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Open Source Not That Open?
mstansberry writes "At the Open Source Business Conference last week, Microsoft's Shared Source mouthpiece Jason Matusow argued the point that open source isn't really open. He said you can't just go changing code on supported Linux offerings without paying extra to companies like Red Hat or Novell. So as Linux is commercialized, it becomes less open. While Matusow made good points during his presentation, many in the open source community are skeptical of the idea at best."
on what your definition of "open" is. Same defense, different Bill.
An objective evaluation from the leader in open source.
Come on... Microsoft!??!
It's a Microsoft spokesman saying it, it MUST be true!
sigfault. core dumped.
...if you're running something like RedHat Or Novell. Of course, for those running Gentoo, or Debian, or Slackware, or Peanut, or whatever, it still holds.
libertarianswag.com
Matsuow says: "you need to understand why you want to open certain software"
Now, presuming that he is disregarding any ideas of software being closed to *hem* increase profit, he doesn't really seem to get the idea...
I'd say that if anything, you should need to understand why you want to _close_ certain software.
His entire argument is that if you make changes to the source code, Red Hat support won't debug your modifications for you as part of their basic support package.
I can do whatever the hell I want with GPL'd open source, short of refusing to share my changes when distributing binaries to other users. Microsoft has all these licenses, but AFAIK they've released nothing of worth under any of them. I can't view or modify any significant Microsoft source without signing an NDA and paying millions of dollars, or risking serious prison time.
The key word here is "supported", you can't expect Redhat, Novell or even Microsoft to support your modifications.
If you don't want official support from any vendor, you modify away - and support it yourself.
Microsoft software isn't all that closed. There are always open holes to exploit.
sarchasm
It's open. You just can't force someone else to change their codebase. If you really want to change it you make and maintain a patchset or your own seperate version of the codebase. Look at how many different kernel sources you can get, yet very few of those patchset ever get applied to the "real" kernel at kernel.org.
The point is you can do whatever you want with the code, but you can't force someone else to use it. I mean think about it. Imagine a code repository where every developer could write anything and it was fully open. It would never build. Code that is good enough usually gets accepted upstream, that darwinistic process helps open source, not the opposite.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
I'm not a linux zealot (I use Win2000, Knoppix, and OpenBSD and most of the time only the Win2000) but I still say this is pure FUD etc.
/. has begun selling pagehits?).
I read the article and it's as thin as water. Nothing to see here (move along), not even anything real to discuss here (except perhaps that
this comment is provided "as is" and without any express or implied legibility or congruity [...]
From Wikipedia. Whatever you think about M$, the distinction between "open source" and "shared source" will be worth knowing going forward, and I'm skeptical of any source that claims Linux was the province of "the blue-haired ponytail set" in 2001. I don't even know what that means.
"Someone somewhere had to wear pants for the first time. The meek and indecisive do not change our world." -Montville
"But if a customer modifies the source code, [Red Hat] can't help you [without charging you extra]. They have to lock things down to provide value," Matusow said. "As open source becomes commercialized, it becomes less open."
Perhaps. But even so, the end user remains free to make changes. Even if the license (oddly) prohibited redistribution, supplying the source code to software with the software itself will always be better that not. Closed source is a dead end. End users have no choice, they must rely on the vendor to issue security patches and fix software.
This is not to say that every user will be tempted to change his/her software. The majority of users will be content with what is, and may not even be aware that the source is available. The freedom still exists, however.
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Many distros only come only with open source programs by default. Which you can go yourself and change without paying anyone anything.
And the Linux kernel is also open. Just don't expect your changes to necessarily go into effect on the 'official' kernel. Just like the MS's shared source code will have 1 official version and then whatever the customers changed out there which they can't even share with each other because they signed NDAs and whatnot up the wazoo just to see the code. Unlike Linux.
MS, stop attacking Linux and mind your own business. You have less and less credibility when you keep attacking Open Source in general with your FUD and your customers are catching on. It's better to salvage what dignity you have and shut up. If and when you stop spreading FUD, your credibility might go up and you can stop spending billions advertising yourself and attacking others. But then, that would totally go against the grain of what is a marketing company, not a software engineering company.
That's a new meaning for the phrase "lock things down" that I hadn't heard before. I don't believe redhat locks anything down. The customer might be responsible for fixing problems with their own changes, but that wouldn't affect the support that redhat provides (i.e. so long as the problem was not caused by a customer change).
In effect, it's more FUD from M$. They really appear desperate now, grasping at any possible argument against Open Source. I didn't see the M$ spokesman telling the audience that Microsoft would support its own software which had been altered by customers.
So Mr Matusow, please explain again, how a license which allows customers to do more than your license allows is bad for those customers? That's like the RIAA claiming that 20-more years of copyright post death of author is good for the consumer.
If your paying for support, which the article implies, then of course if you customize your kernel and system over a standard patch level, then yes, the support should cost more.
AFAIK, one can still get those distros without having to buy a support contract.
That's not really the point. First of all you CAN alter the source if your need is desperate enough. Thus if some app needs your change you can weigh the pros and cons of blowing support vs getting the enhancement. - CHOICE. Secondly, if Red Hat dies and goes broke you have the source. Thirdly, you can make your enhancement and submit it to the maintainer and with a bit of luck it will come out in the next version of RedHat as the official supported version. Fourthly, somebody else might scratch the same itch and submit the patch which comes out in the next version.
What TFA is saying (while being overly general) is that when you move outside of the box to an unsupported configuration, you lose support -- and if you want support, you'll pay through the nose for it.
What the article doesn't say, is that M$ has the exact same stance. You run 3rd party software with Microsoft Exchange, you lose support from Microsoft on not only Exchange, but probally your install of Windows 2003 Advance Server. Go read your EULAs from top-to-bottom, and you'll see what I mean. For any Microsoft product.
God I hate people slinging FUD around.
da w00t. mtfnpy?
For a while, I ran Red Hat.
Why is Bob Young posting as AC? Come on, Bob, show some backbone - we won't be that hard on you!
"He's a god; it'll take more than one shot." â" Lady Eboshi, Mononoke Hime
In the meanwhile, those who know and care will buy the best option available, while looking at historical data for reliability, TCO, and ownership experience... and then laugh at those who run the American software/vehicle upgrade treadmill.
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The point of contention is open source vs. standardized distribution. Once you make a modification, your code base is no longer the "standard" distribution, be it RedHat, gentoo, or Slack. Therefore you really can't get support for it, free or otherwise (what, are you going to post on a forum "well, I tweaked this and this..."). So as Linux pushes towards standardization effectively the open-ness is still there and available to you but is marginalized in the sense that once you make changes then you aren't standard anymore.
It's not a distribution thing its a philosophical thing.
To make an allusion to a situation I have at work: we use a framework for development, and I have a tweaked copy I use for a pet project. But I don't dare ask for support on it, because I made modifications to the code beyond the specifications of the code. I can do that, because I am a developer and have rights to the codebase, etc. but then its no longer a standard. I can't expect it to support other applications built for the main framework and vice versa, etc...
But in truth he makes a point - the core of the OS in general doesn't need to be messed with, most tweaks and alterations do/should occur at the application level.
Just my 2 cents worth,
-everphilski-
Scientist just discovered that air is not completely free! Researchers at Phillips Morris institute have completed a study that calculates the number of millicalories required for each breath of fresh air. This study is demonstrates that the air you breath is not entirely free but requires expenditure of energy and coordination of dozens of different muscles. This study is being release just prior to the companies announcement of a new product that uses a rechargable battery operated turbo-enhanced tobacco injection system.
By reading those comments I get an odd sensation that Microsoft is trying to use "developers, developers, developers" like a bunch of highly exploitable hippie enthusiasts.
diegoT
And i suppose its possible to change the code for a small fee in Windows then? Not? STFU then.
Ofcourse RedHat cant support somebody elses code, the programmer changing the code might as well be a monkey and there is no way RedHat can magically fix things if an idiot sits down and hits the keyboard with a pillow. What you can do is send those fixes upstream and if the fixes are good it will get incorporated into the next release.
HTTP/1.1 400
So I guess they are right: RedHat won't support a patch from out of the blue (say a patch I made for my ultra-custom setup) without testing (which might cost RH consult billable time).
But that isn't a big deal because MS doesn't either. It isn't like MS will support driver modification from ATI let alone anything I could come up with either so what is the advantage of MS's way?
I'm not sure where the pay through the nose thing came from but between Taos, Whitebox, Centos et al I don't see having a supported distro a big expense. If you want changes that might break something you make sure you don't. Big deal. How Microsoft competing against that? And on what planet wouldn't changes to the core operating system be problematic?
Quack, quack.
Redhat wont go the extra mile to support some code that they have supplied and I have modified.
Wow that's preposterous.
What next? Ford wont honour my new vehicle warranty if I modify the engine?
Mongrel News all the news that fits and froths
Oh, but there's more. If your mods are excellent and usefull, they might be rolled into the upstream sources and officially "supported" by having others continue to mod and improve things for you. That's why programs like the GNU debugger have 87 authors, which is way more resources than any "traditional" company can afford to lavish on any program.
This is a typical Microsoft smear that should backfire every time. They take their perceived weaknesses and project them onto others. This form is more insulting than most. The unstated argument is, "When X grows up, they will be just like us in all the bad ways but lack our strengths." Everytime some M$ spokesvole says something like this, rest assured it's an admission they don't have something people really want, they are not going to provide it and someone else does it better.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Here they go again, saying that Red Hat equals Linux. Hey I got one word for their comparison... CentOS. It's RedHat EL without all the trademarked stuff. And yes, they could make all the changes and offer it under CentOS if they wish. Their big point is that changes to Redhat's codebase isn't going to go back into Redhat's Final Product necessarilly.
So? Roll your own distro. Can you do that with Windows? No. Can I tweak XP and sell it as my own? No. Better yet, can I tweak the codebase for Windows Server 2003 so that I have a company wide distro for our internal systems? Hell no.
I'm sorry but this Microspin Doctor's argument looks to be in beta still. As per usual, I don't expect Microsoft's final argument to be worth anything until the third release.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
OK -
first off, the argument went like this:
Say you're running SAP or some other large enterprise system. Say it's running on Linux. The fact that it's Open Source doesn't gain you much. You're extremely unlikely to be able to change things as companies like SAP, Oracle, etc. all specify exactly which versions of some of the various fiddly bits of Linux they support running their application on. If you deviate from those supported configurations - they don't support it.
And guess what - it's true.
Oracle isn't into supporting you bump-reving your kernel, and your upgrading to the latest c lib. They'll test a working stack - identify known issues (and work-arounds) - and that becomes a "known good" configuration. So - while you can do whatever you want with the source, that doesn't mean that other people are obligated to support it.
In any case - it's sort of a straw man argument. The fact of the matter is (and he even pointed this out) for the most part most people just use software. They aren't interested in actually modifying it in any way (substantively speaking). They aren't going to look at the source code, change it and re-compile it. Only 1% or 2% of software users are in that class. So realistically the fact that you can modify the source isn't such a huge advantage in practice. Other people have cited here what the real benefits are: Freedom of choice - you can still choose to make the change and support it yourself, and security - if the company supplying your software goes away, you still have the source...
And I see a lot of people reiterating the following OoC (Out of Context):
"But if a customer modifies the source code, [Red Hat] can't help you [without charging you extra]. They have to lock things down to provide value," Matusow said. "As open source becomes commercialized, it becomes less open."
What he meant by that - and clarified - was that Red Hat has supported configurations, and other software vendors upstream (Oracle, SAP) have supported configurations. They "lock things down" (not in the literal sense, damn us programmers are always soooo literal - I'm suprised more of us aren't fundies) to provide value - is simply saying they limit the scope of what they support... Deviations from those known configurations are not generally well supported. I'm very curious about how well Red Hat supports the following on the current set of it's "Enterprise" edition:
1> Downgrade a core component such as the C Lib, or similar library or set of system utilities that a lot of the system relies on.
2> Upgrade a core component as above.
3> Crossgrade a component like the file system to a different one.
Once that's been done, I'm also wondering what kind of support you'd get out of a company like Oracle or SAP...
I disagree with this statement 100%. I routinely write software that I primarily test by compiling with GCC that works out of the box with ICC v8, MSVC [CL version 6, 7 and 8] and CC from various UNIX'es [e.g. AIX, IRIX and HP-UX]
Yes, GCC supports things like a smart assembler inliner and packed structures. But I ask you, why doesn't MSVC? In this day and age it still uses the "we put code in verbatim with params" model that Watcom made famous in the EARLY NINETIES.
With GCC I can say "pass me these variables in registers" and then mix with C and ASM code in the same routine. GCC will sort out which registers to assign and even alias the variables automatically as possible.
With MSVC it's totally atomic. You can't tell it to alias registers with variables and once you leave your asm block you're totally fucked.
HOWEVER, when striving to write portable code GCC is a hell of a lot more compliant. Where are "long long"s in MSVC? Where are VLA and other C99 keywords?
Speaking as someone who actually works on a diverse set of platforms I'd like to qualify your post as "cheapshot".
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
I mean, if I were to change the Linux memory manager and ask for support from Red Hat, RH might have an issue with that. And if I were to change the Windows XP memory manager... Um, where do I get the source code for the Windows XP memory manager?
Strangely enough I have a friend who did just that. Now the research project he was working on had been granted access to Windows NT source after signing NDAs but the license was transferable if the project moved to another university, they were not prohibitted from publishing, etc. It was a pretty reasonable deal.
Some customers have source as well for the very reason many around here trumpet open source, they want the ability to make changes *iff* necessary. I know I've been very fortunate in alwyas being able to get employers to purchase source licenses for libraries we wanted to use, not the less expenside binary only licenses. It always seems to have paid off.
So open source's advantage is not that you get access to source, it is that little guys get access to source. When you are a big enough and you are buying enough everything is negotiable, even access to source code.
They have to lock things down to provide value," Matusow said. "As open source becomes commercialized, it becomes less open."
Biased much? No, to provide value they don't need to lock things down (although last I heard DRM wasn't intalled on Linux distro's, you don't need a registration key to use a distro, you don't have to call up to register your installation. I'd hate to see what Matusow claims Windows is, if he believes Linux is locked down). To provide SUPPORT they need to lock it down. Linux has been able to offer value in it's distro's for years without locking it down. Although value is subjective, so I'm sure many MS cronies will disagree.
Norman Cook's Ode to Sl
If you go with Open Source, you have the option to spend time/money to fix things. If you really need to fix things, that's what you do.
If you go with MicroSoft or other closed source products, when you are up shit creek, you are relying on them to give you a patch. Maybe you don't really matter to them (or whatever vendor sold you the stuff) -- in which case, you can go jump in a lake.
Sometimes the problem isn't that there's a bug in the closed source stuff, but that your stuff is interacting with it in a way that makes it misbehave. Perhaps the system is documented, in which case you need to read a thousand pages in the reference manual, hoping to find the requirement that you've failed to meet -- thereby causing the failure.
Or you call the vendor:
You: "it's broke."
Vendor: "Why? What are you doing? Nobody else has this problem"
You:"Well, I don't really know."
Vendor: "Thanks for calling. Please get back to us when you have more info."
On the other hand, if it is open source, you can fire up the debugger, find the problem, and work aroudn it or fix it -- all of that is perhaps faster than going through the support process. If you do a big project, the odds of you encountering a roadblock like this approach 100% percent. If you are pessimistic about the vendor and believe you can fix things, you pick open source.
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_
...on how much responsibility you want to take for the open source/free software you use. Honestly... when was the last time any of us really needed paid support for a lot of the most popular FOSS software? I haven't used paid support AT ALL since moving from Windows to Linux. I'm also very willing to take on the responsibility of solving problems with the FOSS software I use at work. Many times the "worst" of it is in an extended Google search since many other people are likely to have experienced the same problem that I have.
Now, regarding paid support... I have yet to have a paid support response that I feel warrants the highly expensive support contract fees we pay where I work. If we're paying thousands a year for support I want 24x7 and I want qualified support staff. I just had an experience over the weekend (involving the migration of software from one system to another) for software that we pay a LOT for support services. It was dismal as usual. We called the company's after hours support line at about 9:30PM on Saturday night. It was automated and stressed that we'd better be in a down/critical situation. We left our message with the correct information regarding contact and the problem being experienced.
The message on their end stated as 60 minute response time. However, their support person managed to call the wrong number and we didn't hear anything. So we called back and actually got a human this time. After talking to the support person for a while, the person said they would call us back after doing some research. Since this product is HIGHLY PROPRIETARY, my Google searches only brought back two responses to the error message we were getting on our server. And those search results were only viewable in cached form. They were... cached web sites that use the same producvt who were experiencing the same error. That is to say the cached pages were just those sites displaying the same error at one point. No forum discussions. No knowledgebase articles. Nothing helpful.
Eventually we got a call back from support and this person had tripped through their internal knowledgebase which gave the most common cause of the error with no other suggestions. We verified that it wasn't the most common factor causing our error after which the support person said, "Well, I'm sorry folks. Maybe you should move back to the old system". WTF?! Fortunately, we pressed them to find someone else to give us a better answer and we eventually got a call from someone else who asked more pointed questions that eventually led to a solution but it took three hours to get to that point.
Ideally, we should have gotten a call from the second person right off the bat since our details were very specific. And that person should have been knowledgable enough to know for certain what was causing the problem. For god sakes, we're paying a LOT of money for support. Enough to staff one person yearly very comfortably. We should have had an answer within no more than 90 minutes. If this had been a FOSS project instead of proprietary crap, I would have had an answer in minutes since the error is definitely caused by a very finite list of factors. Sadly, that is not the case with proprietary software. And this is one of the BETTER experiences I've had with paid support!
The usual is more along the lines of me calling an issue in and having to hound them every few hours or days until I get an answer. Many times the answer is just, "uhhhhh... hmmmm... it SHOULD work...". I'm sorry but I'm more than willing to replace proprietary stuff with well known, well supported FOSS offerings: Apache, BIND, ISC DHCP, the Linux kernel, Bash, OpenSSH, OpenVPN, etc... And if I really need a fast answer that I didn't find with a Google search, there are always FOSS coders that will fix stuff for a reasonable fee that ISN'T the equivalent of a year's salary. This Microsoft guy doesn't know what he's talking about.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
This is really nothing more than another Microsoft expression of arrogance.
I mean they do have the singularity OS....
You're telling me. FYI, there was once a large retailer who had over 1000 stores whose customer value cards authed thru a central farm of NT servers. The problem was that these servers would crash on a regular basis and arguably cost the company over a million dollars per hour in downtime when it happened.
To get to the root of them problem, they bought expensive specialized hardware, put up big money for a custom tcp/ip stack, and scheduled nightly reboots, but still nothing helped. So they flew in experts from all over thw world, who eventually came back to them and said there was a flaw on the OS. Then they went to Microsoft, and in not so many words got the finger even though they would have certainly been willing to pay big bucks to fix it if they could.
So how do I know about this? because I was one of the people hired to help the move over to Solaris at great great! expense to them. But their reboot problem was finally resolved.
So really, at least Red Hat is willing to take your money and not leave you screwed. And why is that? Because if RedHat won't do it someone elese would because Linux is FOSS and that forces people to compete off of merits and not by giving customers the finger when service and support don't fit into a companies master monopoly strategy.
So excuse me, but this has got to rank as the most blazing hypocracy I've ever seen. I'm sorry to see that your post is rated as flamebait at this time, because Microsoft truely is ARROGANT by the words very definition. They're gonna get what's comming to them, and nobody is going to cry a tear.
From my point of view this really puts the blame on the comercial vendors. The fact that they only support one configuration on one specifik platform makes the OSS alternatives look much better from a customers view.
I do alter source code pretty often infact. It has been invaluable to me at work since i can find an error, fix it and continue as nothing happened. I have had problems in commercial software that hasnt been fixed for years and could do nothing.
HTTP/1.1 400
1. RedHat's distros come with (backward) compat libraries and compilers packages (optional to install) with their enterprise products. I believe the that between the two you have most things covered. The compat libraries are typically required by Oracle ...
2. You might get away with core upgrades, if it lives on an extras disk. I haven't explored them... anyone? However, if people complain loudly enough and the change isn't that major, they have been known to include things that were intended for a future release, or were even being deliberately excluded. A good example is their reluctant support for the features of QLogic FC HBAs. It took months to get them to stick it into EL3. AFAIK no clients actually paid for it (all they really had to do was incorporate the vendor's own code, and that doesn't taint the kernel), and even though the vendor's drivers were eventually compiled in, the user had to know what symbolic links and modules.conf changes to make to get it to work... before that I was downloading the source and compiling in the vendor's driver. RedHat wouldn't have supported any I/O related issues to those disks, I'm sure, but they would still support configuration of the web server!
3. RedHat have deliberately left lots of things they will refuse to support out of their kernel releases. Reiserfs is a good example of this. If you want it, you have to install the source rpm, reinstate the config and compile the modules for yourself. I do however find it very annoying that we need to in the first place. But then if you don't like it, you can always go with SuSE.
The downs may seem very significant, but the only issues this causes to the likes of me is when the hardware compatibility matrix is affected. I like to be able to dial 1-800-REDHAT and have the expectation of a reasonable answer to a reasonable question in a reasonable amount of time. Now if only they could get the answers right more often! :)
GPL licenced Open Source Software is the only kind there is.
[sigh]
Microsoft knows full well of BSD licenced software. They just prefer not to mention it since it would make their bullshit clearly that.
I guess while Microsoft slogs it out with "Linux", Sun and Apple, this will make BSD the "meek"?
War crimes, torture, lies, illegal spying... Would someone give Bush a blowjob, already, so he can be impeached?
An IT manager may look at this argument and conclude there is no advantage to open source solutions, in that there is no point having solutions that are not supported. The manager may conclude closed source is a better choice; while no self-modifications can be made, at least the system is supported in its entirety.
At the end of the day, your average IT manager needs to desperately separate him or herself from the technology. Otherwise, they get completely snowed under doing technical work that should have been delegated. When there is an option to pay for support, most will take it. The argument is powerful in that it contends as there is no option for support of changes, so there is no ability to make changes. So why buy open source as opposed to a fully supported Microsoft product?
Very smart implication, I think anyway.
The thing to remember is that not EVERYONE needs to change the source for ANYONE to benefit, ONLY one needs to change the source for EVERYONE to benefit.
Welcome to the land of the free...pay toll ahead...no photography...please open your bag...
Few if any competent companies would expect that they can modify the source willy nilly and then expect direct support on what _they_ have done from the distribution vendor. I mean, if you have an understanding of the process of software development and have spent 5 minutes reading about the Open Source movement, then you'll understand that it is a completely impractical, if not irrational, way of working.
When has this approach ever been promoted by the Open Source community? This sounds like only something a PHB could arrive at, following a methodology of gleaning an understanding of OS while walking by the cubicle farm and overhearing casual conversations.
Seriously, to me it seems like Microsoft sat around a table brainstorming for potential negative aspects of OS that they could market to suitably gullible people. I guess they feel sufficiently threatened to roll with even the weak results of that session. I hope the audience laughed at the guy, and told him to go back to counting the cash piles back at Redmond.
In other words, they're setting up a strawman (by claiming that open source is something it is not), and then attacking that. Very clever, given that few people outside the scene (and not even everybody in the scene) know what open source really is.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
From TFA:
``Shared source is Microsoft's foray into community development, started back in 2001 when Linux was just a hobby for the blue-haired ponytail set.''
Excuse me? Am I delusional or were major, reputable companies already using and supporting Linux in 2001?
Had this nonsense been coming from one of Linux's adversaries, I would have understood, but this is coming from the reporter!
I guess, by the same token, Linux was created in 1991, while Microsoft was still struggling to establish a foothold on the PC desktop market.
Please forward my (and your own) complaints to the reporter and the editor's.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
I have a number of production servers to this day still running RedHat Linux 7.2. They are patched and up to date, even though RedHat axed support for RedHat long ago. I spend very little time doing so, because Progeny came to the rescue allowing me to milk another couple years out of otherwise perfectly happy, capable, production servers.
Also, there's the Fedora Legacy project which has picked up RedHat 7.3 as well, providing yet another option for administrators of "axed support" distros.
Let me ask you this - what companies or groups have stepped up to the plate to support Win9x after Microsoft's abandoning of the platform?
I guess Windows is really not that open, is it?
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
"Are you suggesting that Microsoft will turn down your money for a support call on a Windows XP BSOD because you have installed Firefox? I doubt it."
The EULA you agreed to says they can. In practice this means they will still take your money, blame the other software and close the case. Either that or like you said they will ask you to install a new server with only MS software on it, load all your data to it and then try to replicate the problem. After a week of blowing your sysadmin's time you won't be able to replicate the problem, they will take your money and close the case.
Yes, I have been there, done that. They once asked us to ship our entire database to them. The CIO flipped. Imagine sending all your customers, vendors, transactions and all kinds of sensitive data to MS!. Trust me they know how to get you to close those pesky tickets.
evil is as evil does
There also wasn't anyone to sue if something went wrong. And there wasn't documentation. And there wasn't a 5 year road map so nobody was in control of its future. And more recently, you could be exposed to legal uncertainty.
Well, people aren't buying that old FUD anymore. So now we've got the new and improved FUD.
Now you can't get support if you've modified the code.
Next thing you know, there won't be documentation available for your own modification.
And then there won't be anyone to blame/sue if your own modifications don't work.
Your whole company will have an uncertain future because your modifications don't have a 5 year roadmap from an industry leader in the software biz (that consistently misses its own goals, but nevermind that detail). No 5 year roadmap = uncertain future.
Worst of all, your own modifications might have legal uncertainties, possibly infringing upon someone else's patents or other so-called intellectual property. You could be exposed to lawsuits or other frightening uncertain legal woes.
Be affraid. Very affraid. And also uncertain and filled with doubt!
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
Just like how the unions are saying that Proposition 75 is a way to silence union members. What is is is to say that the union can only take money out member's paychecks for political campains, after they get permission. Not jump through hoops to get a refund of polical dues. Or Proposition 75 will cut school funding. But it actually limits the amounts of spending increases.
Fight Spammers!
It quotes a total of three people: one MS rep repeating the company line of FUD and baseless assertion, and two "experts" who basically parrot the rep. There is no critical eye turned toward Microsoft, only toward those dirty hippies trying to free people from the grasp of monopolistic software companies. At no point does the writer even try to inject any sort of meaningful discourse or contrast.
This doesn't surprise me, considering the source (a CIO magazine).
Dang. That'd be a great business model.
Why didn't we think of that?
Oh, wait...
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
Clinton's defense wasn't a technical fallacy; it was an attempt to mislead by exploiting the logical gaps in the terms of his opponent. The strategy is simple, but you have to be smart and have the force of personality to control your opponent. You look for something that is at least a tiny bit vague in his assumptions or definitions and repeatedly demand he make it more and more precise, until he inadvertently leaves out whatever it is he has in mind that's important to him. Sooner or later, this has to happen because every edifice of human reasoning has at least some rotten timbers in it. You then build a logically unassailable but sophistic argument based on his own definitions that leads away from where he wants to go to where you want to go. If your opponents states, preferably forcefully and emotionally, that an animal is a crow if and only if it is black, then you go on to argue that a black cat is a crow. It's easy to spot the falsehood, but hard to discredit the source of the falsehood if it was yourself.
The argument in this case is closer to the strategy the cigarette companies used on tobacco's addictiveness. In that one you pick an arbitrary definition of your own -- a straw man -- then quickly move on and hope your audience doesn't have time to realize the definition you've used is loaded. You help this process by passing over it quickly, or by referring to it without ever stating it explicitly, and moving on to emotional or inflammatory rhetoric.
The distinction is this: in one case you force the other side to provide you with the faulty definition. In the other you rely on the other side carelessly accepting a definition you supply.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
"An IT manager may look at this argument and conclude there is no advantage to open source solutions, in that there is no point having solutions that are not supported. The manager may conclude closed source is a better choice; while no self-modifications can be made, at least the system is supported in its entirety."
With Open Source you can.
A. Modify nothing had have full support
B. Modify somethings and have support on what you have not modified.
C. Can fix problems or ad features yourself and get them added to the distro.
D. Support yourself if you have the staff since you have the source.
E. Find an other vendor that will give you the support you want since Linux is "multi sourced".
With Windows.
A. You can not modify or enhance Windows and you get the support that Microsoft will give you at the cost they want to charge but only as long as they are willing to provide it.
It was traditional that "Big" companies would avoid single source products like the plague. That is why back in the day Intel would let other companies manufacture Intel chips. That is how AMD got in to the X86 business. The fact that Linux is not single source has got to be a big deal. If Red Hat does you wrong you can go to Novel. If Novel isn't your cup of tea then jump to what ever Mandrake is called this week. Choice is good.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.