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Microsoft's Platform Strategist Speaks On Linux
prostoalex writes "Martin Taylor, general manager for platform strategies at Microsoft, was interviewed by CRN magazine on Linux, open source development, and Microsoft's official stand on it."
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Redhat Enterprise Linux pricing Microsoft Windows Server 2003 pricing
It depends on the organization. For example a number of large univerisities use debian with no commericial backing support. In that case, it IS free.
Speaking of... here is a good review of the contents of the win2000 zipfile. Suitable for developers to read (no direct excerpts or specifics), and quite amusing.
Red Hat Professional Workstation = $99.95
RHEL 3 - Workstation = $179+
RHEL 3 - Enterprise Server = $299+
RHEL 3 - Advanced Server = $1,499+
The + means you can pay more depending on the support configuration.
HOWEVER, if you aren't interested in RHN and support, buy one and install it on a thousand machines. Fully legal, according to the EULA. Try that with Windows and see what happens...
Charles Hill
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
The goal of "the company" is to increase shareholder value. Microsoft has to persue avenues that lead to more profits. For the longest time one of the biggest issues with purchasing a Windows server OS was that it couldn't be deployed to handle a single task at mass scale. But, to MS's credit, those same Windows servers - well, the Windows 2000 kernel ones - do pretty at being all-in-one servers for small environments. Anyway, it's been a heck of a lot better - from a cost/benefit standpoint - to put up a dedicated *nix server when you need one task done as consistently as possible.
Server administration isn't even close to my full-time job, but I can recall many occassions when I've found myself stopping services on a Windows server that had no business running those services in the first place. "SMTP spending resources on the file server? WHY?!?"
I think the guy makes some good points. I was even thinking that it was one of the best-sounding MS interviews I'd read in a while until he said that Linux was definitely being used in the "fringe".
DISCLAIMER: I don't use Linux in my professional day-to-day work. I rarely touch a Linux box. Or any *nix box. But when a programmer/IT buddy of mine told me he had converted ALL his company's servers AND desktops to Linux without much fuss, I realized that this is not just for the fringe. MS may not be in total denial, but they're still in denial.
My sigs always suck.
Mr. Taylor, does this statement mean that spending more on a Microsoft product doesn't mean I am getting the best thing out there?
Just because you have a bunch folks out in the community that have the access to look at open-source product means that, by default, it will be more secure or higher quality.
Oh, thanks for pointing this out to us as well.
Free as in not paying for licensing.
I'm not denying the existance of other costs associated with it, but if you have an IT department that can keep packages up to date and you designed a solid infastructure you don't need proprietary software or commericial backing.
He seems to think there is only one source of Linux, Red Hat, and continually compares Windows to it. Even Linux users are questioning some of Red Hat's latest moves, and there are many who believe SUSE is closest to a viable large user base desktop Linux distro.
Red Hat AFAIK is the only Linux with a serious company behind it with guarantees for support.
And guarantees are important in (it-)business...
Privacy is terrorism.
What part of "most of the time" didn't you understand?
Don't for get educational pricing:
RHEL 3 Workstation - $25
RHEL 3 Advanced Server - $50
No support included though, but all updates are.
RHEL Workstation = $25
RHEL Advanced Server = $50
And as everyone knows by now they also offer Fedora for Free. Another interesting alternative is Whitebox linux which is based on the RHEL source.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
$ cat ChangeLog-2.6.1 | grep @ | grep -v " " | sort | uniq | wc
117 117 2636
Still.
Hey! What about OpenCola?
He really meant on any given day.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
One of the best SNL skits ever! "The cock of the walk, baby!"
Here 'tis: http://www.fleetmack.com/downloads/cowbell.wmv
You really should go read the EULA one more time. No, you can't install RedHat Enterprise on multiple machines and just run it. Not if you have a single support contract with RedHat. If you have original media from RedHat, you have 1 years worth of support that you can't opt out of.
If you have a single support contract with RedHat, then all of the systems are considered "Installed Systems" (as defined section I.A). RedHat has the right to come into your locations, and audit all of your "Installed Systems" (I.4). They can then invoice you for all of the extra systems you have installed. If are over your allotment of installed systems by more then 5%, they are allowed to invoice for an additional 20% penalty (later in I.4).
I'm not a lawyer, and that is my interpretation of it. However, if you took the binaries off the install CD and put them on a different CD (excluding a handful, primarily being redhat-logos and 3rd party stuff), you could install that, invoking the GPL license. However, a number of binaries on the CD, they could claim copyright on (XFree86 and Apache binaries for instance, and anything else which has a source license of BSD-like). I'm not sure what the license on the actual binaries are.
I'm not sure if the license inside of the RPM is the license for the binaries, or the original source. I'm assuming that it is only for the source.
The actual ISO image isn't GPL'ed. They own the copyright on that, so you can't just go give away a copy. They also own the copyright on all of the binaries. They might be compelled to allow you to transfer the some of the binaries, but they don't have to let you do it in the specific structured way they did. In fact they can't, as they have 3rd party software that they can't allow you to transfer.
Finally, whoever owns the support agreement, just agree to these terms, and can't get out of the terms for the first year after purchase (I.1.2). Everyone who has a support agreement, must not install the software on any additional machines. They got around the GPL requirements, by not making it a requirement on the binaries, but by making it a requirement for support (and not letting transferring the binaries to you, until you agree to this). According to the license you agreed to, unless RedHat makes a material breach of the license, or you agreed up front to a different set of terms, you are bound to the support contract for the term of 1 year.
So I wouldn't go around telling people they can violate a legal contract they have agreed to. It isn't a very smart thing to do. Unless you have a different agreement, or you have a sound legal analysis that contradicts this, I'm pretty sure you are committing copyright infringement if you have multiple copies installed.
For that matter, I'm not sure it is legal to use the software without support. There is nothing in the license which grants you rights to use it. (There is nothing saying you can't either, but it's not explicity stated that after the support is terminated you still have a license to use any of their copyrighted materials). However, I'm very doubtful that RedHat will be coming after anyone. That doesn't change the techincal points of the legality or not.
If anyone has any analysis that differs from this, I'm all ears. I'd love to be able to buy the first copy, and install it lots, and lots. However, I've carefully read the agreement, and I don't believe I can legally do that. Plus if I don't have the support agreement, I have to build all of my own updates. Really not something I'm looking forward to doing.
Kirby
I've read it a dozen times, though IANAL.
Zip on down to Appendix #1...
"With the exception of certain image files identified in Section 2 below, the license terms for the components permit Customer to copy, modify, and redistribute the component, in both source code and binary code forms."
The software (RHEL) and support services are SEPARATE. Don't buy one, install a thousand times then use RHN -- you're in violation.
Hell, just borrow a copy from someone and install if you aren't going to use RHN or support.
Or am I mis-interpreting Appendix #1?
-Charles
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
While the support and software are separately licensed, you can't get a copy of RedHat's software without support (and you can't duplicate what RedHat gives out to anyone without modification).
I wonder how much trouble you'd get into just making new RPM's that are named the same, and just switching the blue and red bytes in the images.
I'm not sure that copying it and running it, will get you out of the other aspects of the terms "Installed Systems", but I'll buy into it for now. I'd actually have to get a real lawyer to be sure.
For my personal situation, I'd like to have a handful with support, and a ton without it. I'd prefer not to have to prove I did it correctly. Hence, I'm a White Box Linux fan... :-)
In 7 years of running Linux, I've never needed any support from anybody I couldn't get off mailing lists, deja news, and a good search engine. I don't have a problem paying for a copy, I'm just not interested in paying for that many copies for support I don't want or need. I need the support for Oracle (because Oracle could get support from RedHat on my behalf).
I think if you went to the trouble to strip off the RedHat RPM's, it'd all work out okay. Depending on how precisely "Installed Systems" is enforced in the Services contract. My next problem will be getting security updates on a regular basis.
Kirby
The whole paragraph:
While amusing, it's pretty clear that he was misquoted.
I am going out on a limb here to say that that was a very skillfully written summary. You took a couple of extra editorial leaps, but in general did a great job.
To make that work, you're then going to need some sort of built-in, federated intelligence that automatically discovers who's running what, when and where.
Every descent OS comes with one - it's called sys admin.
You're just lying. Linus said he doesn't care about kernel drivers binary compatibility (i.e. NVidia). The kernel developpers do every effort to keep userspace compatibility though, I even remember some performance enhancements have been withdrawn because they were slightly incompatible with some obscure application (e.g. running child first right after fork).
3) The code is likely just plain bad. It may need a major rewrite before others in the community could start to contribute.
According to someone who actually looked at the code it is pretty high quality
"Quality: Despite the above, the quality of the code is generally excellent. Modules are small, and procedures generally fit on a single screen. The commenting is very detailed about intentions, but doesn't fall into "add one to i" redundancy."
If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Probably. But, again, that's irrelevant. I didn't say anything about their comparable coding abilities, I just said they are almost certainly of comparable intelligence.
No probably about it.
IIRC, the 'Quick & Dirty Operation System'was written by some guy called Tim Patterson. QDOS was written to be file-structure compatible with CP/M and later evolved into MS-DOS/PC-DOS when the acronym was changed to mean 'Disk Operating System'.
The original author apparently once said that it was a hack at the time because he didn't have time to write a proper OS, and he never meant it to be the basis for what it became.
Fortunately the NT line of windows is VMS based rather than CP/M based like Windows 3.x/95/98/Me.
But as to the intelligence factor, look at how much time each of them has spent actually coding, vs. doing Business Management. Now, you may consider BM as requiring more intelligence to accomplish than creative coding; personally, I don't.
I regard Linus as a coding genius and Bill as a marketing genius.
What's harder, starting an OSS project and getting help from geeks to make it what it is today, or convincing the world that viruses, worms and rebooting are a normal and acceptable part of computing life?
You make the mistake of thinking you can educate the fundamental stupidity out of people. You can't.