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Ask OSDL CEO Stu Cohen About Linux TCO Studies
This morning OSDL and OSDL member Levanta jointly released a study done by Enterprise Management Associates called Get the Truth on Linux Management. For years, a proprietary software company in Washington State has run what they call a Get the Facts campaign about Linux, full of studies that invariably show Linux to be expensive, hard to maintain, and less than totally secure. Stu Cohen, as CEO of OSDL, a group "dedicated to accelerating the growth and adoption of Linux in the enterprise," will happily answer your questions about Linux vs. Windows studies and the myths and FUD that seem to hover over them. Expect Stu's answers to the 10 - 12 highest-moderated questions later this week.
This may seem like an inane question but why don't I see more of a push to get Linux into the realm of academia?
I know that Ubuntu has made strides to incorporate themselves into learning environments but where is the effort to alert students (primarily other than computer science majors) to the benefits of Linux?
When I was a freshman at the University of Minnesota, a friend handed me a CD distribution of Debian that would change my life. I knew of the Linux labs in the University but only now did they interest me. I'm now getting my masters at George Mason University and I don't believe there's a single Linux machine on campus. In fact, the whole Computer Science department has only two Sun servers to offer me an account on! Everything else is Microsoft!
Now you may lay claim that every computer science major these days is running Linux anyway. But how about the other areas of study? I used to take music theory and people would rant and rave about their Macs or one of various composing suites in Windows. I tried explaining that Linux has (certainly more affordable) solutions to offer in this department too but no one would even listen to me. It's not like they were mixing platinum selling records, they were just looking for software to write sheet music with.
I think that both Apple and Microsoft realize that the toys people have in college become the toys they demand in real life. So there are all these efforts to garner the student's interest hoping that they will use them in their careers.
They make it free (which Linux already is), they make it easy and they make it available.
So how about it? Why isn't the Linux community minting install discs and distributing literature on campuses? Why isn't Linux tailoring cheap solutions to K-12 schools that don't have the money for Windows anyway? Why do we risk letting someone leave academia without ever experiencing the real fruits of it?
If you are doing this (and I just don't know about it), what steps have you taken?
My work here is dung.
What I would really like to know is why Linux or Windows? Why hasn't there been a really good study that included BSD, Solaris, OSX, or even licensed variants of Unix? Is it all about Linux or is it about better operating systems?
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Why would you expect that the answers of someone "dedicated to accelerating the growth and adoption of Linux in the enterprise" would be more objective, in any way, than any of the reports created by pro-MS companies?
It just doesn't make sense...
How can we fix the problem of the way TCO studies handle security? In so many of them every OSS application under the sun gets tallied against Linux systems, regardless of how obscure, or unrequired that application may be. Yet all of the 3rd party things that have holes in them rarely seem to even get looked at when talking about Windows security. Firefox for example seems to get tagged frequently when talking about Linux security in these studies, but Firefox isn't integreated into Linux, and it runs on both platforms. IE on the other hand is integrated into the OS, sure you can not use it, but there is a ton of junk in Windows itself that requires the various bits and pieces of IE to operate correctly. What is it going to take for these studies to finally start comparing apples to apples in regards as to what really is part of the OS and what is required for it to run?
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
Bit of a silly question if you don't provide a list of what you want to run, are currently running, and am planning on running in the future :)
If you need MSSQL, you're SoL, if it's just a fileserver, samba will work fine, etc.
Splut.
Coz eternity my friend, is a long *ing time.
It's a Serious Question. Don't TCO costs end up coming down to how much you will pay employees, how many employees you need, and the price of software? Shouldn't any capable manager be able to estimate the costs themselves? After all, I'm certain TCO varies wildly from workplace to workplace, considering what kind of system is already in place, what software is readily available for an OS, and what skills your current employees have.
My question is: is there really a use for these reports other than for 'defense': positive propaganda versus negative propaganda?
As an aside, do these studies take into account the availability and flexibility of currently extant software? Is there even a way to turn that information into TCO?
Did you ever notice that *nix doesn't even cover Linux?
Maybe the TCO summaries are right after all?
Atleast partially that is.
Using the linux road, you have to pay competent people salary for actually knowing something about the system they're dealing with.
Anyone can get windows server up and running after 10 minutes of reading help files, but it won't be secure by a long shot.
I guess same applies for linux in some ways, but it's like comparing iron ball and snow ball in hell.
Both will melt down eventually if left unmaintained, but it's just matter of how long it takes.
And longer it takes, the more profit you make.
TCO might be higher, but you simply get more work done when your IT department doesn't have to spend 2 days every week reinstalling all workstations.
And getting more work done increases profits and in the long run, brings down the TCO, even if it's higher at the beginning.
TCO surveys are statistics, and statistics always tell what the collector wants them to say.
It's just matter how you count things.
There are no atheists when recovering from tape backup.
Why would anyone expect that the criteria of someone "dedicated to accelerating the growth and adoption of Linux in the enterprise" would be more objective or that the measurements would be more accurate than any of the "studies" done by pro-Microsoft companies?
I've seen pro-Microsoft studies that "extrapolate" data out for 5 years to get their "TCO" figures.
Not to mention that "TCO" figures are meaningless when compared between different companies. There are too many variations between the tech staff, the users, the apps, the hardware, remote vs local users, and so forth.