Report From "Get The Facts"

Richard W.M. Jones writes "Huw Lynes wrote an interesting report from Microsoft's "Get The Facts" show in London (earlier Slashdot story). Along with the report he provides some analysis of their apparent strategy, which includes equating "Shared Source" with "Open Source" and making out that Linux isn't free."

Comments

It's a super bad analogy

[CaptainZapp]

My absolute favourite part of the talk was when Barley started to extol the virtues of Windows because everything in it was made by one manufacturer. A fair point which would have been well taken had he not gone on to draw an idiotic analogy. He asked us to imagine an aeroplane where different components were made by different companies. Apparently he's never heard of Airbus.

Even worse, does Airbus (or Boeing for that matter) manufacture every single of a million parts in a plane themselves?

Hell no! Certainly not. There's an abundance of suppliers supplying parts for a plane, from the altimeter to the leather chairs in first class.

You don't even have to go so far as to look at the airplane industry. Car manufacturers make only a miniscule percentage of the components themsleves. The rest is manufactured and delivered by suppliers.

Otherwise the cost for a car would be comparatively so outrageously high like the cost for some uh! software...

Unfair comparisons... of course they're going to w

[LaserLyte]

Haha... so Microsoft's strategy of pushing the idea that Linux has an equal or greater TCO than Windows basically ignores the fact that Linux is free and that any businesses wanting to use it will naturally go for the most expensive possible distribution (i.e RedHat uber deluxe professional platinum addition for business).

Perhaps if they faced the "facts", their study might be worth something.

And as for the comparison of Linux to a DOS prompt... Microsoft seems to think that adding a huge bloated GUI to a server OS is going to improve things. Well, I say that any half-decent system administrator should be able to do his job completely from a command-line interface and should not need a GUI.

Yeah... Ok

[SamiousHaze]

The overall tone of this event makes it fairly clear as to Microsoft's anti-Linux strategy.

1.Claim that linux isn't free.
2.Pretend that Shared source is the same as Open Source
3.Make a big deal about the migration costs of moving to Linux
4.Use the forrester report to claim that Linux is insecure
5.Belittle the quality of the toolset available on Linux

Point 1 and 2 I won't dignify with a reply.
On Point 3 - Yes, there are migration costs... but that is a dumb argument. There is ALWAYS a migration cost when upgrading (horse and buggy to car - airtravel - spacetravel etc)

4. Yes, linux can be insecure ---- so can windows and anything else (except OpenBSD!! :P)

5. On this point, I dont' care who says what - Microsoft has better (and I mean this in all respects) tools available for Rapid development.

Gandi Quote is germane

[Gothmolly]

First they ignore you,
Then they laugh at you,
Then they fight you,
Then you win.

I'd say that we were at Stage 3 now, we were at Stage 2 last year and the year before.

Things are looking up!

Edinburgh event

[linuxci]

I was at the Edinburgh event last week which was the 2nd event in their roadshow.

Here's some advice for people who'll be at their next two events (Manchester this week I think, and Wales the week after (Newport, IIRC)):

- Plan in your coffee break questions to ask them (be careful about providing them with the question on paper as they reworded mine - try and ask it in person at the end).

- Ask more about IBM involvement in Linux, they tried to claim that IBM were trying to lock people in to Linux, try and provide counter examples as to how it'd be easier to escape an IBM stranglehold than an MS one.

- They cite interoperability as one of Microsoft's main aims, people mentioned the office file formats and recent patents, but they hedged around the question, someone needs to seriously challenge them on this at the event.

- Talk to the other delegates in clear concise language why you think Linux should be considered as a serious option. Don't sound like a zealot and accept there's many times when Windows would be more suitable than Linux.

- Point out to people that open source doesn't always mean Linux, in fact doesn't always mean changing an OS at all. There's some quality open source software for Windows - promote Firefox and OpenOffice as examples

"Linux isnt free?"

[bludstone]

Really, Well, I just installed mandrake 10 this weekend to replace w2k on an old pc. My first linux. And it was, free.

I downloaded it, burned it, and installed. I had minimal help and everything went very smoothly.

Er, right.

"linux ISNT free?" "really? heres 10 free copies of mandrake right now." "youll have to pay to support it." "ah, then dont you mean linux SUPPORT isnt free? Is windows support free?" *insert adhominem attack they are trained to do here*

I imagine the best thing you can do at these is hand out free linux install cds, and allow people to make the choice for themselves.

Again, mandrake 10 was SUPRISINGLY easy to get working.

Re:Spin Doctors

[chabotc]

Honestly that is, and always has been one of the strong points of Microsoft. It's not without reason that the famous Balmer 'developers -developers - developers - developers - developers - developers - developers' chant happened.

Their toolkits are well documented and very easy to get started in. Also a lot of their development (& -tools) is focused not on making the right choice, but giving the most fancy features and ease of use to developers and users alike. Because of this there are many many Windows developers who with limited skill can already contribute to the windows software pool, and thus making more software available for Windows, and making getting Windows developers cheaper then getting Linux developers.

However there are also those who feel this is also the weakness of Microsoft. By making API's and tools that are not technicly the best solution it'll burst in due time (who doesn't know of the socket handle leak that MS can't fix because otherwise they'd break 1000's of apps). Also by making it easy to develop for and maintain Microsoft software, the engineers and administrators often have no clue of underlying issues thus leading to lots of bugs and exploitable situations..

There's something to be said for forcing people to understand a situation before allowing them to contribute :-)

Re:"Linux training costs were 15% higher on averag

[unoengborg]

15% higher. Not a chance

If I took a Unix course back in 1989 (before Linux even had emerged) most of what I learnded then would still be somewhat useful in Linux of today. How much would 15 years old windows knowledge help me in manageing windows XP of today. Not much I think. Most likely I would have to have more frequent retraining if I run windows.

Re:It's True About Desktop Management Tools

[aegilops]

Just to expand upon some of your examples a little:

Software package distribution to end-users (a la SMS or Group Policy)

Desktop lockdown policies, e.g. very restricted access for, say, a call centre, "normal" access for the general users, maybe a more elevated level of access for the odd rogue punk

Desktop roaming and profiles, i.e. a user should be able to log on to any desktop and receive all of his/her applications and data

Expanding the above point - if a PC fails, it should be trivial to either re-image or swap out the hardware and have the user back up and running almost immediately. I.e. no local data / no local installs

Strong method of validating integrity of the desktop, particularly in regulated industries (banking, pharmaceuticals etc) - i.e. how can you "prove" that the machine has not been tampered with, and so is operating correctly. Sounds daft? Try working in a regulated industry...

Hardware inventory / monitoring toolkits (in an ideal world, you'd have a single machine image for the whole company to make support of your desktop image easier, but life frequently isn't that simple)

Software inventory / monitoring toolkits (not all software will be freely licensed, you may be distributing some proprietary software that runs on your free systems

Remote control software to enable support staff to assist users remotely

Your examples of automatically distributing patches (and forcing, and preventing logon from un-patched machines) for both OS and applications is exactly right, along with having the control to test and select what patches are distributed to end users. No doubt many of my examples above are already addressed, and this is after all what you'd be paying a Linux expert to help you with (read: commercial support organisation and consultancy - IBM would likely be a good fit, along with many others). Remember, a corporation could well take the view that if it's worth doing, it's worth doing right - i.e. choose Linux for the right reasons, but don't automatically assume that they will want to do it for zero cost - both in the initial purchase price as well as the ongoing maintenance.

Aegilops