditional proprietary software shop. I have no marketing, sales, management, accounting, and legal departments to add to my overhead. When I write software and use it in a solution for clients, I am the one getting all the profit. Can I write all the needed software myself? Of course not. But fortunately, there are other consultant-developers like myself who do their part. Together we are the development team, even though we do not work within the same walls. GPL is our social contract that we will all contribute back the work we do, for if we do not, none of us can survive (or at least not as easily). And, incidentally, I provide notably cheaper solutions for my customers as well. So everybody benefits.

Proprietary software is dying business model.