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Latest Ballmergram Bashes Linux TCO
Phoe6 writes "Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer has used the software giant's latest executive email to stoke up Microsoft's fight against the rise of Linux. The 2,600 word missive was titled 'Customer focus: comparing Windows with Linux and UNIX'. In it, Ballmer repeated the key themes of Microsoft's controversial Get The Facts campaign. Zdnet has its report here." Linuxworld also has a story.
What would we expect of Ballmer? "Okay, okay, I give in, Linux is actually better, cheaper, more stable, faster" and so on? Of course not. He is lying, true, but that is his job (used car salesmen, bow before Ballmer, for he is your god).
Stupidity is an equal opportunity striker.
Fellow slashdotter Bill Dog
Am I the only one who sees a strong parallel between a billionaire CEO like Ballmer telling his employess he "wanted truly independent, factual information" and say the President telling his intelligence analysts that he wants to know about, say WMDs in Iraq or ties to terrorists? I'm only 26, but I'm pretty certain that if a "senior Microsoft team led by General Manager Martin Taylor" had come back to Ballmer and said, "Sorry boss, but we just can't beat free when it comes to TCO between two functionally identical products" then our man Mr. Taylor would be out of a very very well paying job, and the assignment would be given to the next peon in line and the procedure iterated until the boss has the "facts" that he wants to hear. Then again, I believe this is the kind of thing they teach in MBA programs, so I suppose any executive worth their $200,000/annum would get the message the first time.
The Christian in me says it's wrong, but the corrections officer in me says, 'I love to make a grown man piss himself.'
Okay, but remember, they will then come up with the argument that the only reason that these things are not on Linux is because the people that write the trojans, worms, viruses, and spyware target the largest audience.
Nope. If you read the letter you might notice they came up with an even better one.
Ballmer - And as Yankee Group noted in its Linux, UNIX and Windows TCO Comparison study, "Linux-specific worms and viruses are every bit as pernicious as their UNIX and Windows counterparts - and in many cases they are much more stealthy."
So you see, Linux has all the same problems as Windows. They're just hidden better! Fear the unknown!
Nice how they use a single metric, cost of switching, Don't say much about cost post-switch that I see (though I skimmed pretty fast and didn't read any of the studies they link).
Under the security part, maybe they should have mentioned something about the extra cost the first time the next big Windows virus/trojan/worm hits the scene. Or the cost of simply keeping up with security and bug fixes.
Its not what they say, its what they don't say.
As a systems admin, you don't have to fuss around with kernels, you can also decide on one distribution if you want. Most distros are freely available on the net for download, so a discount isn't even needed. You can install it, set it up. run updates on it once in a while. Baseline security analyzer? Give me a break. Run a port scanner like nmap on the machine and run 'ps aux' to get a complete list of processes. Keep track of these and most security problems should be avoidable. Fedora does this, Red Hat does this, SuSE does this, the latest Ubuntu does this. You can use yum or apt, how much time does it take anyway? Dependencies are also handled by yum and apt, so no problems there. All these work.
Here's my question... if you're a systems administrator that believes that Windows 2003 is so easy to use, and takes little time, then why not use that extra time to learn the other side of things? You might actually like it if you read enough. Imagine the advantages of having both Windows and Linux on your resume. Or are Windows problems a little too much that you don't have time to learn? Imagine how much money your boss could save if you spent that extra time learning. Then he could get you to download Linux distros, and use those, without having to pay for additional licenses. Imagine the possibilities of opening your mind to new knowledge.
As a systems administrator and business owner, all I can say to you is... sheesh.