Microsoft Customers Balk at Hard Sell

HangingChad writes "ComputerWorld is running an article about Microsoft's latest type of sales force scare tactic. Apparently Microsoft is using the new title of 'engagement manager' to attempt sales via intimidation. From the article: 'Indeed, according to Microsoft's Web site, the responsibility of someone with Lawless' title of "engagement manager" is to "perform as an integrated member of the account team, drive business development and closing of new services engagements in targeted accounts."'"

Comments

Uhh. Yeah. It's called an account manager.

[windowpain]

This is something new and intimidating?

Re:Uhh. Yeah. It's called an account manager.

[sconeu]

RTFA. She was threatening license audits.

Re:Uhh. Yeah. It's called an account manager.

[windowpain]

Account manager + Microsoft = inevitable underhanded tactics.

It's just Bill and his minions being their autistic, demanding, clueless selves.

Re:Uhh. Yeah. It's called an account manager.

[DaHat]

Sure by saying this I will be labeled as a Microsoft lover and what not... but honestly... I fail to see the problem here.

It would be irresponsible for Microsoft NOT to investigate allegations of piracy at this level as was likely the initial cause of the emails in question. Sure they could turn it over to the BSA, however for all we know this could have been a report to a person who was ill-informed of the proper procedure for relaying reports of piracy and took it upon themselves to investigate.

After such an investigation both parties tend to want the violator to be legit so having access to a sales department (or being within one) does help that make that easier afterwards.

Re:Uhh. Yeah. It's called an account manager.

[mattkinabrewmindspri]

I've always wondered(and this is a serious question, so please forgive my ignorance), what makes business owners comply with a BSA license audit?

If I own a business, I wouldn't want anyone who didn't work for me to touch any of my computers, much less use them, and much less go snooping around on them looking for something to incriminate me or my business. I assume most business owners feel the same way.

Re:Uhh. Yeah. It's called an account manager.

[Marxist Hacker 42]

After such an investigation both parties tend to want the violator to be legit so having access to a sales department (or being within one) does help that make that easier afterwards.

The problem is she wasn't satisfied with the same evidence the BSA would have been. The BSA would have taken the evidence of the audit, ran off to check it against Microsoft's records, and be done with it. She rejected the evidence and tried to send a SPY into his organization.

Re:Uhh. Yeah. It's called an account manager.

[misleb]

Good question. You'd think they would require some kind of court order. Maybe the BSA threatens to sue.

-matthew

Re:Uhh. Yeah. It's called an account manager.

[Anonymous Coward]

Usually the threat of Litigation. I'm not sure what the penalties for an unlicensed copy of windows xp/office/whatever, but I'm sure its more expensive than 500 bucks a copy.

Re:Uhh. Yeah. It's called an account manager.

[Richard Steiner]

Fear? The fact that the BSA has a reputation for levying six-digit fines probably plays a role, although how they could legally do that without involvement from the courts is somewhat beyond me.

Re:Uhh. Yeah. It's called an account manager.

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine that they invited the consultant over, and on his arrival, took him into the *server* room which happens to be in the basement, and locked him up. Then get back to lawless saying the consultant never arrived. After how many consultants do you think M$ will give up?
    Or cut a deal with the consultant and claim to have an excessive number of licenses that can be sold in the secondary market unless a refund is provided.

Re:Uhh. Yeah. It's called an account manager.

[hackstraw]

She rejected the evidence and tried to send a SPY into his organization.

OK, but reading the article, I kept thinking to myself, "Who takes these kinds of jobs, and why do they try so hard at them?"

Are these people on commission or are they just naturally assholes and like it that way?

Re:Uhh. Yeah. It's called an account manager.

[sexyrexy]

It's entirely possible that this was simply the act of one stupid account manager who is very aggressive and should probably be fired. People often make the mistake of assuming that [giant organization] is a unified organism with a singular purpose. The reality is that every organization is made up of individuals, each of whom has their own distinct desires and ambitions, and personality traits. It's not at all unusual for a sales manager to say something really, really stupid, as probably every person here can confirm.

Re:Uhh. Yeah. It's called an account manager.

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Chances are option #2- just like when the guy who wrote "Thank you for not smoking" asked the lobbyist why she did what she did "It's a way to pay the mortgage". Pretty bad that we're in a culture where there are so few jobs that those who are good at sales have to work on commission and be total assholes- but that's what you get for outsourcing almost everything else a person can do to earn a living. They take the job because they have to- they're paid on commission to convince them to set asside their ethics for bigger sales.

Re:Uhh. Yeah. It's called an account manager.

[Marxist Hacker 42]

You've been reading BOFH I see....

Re:Uhh. Yeah. It's called an account manager.

[Secrity]

I pick #1 and #2. These sales sharks are very predatory assholes and they are on commission - they are pros and will do and say ANYTHING to make a sale, including getting people fired because they wouldn't look at the shark's product. Top performing sales sharks (i.e., the biggest assholes) typically get promoted and eventually end up in the executive ranks in companies. I also believe that these sharks are the assholes in the expensive cars that go around cutting people off on the Beltway.

Re:Uhh. Yeah. It's called an account manager.

[cp.tar]

So I won't be at fault if I tag this article as 'blackmail, intimidation, racketeering'?

Re:Uhh. Yeah. It's called an account manager.

[kjots]

Chances are option #2- just like when the guy who wrote "Thank you for not smoking" asked the lobbyist why she did what she did "It's a way to pay the mortgage"...

The correct way to deal with this situation is to burn her house down, preferably with an unextinguished cigarette butt. Make sure she's not home, though; she can't appreciate the irony if she's dead.

Re:Uhh. Yeah. It's called an account manager.

[rseuhs]

It would be irresponsible for Microsoft NOT to investigate allegations of piracy at this level as was likely the initial cause of the emails in question. Sure they could turn it over to the BSA, however for all we know this could have been a report to a person who was ill-informed of the proper procedure for relaying reports of piracy and took it upon themselves to investigate.

You obviously didn't read the article because the Microsoft saleswoman wasn't even interested in licensing information (and why should she? She gets a bonus for sales, not for proving legitimate software).

it's all about obfuscation

[yagu]

What's up with Microsoft? I would recommend Thomas Peters' "In Search of Excellence" for their review. While I wouldn't agree 100% with all of "Search...", there are anecdotes and good evidence around "customer service", and what makes a company excellent.

Creating adversarial relationships, especially ones where Microsoft as much as accuses a customer of piracy (are we sure Microsoft hasn't purchased RIAA yet?) cultivates resentment and long term rot.

And now, Microsoft is creating account team members whose sole function is to instill FUD in their customer, intimidating them into shelling out even more money for services to ensure Microsoft checks and balances are in Microsoft's favor? Sheesh. This is a scam, pure and simple. As the article points out, if Microsoft truly thinks something is amiss "it sics the Business Software Alliance on the company. It doesn't turn the matter over to one of its sales managers".

Maybe Microsoft is doing this to themselves inadvertently, or maybe it's a strategy. From the Fine Article:

When I phoned Lawless to find out, she referred me to Microsoft's PR machine. The responses I got through that channel stressed that Microsoft's aim is to help customers navigate the complexities of software licensing and that one of the roles of engagement managers is to assist in that effort by informing customers of a potential licensing risk. I was told to attribute the responses to Lawless.

Microsoft's "complexities of software licensing" are the seed of irritation. Accusing customers of ripping them off because they can't figure these complex licenses out entirely is the fertilizer to grow that seed into full blown resentment.

If there were any real alternatives to technology in today's Microsoft dominated juggernaut, these "practices" would send customers screaming to the competition. Unfortunately, so far, there aren't.

Re:it's all about obfuscation

[PrescriptionWarning]

If there were any real alternatives to technology in today's Microsoft dominated juggernaut, these "practices" would send customers screaming to the competition. Unfortunately, so far, there aren't.

sure there are alternatives! They just aren't the easiest of them all, and that's where Microsoft really holds everyone in a stranglehold is that they have made everything "easier for everyone". I fully believe that everyone out there really wants to break away from Microsoft, just not everyone is willing to put the effort into it since its no easy undertaking at the moment. Given the choice to make a life size statue of Jesus out of Legos or a 4 inch model of Satan out of marshmellows, most would rather just go ahead and do the latter.

Re:it's all about obfuscation

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft's aim is to help customers navigate the complexities of software licensing and that one of the roles of engagement managers is to assist in that effort by informing customers of a potential licensing risk

or the Sopranos version

Wes offer yous a security plan to make sure nothing bad happens to yous or your family. God forbid.

Re:it's all about obfuscation

[P3NIS_CLEAVER]

This proves that Microsoft has never invented anything. Have you ever delbt with Oracle's sales department?

Re:it's all about obfuscation

[Fanboy Troy]

Actually your post reminded me of a bookmark I had laying around quite a while about why Ernie Ball dumped microsoft. FTA:

...Humiliated by the experience, Ball told his IT department he wanted Microsoft products out of his business within six months. "I said, 'I don't care if we have to buy 10,000 abacuses,'" recalled Ball, who recently addressed the LinuxWorld trade show. "We won't do business with someone who treats us poorly."

...What I really thought is that you ought to treat people the way you want to be treated. I couldn't treat a customer the way Microsoft dealt with me...I went from being a pro-Microsoft guy to instantly being an anti-Microsoft guy...

Re:it's all about obfuscation

[throx]

I fully believe that everyone out there really wants to break away from Microsoft...

Actually, I disagree. Most people don't actually care. There's even a hell of a lot out there that actually love Microsoft products (they're an American company, wave flag, etc.), and another very large set that just likes the idea that a single source solution tends to play pretty well with itself.

Part of the problem for the alternate systems is to actually convince people that the MS monopoly is bad for them.

Re:it's all about obfuscation

[olddotter]

Don't make the mistake of thinking that Microsoft wants their customers to like them. Microsoft has several problems, some legit, and some they caused themselves.

The legit problems is that since they have a virtual monopoly their biggest compeditor is the version of Windows (or Office, etc.) they sold customers a few years ago. Hence the only way to grow is to "encourage" people to buy new software even if they don't really need it.

They have a history of upsetting their userbase. Given that they have a virtual monopoly they don't really care if their users like them. MS takes a corporate mafia approach to sales, trying to strong arm customers into paying them off. I've seen these articles in the nears every few years for most of the last decade.

I keep hoping it will drive defections to Apple's OS X or Linux.

Re:it's all about obfuscation

[NutscrapeSucks]

Part of the problem for the alternate systems is to actually convince people that the MS monopoly is bad for them.

No, that attitude is the problem itself. Trying to sell a product on the basis of "It's not Microsoft" doesn't work in the real world because Microsoft is not percieved to be any worse of a problem than the Electric Company/other benevolant monopoly.

The Linux world focuses far too much on the negatives about MS and Windows and far too little on whatever positives they have. It's not hard to read between the lines and realize that even the stalwart Linux advocates don't believe in the product on it's own merits.

Re:it's all about obfuscation

[Anonymous Coward]

It must be four years ago by now, but my spouse worked for the VA. When the VA decided that they didn't want to upgrade to microsofts latest OS they were told to expect to be audited. Good for them that they could account for each and every os on every box in the building. I am amazed they kept such good records. Some things that VA IT did very well. Spectacular. The MS team went into about every room in the complex. They were very disappointed.

This is old hat. Perhaps the level of intimidation is up due to some missed quota. So now they get a new title? That is a laugh.

Re:it's all about obfuscation

[billcopc]

As the article points out, if Microsoft truly thinks something is amiss "it sics the Business Software Alliance on the company. It doesn't turn the matter over to one of its sales managers".

I don't see much of a difference. The BSA is just a FUD agency anyways. They have no authority over anyone, you can very well have your security guards throw them out as they would any other trespassers. The BSA is paid by Microsoft and the other big cheeses to spread fear, but the only authority in any licensing dispute, or piracy claim for that matter, is a court of law.

Re:it's all about obfuscation

[__aahlyu4518]

"Most people don't actually care. There's even a hell of a lot out there that actually love Microsoft products (they're an American company, wave flag, etc.),"
By profiling it as an american company (which ofcourse it is) they risk alienating a LOT of other countries which become sicker everyday of the american way. On the other hand... Maybe that will help getting a real alternative within maybe 3-5 years.

Re:it's all about obfuscation

[NineNine]

There's even a hell of a lot out there that actually love Microsoft products (they're an American company, wave flag, etc.), and another very large set that just likes the idea that a single source solution tends to play pretty well with itself.

Count me in as one of those. I have yet to read one compelling argument to convince me that their so-called "monopoly" is a bad thing. As is, I buy Ms software, I use it, and my business runs. It's that simple. High ideas about "freedom" don't pay my bills, and at this point, my brain turns off when I hear some zealot spouting off about it. I'm a regular person with problems that are much more immediate and much more compelling than any fluffy idea such as "freedom" when it has to do with software (which is a misnomer, anyway). I know that academics pooh-pooh people like myself as being ignorant. I'd suggest that academics pushing their "Freedom FUD" are simply naive.

Re:it's all about obfuscation

[truthsearch]

But that's not what he said. There's a big difference between promoting a product as non-Microsoft and educating people on why Microsoft is bad for them. We can educate without advertising.

Re:it's all about obfuscation

[Kadin2048]

I have yet to meet anyone in business who really cares that much about Microsoft one way or the other. Many (I'd venture perhaps to say 'most') people find aspects of Windows annoying or obnoxious, but in general it's "good enough."

In fact, if I had to pick a single phrase that sums up Microsoft, that's what it would be: "good enough."

It's not wonderful, and it's not cheap, but it basically does what it says it's going to do, and the pricing is such that most businesses can afford it (or that they've rolled the cost of it up into their products and passed it onto their customers).

The only people that probably 'hate' Microsoft are probably at competitor companies (insofar as they exist anymore), and that only people who really 'love' them are probably at companies that are making money off of their dominance in some direct or indirect fashion.

To the very great majority of people, Microsoft software is like 120VAC electricity: they understand that there are other ways to run their toaster, and perhaps are even dimly aware that in other places, things work differently, but it's not particularly relevant to their business, and as a result they don't care.

If people dislike Microsoft for something, it's mostly for their licensing structure. That's why you see most people trying to advocate Linux use to businesses focus on the small-F "free" aspect: very few people really care about the capital-F/libre definition of "Free," the only advantage of Linux is that it costs less.

However, I think during periods of market contraction, as companies look towards their overhead for ways to cut costs and maintain profitability, you'll see increased interest in free replacements for expensive software. Right now, most companies aren't under so much pressure that it's worth the transition problems to get rid of Windows (although it's worth transitioning from UNIX to Linux in many cases). As the market becomes more and more competitive and commoditized, I think eventually people are going to see the price of a Windows+Office license for every computer as a competitive disadvantage.

Re:it's all about obfuscation

[ClickOnThis]

and another very large set that just likes the idea that a single source solution tends to play pretty well with itself.

Alas, if only it were so. Anyone who has worked with, e.g., MS Word documents on more than one system knows that "What You See" may not be "What Your Colleague Gets". I have had personal experience with MS Word documents that have displayed different formats, line and page breaks on different systems with identical versions of MS Word.

I remember once seeing a Microsoft ad in PC Magazine that screamed in huge letters: "Popular = Compatible = Good". Experience with their software puts the lie to this doublethink.

Re:it's all about obfuscation

[NutscrapeSucks]

That page is exactly what I'm talking about. Apparently the most important thing tney have to report is events regading DR-DOS that happened in 1990, sixteen years ago. For an IT Manager trying to make a decision about the future, they simply DO NOT CARE.

Re:it's all about obfuscation

[PrescriptionWarning]

When people say they don't mind that they use Microsoft (windows, office, etc.) what they are really saying is "give us a better choice and we'll consider it." Many of my best friends are like most people in that they use computers pretty much only for the most basic things they are capable of and once in a while video games. So long as it runs these basic things they are fine. Right now microsoft fills this gap because they know software they buy will work on it almost guaranteed. Even still, they has a very huge distaste for microsoft not because they don't believe in their practices, not because they charged them money for the product, but because they absolutely hate it when Microsoft (insert product here) breaks in such a way that its fairly harmful to them (getting a virus, deleting something that took a lot of time to create, etc.) I can't say that alternatives are to the point that they can be a real reckoning force compared to microsoft's offerings, but I can say that the time will come and people will change.

Re:it's all about obfuscation

[einhverfr]

They just aren't the easiest of them all, and that's where Microsoft really holds everyone in a stranglehold is that they have made everything "easier for everyone".

Yikes!

The fact is that easiest depends greatly on what you are trying to do. WIth Microsoft, easy things are easy for those with no idea what they are doing, and hard things are damn near impossible for an expert to accomplish. For example, I hate the fact that Windows doesn't allow you to rename an open file (yes, I know why this is the case, but it is a piss poor excuse that UNIX varients have gotten around for a long time now).

UNIX and Linux are indeed more user-friendly than is Windows, but it demands a little more learning from the user to get there.

Re:it's all about obfuscation

[Lehk228]

it's all in the printer settings, word was not designed from the outset as an information interchange format, it was meant to type them print.

Re:it's all about obfuscation

[Tim C]

Many (I'd venture perhaps to say 'most') people find aspects of Windows annoying or obnoxious, but in general it's "good enough."

I'd agree with that, but I'd go further - most likely those same people would have exactly the same attitude towards/experience of Linux or OS X.

No OS is perfect. Some are better at certain tasks than others, but none is superior at all tasks. None are without flaws.

Re:it's all about obfuscation

[drinkypoo]

Creating adversarial relationships, especially ones where Microsoft as much as accuses a customer of piracy (are we sure Microsoft hasn't purchased RIAA yet?) cultivates resentment and long term rot.

It's more like the RIAA licensed Microsoft's business methods. Long before this whole P2P thing blew up, Microsoft was performing surprise "licensing audits" against damn near everyone with more than 20 seats. Schools, corporations, and everything in between got a visit from Microsoft. People who were out of compliance were presented with two hands. One hand held a bill for the missing licenses. The other hand held a BIG FUCKING STICK, which is to say, the threat of a lawsuit if you don't come into compliance immediately by either paying up, or removing the offending software.

Back then, pretty much everyone paid up. The alternatives were no alternative. Microsoft has slowed down on that particular tactic more recently, because most businesses could get their work done if they shifted over to Linux. They don't do it because there's a cost, but if the cost of licensing compliance is a significant percentage of the cost of switching to Linux, I think many of them would go ahead and do it.

Re:it's all about obfuscation

[Wolfrider]

Parent +1 interesting link

--Thanks for that; interesting story. Good on him for ditching MS after they treated him like that.

Re:it's all about obfuscation

[drinkypoo]

I know that academics pooh-pooh people like myself as being ignorant. I'd suggest that academics pushing their "Freedom FUD" are simply naive.

Well, I think you're ignorant too, but I'm not going to pooh-pooh you, I'm going to respond instead.

The fact is that Microsoft software is insecure, overpriced, bloated crap. Oh yes, you can get your work done with it, and in many cases it is easier because it's all made by the same guys and they know all the secret tricks. Microsoft software is demonstrably less secure than, well, pretty much everything else. It is also highly unstable. I crash windows software (including the OS) all the damned time, and on good hardware.

In fact I have just put ubuntu dapper beta on my laptop, and it's more stable than windows 2000 or XP was on there, and what's more, it took me only two reboots! One at the end of the installation, which was done from a livecd meaning I could use the machine during the install, and one after some updates I installed. I installed XP on it just a couple days ago (and crashed it after installing all the updates, and had explorer lock up several times, and and and) and that took something like eight reboots.

But quality is only one issue. It's the one that makes the most difference to you, so I addressed it first, but there's also the issue of Freedom, and it does matter. If you run windows, you are not in control of your computer. Microsoft is. Short of attacking the system with a debugger, you really have no way of knowing what Microsoft is doing with your data. For all you know, the indexing service caches all your passwords and sneaks them into your crash reports as a snippet of binary data.

Eventually, all major commodity software will be open source. The only proprietary software will be that which for legal or contractual reasons must be closed source - which is to say, it's written for people who think security through obscurity is useful. There's lots of those people, like in the DoD. I suppose for missile systems and such, it is useful, so there are legitimate reasons. Linux is better than Windows in most departments already and it's getting better faster.

Basically the only class of user best supported by Windows is the "wannabe power user". They think they know what they're doing. They install a bunch of crappy software. They're okay with wiping the system out and starting over. These are not the only people who use Windows, obviously, but they are the only people who should use Windows. The rest of us would be much better served by Linux. In a business environment, users don't need to install software, that's IT's job.

By using proprietary software with proprietary formats, you are putting yourself at the mercy of your software vendor[s]. If you're comfortable with that, more power to you. I'm not.

Re:it's all about obfuscation

[Nefarious Wheel]

"Nice place you have here. Sure looks flammable. Is that an unlicensed server I see there? What's this big red button do?" [POWER FAIL] "Awww, it crashed. Hey, you know, a guy like you could maybe use a little insurance. I got a nice license for a reliable asset manager here, pretty cheap considering. Price? Everything's negotiable, mate. What's your weekly take? Oh, and I noticed your family out for a walk yesterday. Yer kids sure are purty..."

Re:it's all about obfuscation

[Blakey Rat]

Are we to the point yet on Slashdot where people will stop bringing up Microsoft BOB as an example of Microsoft's being bad? That one always cracks me up...

Oh, a cheap *home* program produced for maybe a year in 1993 happened to be bad, that'll convince me not to run Windows XP! Good argument, sir!

Re:it's all about obfuscation

[throx]

Anyone who has worked with, e.g., MS Word documents on more than one system knows that "What You See" may not be "What Your Colleague Gets". I have had personal experience with MS Word documents that have displayed different formats, line and page breaks on different systems with identical versions of MS Word.

Not wanting to defend MS Word (it's a bloated mess), but this is actually your mistake for thinking Word is a page layout program. It isn't. It reformats the text based on your default printer settings so all those people who just hit "Enter" a lot to get to the next page are really screwing themselves over.

If you want consistent page layout from Microsoft, use Publisher. That's what it's there for.

Re:it's all about obfuscation

[throx]

You make an excellent point. Thanks!

Re:it's all about obfuscation

[throx]

I agree, but if you look at worldwide trends, most of the migration away from Microsoft is outside of the US. In any case, I wasn't really profiling a large group of people for loving MS because it's a successful American company but I definitely know a few that think Gates is somewhat close to God for his "business acumen"...

Re:it's all about obfuscation

[throx]

The biggest reason MS got as large as it is was the fact that it was so damn cheap compared to competitors (at least for sticker price). Calling it "overpriced" is really a massively relative term - one of the best things they did was turning the PC from the specialist tool IBM wanted it to be into the commodity we have today. Bloated and insecure I'll go for, but to be somewhat fair on the "insecure" line - much of that is because it's in the hands of end users who leave their windows open for the cats to get in and out and the spare keys under the mat.

Installing XP is definitely still a reboot-fest (thanks to no "unlink" semantics on delete in the kernel) but I have no idea why Explorer was freezing on you so often. That's honestly pretty atypical behavior. Sounds like you have some screwy name resolution problems on your local net or something (the usual reason for Explorer hanging for a long time).

The whole "you don't know what's going on" argument is really pretty lame. No one has enough time to go through the 6 million lines of code in the Linux kernel to assure themselves that nothing funky is going on, much less do any sort of covert channel analysis. It comes down to a matter of trust - you obviously trust the people that have looked over their specific portions of the Linux codebase and people that run Windows are implicitly trusting Microsoft and the hundreds (maybe thousands) of third party individuals and organizations that have looked over the Windows codebase.

To put it simply, unless you've looked over every line of the memory manager in Linux you're no more sure that it's not snarfing your passwords from the buffer cache than you are unsure the MS code is snarfing your passwords with the indexing service. It's simply a matter of trust.

I find it exceptionally unlikely that commodity software will ever be open source. That's zealot speak. The real trick for commodity software is keeping the price lower than the competition - one way to do that is use OSS and roll your development into the product for your competitors to use. Another way is to eat the dev costs on a closed source product and protect that from competitors. Both are valid models and both can be competitive.

By using *any* software, OSS or proprietary, you're putting yourself at the mercy of whatever development resources are working on that software, especially if you're not a developer yourself. Philosophy is great and all, but the real end-user benefit of OSS is the sticker cost.

As an aside, I think the zealots talking about the difference between proprietary software and OSS in terms of philosophy are doing more damage than good nowdays in terms of Linux market penetration. Cost/benefit analysis is where it's at. If you can't show that then all your philosophy is about as useful as a political speech in a boardroom.

Re:it's all about obfuscation

[ClickOnThis]

The only people that probably 'hate' Microsoft are probably at competitor companies (insofar as they exist anymore), and that only people who really 'love' them are probably at companies that are making money off of their dominance in some direct or indirect fashion.

I think that's putting it way too simply. Everyone I have met who hates Microsoft has not been a competitor but a consumer, albeit perhaps a knowledgeable and self-interested one. The problem is that Microsoft does not just destroy its competitors -- it also destroys choice, either by drowning out alternatives with FUD and marketing, or with the classic "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" strategy. And this angers those of us who want a choice.

If people dislike Microsoft for something, it's mostly for their licensing structure.

Microsoft's whole business model depends on being a monopoly, so they do everything they can to preserve it. Their licenses help them to do that, but they're not the real issue. See above.

That's why you see most people trying to advocate Linux use to businesses focus on the small-F "free" aspect: very few people really care about the capital-F/libre definition of "Free," the only advantage of Linux is that it costs less.

"Free as in beer" is not the only advantage of FOSS such as Linux. However, it is the first one that a business is likely to understand, so it's hardly a surprise that an advocate would mention it first in a business context.

As for the "free as in speech" part, which really is manifested in the use of open standards -- this also benefits a business because: it removes the threat of vendor lock-in; it promotes competition between software suppliers; and it protects the ability to access to documents and data in the event that the software company goes out of business or withdraws support for the formats.

Re:it's all about obfuscation

[truthsearch]

What selective sight you have! How about this quote from less than 5 years ago:

"Five minutes after any agreement is signed with Microsoft, they'll be thinking of how to violate the agreement. They're predators. They crush their competition. They crush new ideas. They stifle innovation. That's what they do." - Massachusetts Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly, Quoted by Matthew Szulik at a U.S. Senate Hearing, Dec 12, 2001

My point is those IT managers SHOULD CARE.

Re:it's all about obfuscation

[kbielefe]

The Linux world focuses far too much on the negatives about MS and Windows and far too little on whatever positives they have.

If by "Linux World" you mean "people who initiate threads about Linux on slashdot stories about Microsoft," then I agree wholeheartedly. Of course, they are often baited with phrases like, "no viable alternative."

Look on sites and mailing lists for Linux distros and developers, and you'll scarcely see a mention of Microsoft except in passing.

The same can be said for the Windows advocates around here. The highest praise I have seen in a while about Windows is "everyone uses it" and "I haven't had a problem in a long time and you wouldn't either if you patched religiously, never opened suspicious emails or installed suspicious software, and ran a firewall and 2 different malware scanners." That is, until your "benevolant [sic] monopoly" comment, which I'm not sure even Bill Gates would believe.

Re:it's all about obfuscation

[killjoe]

Well with shills like you around those zealots are not going to get far are they!. Hooray for you kind sir. You have taken it upon yourself to defend the honor of MS from the unwashed masses!.

Alas more corporations need people like you. Is there somebody someplace critizising maytag? Nissan? or Bic? Quick let's all rush to their defense by calling the malcontents zealots!

"It's not hard to read between the lines and realize that even the stalwart Linux advocates don't believe in the product on it's own merits."

Given that every person who uses linux today used windows at one point I'd say you were full of shit. But then again anybody who has read your posts already knows that.

Re:it's all about obfuscation

[NutscrapeSucks]

If by "Linux World" you mean...

Oh, this attitude that Linux will save use from Microsoft goes back long before Slashdot. For fun, check out c.o.l.a. from 1994 and just like Slashdot today. However, I will agree that the smart people in the Linux world (ie RedHat) are focused on "Enterprise Unix" and wisely avoid the desktop market.

That is, until your "benevolant [sic] monopoly" comment,

I'm not saying that I believe that, just that is how they are percieved in most of IT.

Re:it's all about obfuscation

[killjoe]

Linux is good enough and it's cheaper still.

Re:it's all about obfuscation

[Americano]

I'm glad I'm not the only one who feels this way.

Quoted from link above, written by me earlier today in a discussion of ODF on slashdot:

[ . . . ] Until the FOSS community in general gets over this "victimized" stance they like to take whenever Microsoft attempts to compete with them, they're going to be perpetually hamstrung by ineffectiveness, and perpetually "almost great."

The success of ODF as a standard & in government adoption, as well as the examples of linux in the server space, perl, python, apache, ant, tomcat, and so many other FOSS products (my apologies if I've overlooked your favorites), should be seen as proof that the technically superior products DO tend to win out in the marketplace over the long run. Instead of screaming "Monopoly! Unfair competitive advantage! Illegal use of monopolistic practices!", open source advocates should simply go about their business, and make a better product than Microsoft can. There's plenty of examples... figure out what they're doing right, and apply those best practices to your own projects.

And let's be honest... if Microsoft said, "our products just aren't going to support the 802.11a standard (an open wireless networking standard) because it's too costly," that announcement would be greeted with a big yawn by most people. The only difference is, ODF is a cause celebre in the FOSS community, because lots of members of that community see it as a way to promote their own anti-microsoft agenda. Soul search a little, and read some of the comments people make here on slashdot... you'll see it's really hard to argue that that's not the case.

Re:it's all about obfuscation

[NutscrapeSucks]

People like you are a prime example, killjoe.

The more you post on the Internet, the less people will want to use Linux. Your Angry Young Boy act is purely reactionary and unconvincing for emotionally normal adults. You are the stereotype.

Now, on to content, I never used the word "zealot" in my post. As with a previous discussion, you tend to imagine things and put words in peoples mouths, which is understandable because you're obviously not very bright. Furthermore, you completely misunderstood the fact that I was providing constructive criticism to those competing against Microsoft which is just the opposite of "defending the honor".

So, you basically manufactured an entire argument and attempted to stick it on me. Very active imagination, but a complete failure as a counter-argument.

Re:it's all about obfuscation

[NineNine]

The thing is that quality is not an issue. I have one server that runs my point of sale software, my accounting software, a big database, a few web sites, a mail server, and it has NO down time. The last time it was down was 45 days ago, when the last patch was applied. It's simply not an issue for me. All of our PC's have -zero- problems, and the only special thing I did was to tell all of my employees not to install stuff. The OS's work just fine. Hell, they work *well*. You can tell me that you have problems until you're blue in the face, but the truth is that I simply don't have problems, so that doesn't convince me in any way, whatsoever.

Any worrying about large vendors like Microsoft, Oracle, and Intuit suddenly changing things so that my current software doesn't work isn't a practical thing to worry about. Along those same lines, you could also worry about what Toyota is doing with you car's computer's data, and what Apple is doing with your iPod's information. Maybe committing to buying a vacuum with proprietary vacuum cleaner bags is dangerous, because one day, you might not be able to buy the bags from Hoover. These things are equally realistic. Sure, what you're talking about is possible, but so incredibly unlikely, that it's really not worth worrying about (unless you have nothing better to do).

It's all about costs and benefits... risks and rewards... That's business. Obsessing over file formats and secret things that Windows could be doing with my purchase orders isn't practical or realistic. You're talking about absctract, academic, theoretical ideas that will probably never happen.

Re:it's all about obfuscation

[laughingcoyote]

By using *any* software, OSS or proprietary, you're putting yourself at the mercy of whatever development resources are working on that software, especially if you're not a developer yourself.

I must take exception to this especially. While neither I nor anyone else could possibly go over every line of code in every open-source program in an entire lifetime, that's not necessary either.

If I notice some unusual behavior from the kernel or a given application (for example, a program sending packets somewhere I didn't tell it to, a program accessing the Internet which should have no need to do so, etc.), I can go look at the -relevant portion- of the code. So can anyone else in the world-you are not at the "mercy of the developers" by any means with open-source. Even if you personally cannot read the code, you can call someone's attention to it who can, and that person can then alert the community if something untoward is occurring. This can also help prevent "false alarms"-it is entirely possible that the unusual behavior is perfectly harmless, and a look at the code will reveal this as well.

Finally, if it -is- discovered that the software is doing something it shouldn't be, it's then possible for anyone to fix the code. If a FOSS program were to begin installing spyware or malware, anyone who wishes can strip the malicious code out and offer the program without it. Any other developer can check to make sure they did the job properly, and fix it if they didn't.

Contrast that with closed-source software. Say I install a closed-source media player on my system. I have not asked it to play anything off the Internet, yet it is accessing (or attempting to access) it, and send encrypted information. Why? Is it trying to download ads or malware? Is it sending statistics about how I'm using it to someone? Is it checking a repository to see if a better version is available? I don't know-and I can't look. Or in other words, I'm at the mercy of the developers.

I find it exceptionally unlikely that commodity software will ever be open source. That's zealot speak.

Tell that to Red Hat, Novell, IBM, or any number of other companies who make pretty good money off commodity OSS. I'm sure those zealots will laugh at you all the way to the bank.

Re:it's all about obfuscation

[drsmithy]

But that's not what he said. There's a big difference between promoting a product as non-Microsoft and educating people on why Microsoft is bad for them.

[Ironic]

That ridiculous web page is an *excellent* example of the problem GP was talking about.

If the portion of OSS community who cared about it expended as much effort on making their software better (or event just finding out what end users wanted) as they did proclaiming "Micro$oft is t3h sux0rs", they'd probably *have* decent competitors to Exchange, Office and AD already.

Re:it's all about obfuscation

[drsmithy]

The fact is that Microsoft software is insecure, overpriced, bloated crap.

Compared to what ?

Oh yes, you can get your work done with it, and in many cases it is easier because it's all made by the same guys and they know all the secret tricks.

Which "secret tricks" are you referring to ? Is this another rehash on the good old "secret APIs" myth ?

Microsoft software is demonstrably less secure than, well, pretty much everything else.

Demonstratable how ? Please don't tell me you think comparing how frequently security problems occur between products with such disparate marketshare actually has any meaning ?

It is also highly unstable. I crash windows software (including the OS) all the damned time, and on good hardware.

Then something about your computer configuration is broken, and you should get it fixed. However, I'm guessing you don't have the slightest interest in getting it fixed, because then you wouldn't have anything to reinforce your stereotyping.

If you run windows, you are not in control of your computer. Microsoft is. Short of attacking the system with a debugger, you really have no way of knowing what Microsoft is doing with your data. For all you know, the indexing service caches all your passwords and sneaks them into your crash reports as a snippet of binary data.

I could say exactly the same thing about all the OSS we use. For all *I* know, SSH is sending my passwords to some random mailing list everytime I type one in.

Linux is better than Windows in most departments already and it's getting better faster.

Maybe in the fantasies of a Slashdot poster, but out in the real world, real people don't think so. AD, SMS, MOM, Exchange, Office, Terminal Services, application integration, collaboration. These are cornerstones of Enterprise IT infrastructure and there's very little of it "Linux" even manages to do as well, let alone better.

Re:it's all about obfuscation

[Anonymous Coward]

You are stereotyping incorrectly. Americans don't equate a company like M$ as their country's pride and joy. Many Americans hate M$ just as much as you do. The fact that you are throwing in the flag-waving argument shows that it matters more to you, not us.

Re:it's all about obfuscation

[killjoe]

It's clear that you are shill for MS. Every time the topic is anywhere close to MS or office you charge into action defending your favorite corporation.

What I am really curious about is why you have chosen to attach yourself to this corporation. When I was in high school people used to argue over fords or chevyies or nike vs addidas. I always thought that as a high school kid maybe it helped people feel more powerful if they aligned themselves with a large corporation.

Seems like some people never get past that stage. Do you wear MS T-shirts and have a bumper sticker with a calvin pissing on a penguin?

Re:it's all about obfuscation

[throx]

The problem with the argument is not that it's not relavent for a small section of the population, but that it's not relavent beyond that small section. To gain the advantage of OSS over a closed source system the user has to:

i) Be technically savvy enough to notice there's a problem and correctly identify which piece of software they are using is the problem (this eliminates 90% of the computer using population).
ii) Be even more technically competent to find the exact cause of the problem, or be able to contact someone who does.
iii) Understand the benefits and costs of departing from the developer's maintained source tree.

Note that for a closed source application that has undergone and continues to undergo extensive third party source examination (such as Windows) many of the OSS arguments fall flat in this regard as being far less relavent than the sticker price.

Note your arguments are full of "any user can" or "any developer can", not "a user will" or "a developer will". That's the weakness inherent in the argument.

Now, on the proprietary side, any good capitalist/libertarian will happily tell you that an unhappy customer is a bad thing and there is commercial pressure on the system developer to *not* place their customers in a position where they are forced into looking for alternatives. This "invisible hand" effectively also places the developers at the mercy of the customers, while the customers are in turn at the mercy of those developers. It's a rather simple positive feedback loop.

So, while the OSS side definitely improves the opportunity for users to identify and fix troublesome code the proprietary side trades this for the incentive for the company to provide code that does not annoy the customer, right down to the point of offering the customers source code if that's what it takes to make the sale.

As for the second quote of mine, you need to look back at the parent post who was stating that *all* commodity software would become open source. In light of that context, your response is senseless as I happily point out that the overwhelming majority (well over 99%) of all commodity software is proprietary and is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future.

Re:it's all about obfuscation

[laughingcoyote]

The problem with the argument is not that it's not relavent for a small section of the population, but that it's not relavent beyond that small section. To gain the advantage of OSS over a closed source system the user has to:

Ah, but you are still incorrect. To gain the advantage of OSS over proprietary, -one- user, -anywhere-, must do the things you list. At that point, the fixed version can easily and legally be made available. With proprietary software, even if you can find the problem and -know- how to fix it, you run the risk of getting sued for it! The other 90% of users, who never could have done it themselves, need only get the fixed version.

Now, on the proprietary side, any good capitalist/libertarian will happily tell you that an unhappy customer is a bad thing and there is commercial pressure on the system developer to *not* place their customers in a position where they are forced into looking for alternatives.

So, these non-technical users, who can't even identify a problem program, are supposed to know to go and look for an alternative? That makes no sense. Most of them will simply assume that "this damn machine is acting up again" and figure that as par for the course. It'll never occur to them that flawed software is to blame and that they need to go -look- for alternatives. On the other hand, a "repository" system can easily place the fixed version as the next upgrade-the user just clicks the "get upgrades" button, gets the fixed copy, and all of a sudden the problem's gone.

This "invisible hand" effectively also places the developers at the mercy of the customers, while the customers are in turn at the mercy of those developers.

Unless the developers are an unregulated monopoly or the users don't know enough or are too locked in to switch. Did you -finish- that book, or are you just picking the parts that support your arguments?

So, while the OSS side definitely improves the opportunity for users to identify and fix troublesome code the proprietary side trades this for the incentive for the company to provide code that does not annoy the customer, right down to the point of offering the customers source code if that's what it takes to make the sale.

Great! I'll take one copy of Windows, then, source code included. I'll just email Microsoft today, I'm sure they'll be happy to accommodate.

I wonder why this email I just got back starts with a question as to what I've been smoking?

And what about "trading" it for an incentive not to annoy the user? How many proprietary programs contain adware, spyware, and other unwanted "features"? How many FOSS programs do? For having the incentive not to annoy the hell out of users, they sure do it frequently enough! Do you think Sony's going to release their next rootkit open-source? The next DRM scheme?

As for the second quote of mine, you need to look back at the parent post who was stating that *all* commodity software would become open source. In light of that context, your response is senseless as I happily point out that the overwhelming majority (well over 99%) of all commodity software is proprietary and is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future.

The way you worded your initial statement seemed to indicate your view that -no- commodity software would be open source. As to your statement that most is proprietary, I would agree, though I likely would not say 99% (if the metric is usage rather then simple number of programs). Desktop usage of Linux is at last estimate around 3-4%, and far higher on servers. Not to mention the widespread use of programs such as Firefox, Openoffice, MySQL, and Apache on various platforms.

Re:it's all about obfuscation

[NutscrapeSucks]

Actually, I'm pretty sure that you are the t-shirt and stickers guy here.

Since you're not smart enough to figure it out, here's a hint. What I'm practicing is not corporatism, it's contrarinism, aka trolling. HAND

Re:it's all about obfuscation

[Anonymous Coward]

Cheap automobiles made in the late 70s and throughout the 80s by Chevy, Ford, and GM have caused me to not buy American cars anymore. (Even in the 2000's)

Is that wrong too?

Re:it's all about obfuscation

[drinkypoo]

I don't want to go over the whole thing, it's tiresome, so I'll just hit this point:

AD, SMS, MOM, Exchange, Office, Terminal Services, application integration, collaboration. These are cornerstones of Enterprise IT infrastructure and there's very little of it "Linux" even manages to do as well, let alone better.

Unix can participate in AD domains through samba and openldap, although it is admittedly a pain in the ass. It also has NIS, NIS+, and that kerberos-based thing whose name I forget :) I would argue that mass management is easier on Unix because it's all scriptable; the microsoft stuff (like SMS) does do a lot, but once you reach the end of what it does, you're done. The functionality of exchange is available as well; it might not interoperate with exchange, but who cares if you drop MS?

MS Office is probably the one place I agree with you, OO.o is a zillion times better than nothing but compared to Office it's poop (from a pure use point of view.)

Anywhere, where was I? Oh yeah, terminal services. A joke compared to what's available on Unix, like FreeNX. And there's user switching these days, too. Application integration? Yeah, when it works. Works fine between office applications but I've had mixed results when throwing other apps into the mix.

In addition, every other server-based task is better done with Linux. Databases? Yep. Web service? Absolutely. Application server? Definitely. File service... need you even ask? Network filtering, queueing, failover, or for that matter clustering... NT is a pathetic joke in these areas, and Linux is the leader.

Windows has its place - that place is in the trashcan, as far as I'm concerned, especially from a business standpoint. The only reason I use it anymore is that I want to play games and don't want to pay for a custom version of wine.

Re:it's all about obfuscation

[throx]

Ah, but you are still incorrect. To gain the advantage of OSS over proprietary, -one- user, -anywhere-, must do the things you list. At that point, the fixed version can easily and legally be made available.

Absolutely, and I'm not disagreeing with that. Remember, my point is the "source code availability" argument is much, much weaker than the "it's free like beer" argument, which is the end result of your point above. Not that a user somewhere can fix it (with proprietary software, the analog is a user somewhere will have enough financial impact to request a change), but that the fix or modification can be made available free of charge - something that is unlikely with proprietary software.

On the other hand, a "repository" system can easily place the fixed version as the next upgrade-the user just clicks the "get upgrades" button, gets the fixed copy, and all of a sudden the problem's gone.

You mean like "Windows Update" or "Software Updates" in OS X? The only difference with them is you don't get major version releases for free (like beer).

Again, your argument boils down to the far stronger "free like beer" case for end users, which was my original point.

Unless the developers are an unregulated monopoly or the users don't know enough or are too locked in to switch. Did you -finish- that book, or are you just picking the parts that support your arguments?

Yes, of course I finished the book. Now, please point to the part where you were only arguing against proprietary software made by an unregulated monopoly. I'm talking about all proprietary software. Monopoly and antitrust legislation are a completely separate issue and one that I think is critical to keeping a healthy competitive environment alive.

In a competitive environment where users can switch suppliers, it is very much in the interests of the suppliers to keep the customers happy. Talk about "consumers being at the mercy of suppliers" is blatantly ridiculous in the typical scenario.

Great! I'll take one copy of Windows, then, source code included. I'll just email Microsoft today, I'm sure they'll be happy to accommodate.

Oh, look. Sarcasm. I thought you wanted to argue seriously. Apologies for my misunderstanding.

You're incorrect anyway - Windows source licenses are available for the right money and NDA. Of course, if you want to argue the "free as beer" line by saying you don't have the cash for that, then I point you (again) to my original point that it's the sticker price that is the killer feature of OSS, not the source code.

How many proprietary programs contain adware, spyware, and other unwanted "features"? How many FOSS programs do?

Irrelavent. You clearly didn't read my statement, noting the part where it says "if that's what it takes to make the sale". Obviously the adware/spyware etc. are in because their absence isn't required to make the sale. See how it works? No one is forcing you or anyone else to use those things.

As to your statement that most is proprietary, I would agree, though I likely would not say 99% (if the metric is usage rather then simple number of programs).

I was talking all software, not just PC based. Your typical commoidty software is cell phones, car computers, microwaves, VCRs, DVD Players, Gaming consoles, etc. PCs are really at the outer edge of commodity. The closer you go to a true commodity, the less source is available (at least at the moment) because to make that source available cuts into the very slim profit margins in the commodity business when your competitors can reverse engineer your product from it.

[I can take this offline if you want - interesting discussion but posting on a day old slashdot topic feels kinda obcessive]

Re:it's all about obfuscation

[thomas.galvin]

Creating adversarial relationships, especially ones where Microsoft as much as accuses a customer of piracy (are we sure Microsoft hasn't purchased RIAA yet?) cultivates resentment and long term rot.

Unless you're a monopoly. Most businesses ask themselves "how can we get everyone in the world to use our product?" Microsoft is a monopoly, and they have to ask a different question: "everyone in the world uses our product; how can we get them to pay [more] for it [again]?"

Re:it's all about obfuscation

[Rakarra]

Good God, man, are you a Scientologist?

Re:it's all about obfuscation

[killjoe]

It's obvious to anybody who reads your posts how much you love Microsoft and how much you can't stand anybody saying anything negative about them.

I don't know if you work for them or if you are shilling out of some adolescent desire to align yourself with a big and powerful company but the end result is the same.

You are a shill. Some people are paid shills, others are unpaid shills.

Re:it's all about obfuscation

[mdfst13]

"By profiling it as an american company (which ofcourse it is) they risk alienating a LOT of other countries which become sicker everyday of the american way."

And I suspect that you will find that in most other countries, Microsoft does not advertise as an American country. For example, in India, they probably talk about the size of their dev center and ignore the location of their headquarters (whereas in America, they downplay the dev center and emphasize the headquarters).

While it is certainly possible to access American media/advertising outside the states, it is unlikely that the people doing so will be the ones who would have a knee jerk reaction against anything American.

Re:it's all about obfuscation

[laughingcoyote]

Please feel free-just email me at the address I have listed, I'll give you my real one. Prefer not to use it here for obvious reasons. :)

Contracts in force between MS & AWC????

[winkydink]

It may have changed since I last did one, but it used to be that if you had
a Select or Enterprise Agreement with MS, they had the right to audit
spelled out in the contract. The article is mum as to whether or not such
an agreement was in force between MS & AWC, though most companies of any
size have one or both agreements.

So, if MS has a Select or Enterprise Agreement with AWC, then MS is fully
within their right to request an audit and this is a non-news article.

Also, note that Computer World doesn't call this a "sales force scare
tactic" as the headline implies. That term isn't even used in the article.

Re:Contracts in force between MS & AWC????

[ktappe]

if MS has a Select or Enterprise Agreement with AWC, then MS is fully within their right to request an audit and this is a non-news article.

Hardly.

1. They did not request a 3rd party, independent audit. On the contrary, they claimed their in-house auditing service was the "only unbiased" audit, which is exactly 180-degrees from the truth; it's the very definition of bias.

2. They completely disregarded without even a glance the customer's legitimate efforts to demonstrate his legality. This shows MS was not in any way acting in good faith.

3. Any party that believes another has wronged them is obliged to take that grievance to the proper authorities, not threaten unilateral actions. What MS did here reeks of extortion; the threat of one-on-one remedies in order to coerce behavior without any involvement of the court system.

-Kurt

Re:Contracts in force between MS & AWC????

[winkydink]

Neither my SA or EA say anything about "independent 3rd party audit". It says MS has the right to audit. Period. And unless your a Global 2000 company, good luck getting them to change so much as one puncutation mark on their contract.

Re:Contracts in force between MS & AWC????

[kindbud]

Well then just bend over if you like it so much. Sheesh. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Re:Contracts in force between MS & AWC????

[drooling-dog]

So, if MS has a Select or Enterprise Agreement with AWC, then MS is fully within their right to request an audit and this is a non-news article.

I wonder if they include this in their "Total Cost of Ownership" calculations...

Re:Contracts in force between MS & AWC????

[einhverfr]

I would think though that if there was an argument of bad faith, scare tactics, etc. as are present in this article, that one could possibly force them face you in court and explain why they didn't just politely work with you and your concerns in the first place. Right to audit ought not to mean right to intimidate.

"No your honor, I don't mind if they audit us, but this exchange shows that this is nothing more than an attempt to strong arm us into buying more of their products. They would not even work with us to ensure that the audit went smoothly!"

IANAL though.

Re:Contracts in force between MS & AWC????

[the_womble]

That is one of the best reasons not to buy from MS.

You are giving a supplier the power to examine all your operations and all your data AND probably severely disrupt your operations?

Hmm

[beavis88]

Hmm, so there's a shitbag working for Microsoft, which automatically allows us to draw conclusions X, Y, and Z about the entire company. Allllrightythen....*sigh*. Slow news day I guess.

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Crowhead]

This is Slashdot - an anecdote is all that is required for proof. Unless it's an anecdote they disagree with. That's called a troll or flamebait here.

Re:Hmm

[beavis88]

Apparently, questioning the "one anecdote" policy here is also called a troll. I 3 Slashdot!

Re:Hmm

[vertinox]

This is Slashdot - an anecdote is all that is required for proof.

Well... To be fair... Anecdotal evidence is still evidence. ;)

Still if such behavior is allowed once, we can assume that it happens more than that and either a manager is over looking it, encouraging it, or isn't managing well enough to notice it.

As in, if one person in a company is a fucktard, then someone else is to blame that they are still working there... And that goes all the way up the chain to the CEO.

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

You said

Hmm, so there's a shitbag working for Microsoft

(but you repeat yourself)

which automatically allows us to draw conclusions X, Y, and Z about the entire company

actually the conclusions had already been drawn based on independent data points over the past twenty or so years...

Slow news day I guess.

maybe

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Didn't you RTFA? "When I phoned Lawless to find out, she referred me to Microsoft's PR machine. The responses I got through that channel stressed that Microsoft's aim is to help customers navigate the complexities of software licensing and that one of the roles of engagement managers is to assist in that effort by informing customers of a potential licensing risk. I was told to attribute the responses to Lawless." Looks like they are perfectly happy with his behavior.

Re:Hmm

[Skuld-Chan]

The sad reality of customer service (and yes sales people do provide customer service) is that bad customer service experiences over the phone or email can spread to several other people. So yes one bad apple can damage the reputation of a company. In this case - now that hundreds of thousands of people have read this - I'm sure they will form their own opinion of Microsoft in the same manner.

Re:Hmm

[Antaeus Feldspar]

Hmm, so there's a shitbag working for Microsoft, which automatically allows us to draw conclusions X, Y, and Z about the entire company. Allllrightythen....*sigh*. Slow news day I guess.

Yes, there is a shitbag working for Microsoft, who was observed in the wild engaged in the act of shitbagging, whose job title is "Chief Executive Shitbag In Charge Of Extorting Sales Through Falsified Accusations Of Wrongdoing", who got the job no doubt because she answered an ad in the classifieds reading "SHITBAGS WANTED! If you're a motivated, self-starting shitbag, you can make GOOD MONEY by accusing our own customers of things you have no evidence of and ignoring the evidence they send you so you can keep making accusations, to create the fear that the customer needs to buy more licenses to avoid legal harassment whether there's any truth to it or not!"

That Tru-Coat...

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't get that Tru-Coat, you get code oxidation problems. Yah.

Re:That Tru-Coat...

[Richard Steiner]

Yup. Bit rot. Happens all the time with unlicensed code. No, really...

Re:That Tru-Coat...

[NormalVisual]

You betcha.

Re:That Tru-Coat...

[thegameiam]

this is MY deal

Re:That Tru-Coat...

[mbradshawlong]

Ahhh, Fargo. Such a great movie.

Re:That Tru-Coat...

[NormalVisual]

We're not a bank, thegameiam....

Perhaps they should provide reasons...

[segfault_0]

Perhaps Microsoft wouldn't seem like such a maniac for asking if they provided the predicates that caused the contact to be made. If they said that someone told us your not legal or you have registered 1000 machines and bought 900 licenses that would make sense - without this much i wouldnt even bother with corrosponding. They have nothing to lose by disclosing their concerns.

Meaningless blurb

[Jason1729]

The blurb uses a lot of words to say very little.

From TFA, MS is sending their sales people after customers claiming the customer is not in license compliance and they need to send an inspection team in. They are very threatening, implying if the company doesn't comply, they'll face legal prosecution. Once the inspection team gets in, they try to get the customer to buy more products.

Re:Meaningless blurb

[Jeff DeMaagd]

I would consider it to be a petty scare tactic. It doesn't make sense to try to sue your customer, and I don't think that any prosecutor would bother with this sort of case unless there is proof of infringement. BSA people can complain to the local Attourney General but unless there is some sort of proof.

Personally, I wouldn't allow any hostile entity into facilities entrusted to me unless there was a legitimate warrant of some kind. I think businesses are probably being smart enough to check with their legal counsel before being duped into allowing fishing expeditions.

Re:Meaningless blurb

[suv4x4]

Once the inspection team gets in, they try to get the customer to buy more products.

Can you please let me know how the heck do they convince the customer to buy more if he's totally legit?

And if he's not, buying the products he needs seems like the least evil that can happen to him (compared to legal prosecution).

Re:Meaningless blurb

[Anonymous Coward]

Now we know where CA's sales force went after CA cleaned up their act.

Re:Meaningless blurb

[hackstraw]

It doesn't make sense to try to sue your customer

Oh really?

Re:Meaningless blurb

[Jason1729]

It gets MS in the door to give a sales pitch.

Re:Meaningless blurb

[fermion]

This has been typical for a very long time. MS or the BSA sends a threatening letter to audit and bill multiple damages. This can be avoided if you install thier spyware app on all your computers. This costs massive amounts, on top the massive amount spent on licensing to MS, in terms of IT and the lost productivity of those using the computers. There is also often an 'inspection' in which MS lists all non-MS outfitted kit, followed by a hard sell to switch MS kit.

Of course this scam is older than MS, and is seen when a company can no longer compete on innovation. For instance, IBM lost many customer due their scare tactics and general lack of respect for the customer. OTOH, IBM has many years of experience in delivering a full package of productivity enhanacement to customers, not just machines, not just software, but process, so IBM was able to revive itself as a provider of integrated solutions. I am told that IBM is much more respectful now.

Even further back we have the oil tycoons and the indescriminate use of force. Like MS, they learned that giving money away is a very cost effectvie manner to clean up a dirty image.

MS provides software. Someone else makes and supports the hardware. Someone else makes and supports the work flow. Someone else makes and support the bussiness plan. MS does not have Rational or anything like it. I wonder if MS is going to be able to reinvent itself, or merely continue to threaten customers and milk the monopoly for as long as it can.

This is not really news or new. Companies will continue to use MS products as long as that remains the path of least resistance. The money and lost producivity is not always such a great issue. Just force the schedule and punish the code monkeys when they don't meet it.

Engage

[trailerparkcassanova]

I heard this today so it must be one of the up-and-coming buzzwords.

Re:Engage

[Anonymous Coward]

It's been on the Bullshit Bingo cards for quite some time.

Re:Engage

[Anonymous Coward]

I heard this today so it must be one of the up-and-coming buzzwords.

Microsoft engagement managers will:

- optimize seamless communities
- generate vertical e-services
- leverage synergistic convergence

and, best of all,

- engage e-business content

Re:Engage

[trailerparkcassanova]

Microsoft engagement managers will:

- optimize seamless communities
- generate vertical e-services
- leverage synergistic convergence

and, best of all,

- engage e-business content

Where do I sign? That's damn good!!!

Re:Engage

[Anonymous Coward]

all while using .net and web 2.0

That explains it!

[Anonymous Coward]

I was thinking that the dress codes must have really slipped at MS when our new sales rep, Paulie, showed up in one of those nylon jogging suits. Bought x4 the normal number of XP cals. Should have them all sold by the time the inventory guy's knee tendons are healed.

Microsoft Customers Balk at Hard Sell

[magicjava]

In all fairness, if you're going to post articles about MS doing this, you should post about other companies doing this as well.

Re:Microsoft Customers Balk at Hard Sell

[sfjoe]

Who is "you"? If you know something and can back it up, then post it. Otherwise, STFU.

Re:Microsoft Customers Balk at Hard Sell

[magicjava]

Oracle's sales force hounded me for almost 3 months after I downloaded their free developers edition from their web site. They made the same claims. I wasn't properly licenced for the way I was using the database and I had to buy more products from them. Just for the record, I wasn't using the product at all. I never even got around to installing it. These tactics are well known, inside the software biz and outside it as well. Salesmen sell, that's their job.

Re:Microsoft Customers Balk at Hard Sell

[BrynM]

In all fairness, if you're going to post articles about MS doing this, you should post about other companies doing this as well.

So let's hear about them. C'mon, you know about them abviously, so let's see what you know. Who else in the software industry is using this or a similar tactic outside of the BSA procedures? I personally don't want to do business with companies like that, so inform me... and the rest of us.

Re:Microsoft Customers Balk at Hard Sell

[BarkLouder]

You must be new...... Welcome to /.

Re:Microsoft Customers Balk at Hard Sell

[ADRA]

You're example is quite different from the rest of the discussion:
1. You have no prior business arrangement with Oracle
2. You haven't bought the piece of software in question
3. You aren't required to have a software audit upon request
4. They have no reason to question that you're using the software correctly or not (since you never used it, there's no dial home)

There's a difference between
"Buy our software because you haven't, but you should, so do it!"
and
"We've been mulling it over in the ol' license factory and we think you're lieing when you say you're only using our software 5 times. We think you need to license 100,000,000 users since one server's SMB share is available to the internet serving pr0n (good pr0n btw). So instead of using high pressure marketing techniques which obviously aren't working, we're going to use our manifest right to invade your workplace to mandate what's needed for compliance the way we see it."

Yeah, I was ranting... /self-slap

Re:Microsoft Customers Balk at Hard Sell

[NutscrapeSucks]

^ Oracle -- this happened to me as well. Took more than a year before their Indian reps stopped calling me.

A few years back, Sybase sent us a big box full of software unrequested. After that they hounded us for months and even sent some sales consultants over in person. I later heard that they were involved in an accounting fraud where they were booking revenue based on product demos.

Re:Microsoft Customers Balk at Hard Sell

[Anonymous Coward]

There is only so much hate to go around.

Re:Microsoft Customers Balk at Hard Sell

[Anonymous Coward]

In all fairness, if you're going to post articles about MS doing this, you should post about other companies doing this as well.

Yes, other companies as well do this as well. Another big software vendor recently tried this with us. Support went from $20k/year to $125K/year because of "new" pricing. Because our environment we have some good tech types, ported the application right out of their tool and told the salesperson to take a hike. The net savings is about $100k and we now have the source code!

These companies bank on the principle of least change. That is, they know you're hooked like an addict to heroin to what you use and you're unlikely to bite the political bullet and change. So for those that will not change it is pay up and shut-up.

Microsoft didn't invent EEEEE (5 E's), they might have mastered it but Entertain, Embrace, Espionage, Extort your way to Earnings is common. Companies could easily save billions if they didn't mindless play the game out of FUD.

Re:Microsoft Customers Balk at Hard Sell

[Kohath]

Fairness? This is "fair" if it's true. It's "fair" if the story accurately reflects what actually happened. So what if other companies do this? This is a story about what Microsoft did. Some other story can be about what some other company does.

Re:Microsoft Customers Balk at Hard Sell

[Anonymous Coward]

In all fairness, if you're going to post articles about MS doing this, you should post about other companies doing this as well.

Yes, and what about the children? The Children?! Somebody did something bad somewhere, so leave poor Microsoft alone! Think of the children!

Re:Microsoft Customers Balk at Hard Sell

[killjoe]

"In all fairness, if you're going to post articles about MS doing this, you should post about other companies doing this as well."

Why?

I'll put it another way. Whats it to you? Why do you care so much about MS? Why are you offended if somebody says something bad about MS? Why are you not offended when somebody says something bad about another company?

Re:Microsoft Customers Balk at Hard Sell

[Anonymous Coward]

That's easy I can give you one from personal experience. NOVELL. I got to watch them demand to audit a government department and then refused to leave until they were personally receiving a signed contract from them or until each and every copy of there software was removed, consequently the department cancelled all there novell software contracts and funnily enough moved to Windows. (the infringement was around about 5% more than they had purchased, infringement yes but unintentional)

Re:Microsoft Customers Balk at Hard Sell

[Anonymous Coward]

Why did you move to microsot, then? Be 5% under comlpiance for Windows licenses and you'll have to buy licenses for all machines over again.

It doesn't look to be any improvement.

How biased can this website get?

[Quintios]

Geez, why not change the title to "Pick on Microsoft AT ALL COSTS." Is there ANYONE that doesn't balk at a hard sell? Why not post something about how horrible car salesmen are? What about telemarketers that don't hang up and keep up the pressure on you even if you're trying to be polite and hang up the phone nicely? So an overzealous saleswoman gave someone the hard sell. So what? Happens all the time in many many different industries.

How is this news? I don't normally complain about articles; truthfully I hardly ever post, but this anti-MS stuff is getting pretty out of hand... Fact is, if that company WAS out of compliance, they'd be better served to get someone from MS in there to determine if they were or not because that's who is going to sue 'em. The fines can get pretty hefty. And if someone around there doesn't have the cojones to tell a salesperson "no" when they don't need something, then you need to fire whomever is running your IT dept.

Sheesh.

Re:How biased can this website get?

[Dan Ost]

It becomes news when it's an official corporate sales strategy.

Re:How biased can this website get?

[nitefly]

The difference is car salesmen and telemarketers don't promise lawsuits or criminal charges if you don't let them "audit" the PRIVATE information you have on your computers.

Re:How biased can this website get?

[Pantero Blanco]

"Geez, why not change the title to "Pick on Microsoft AT ALL COSTS." Is there ANYONE that doesn't balk at a hard sell? Why not post something about how horrible car salesmen are? What about telemarketers that don't hang up and keep up the pressure on you even if you're trying to be polite and hang up the phone nicely? So an overzealous saleswoman gave someone the hard sell. So what? Happens all the time in many many different industries."

I've never had a car salesman try to sell me a car by claiming I stole the one I'm driving from his lot...There's a huge gap between a "hard sell" and a baseless accusation... And a baseless accusation aimed at getting money out of someone is generally considered extortion.

Re:How biased can this website get?

[Temkin]

Fact is, if that company WAS out of compliance, they'd be better served to get someone from MS in there to determine if they were or not because that's who is going to sue 'em.

Actually... Some would say that's why Microsoft should be the last choice. If they're going to spend $$ investigating, they're going to do everything they can to recover the cost of the investigation at the very least.

If it were me, I'd prefer a neutral third party.

Re:How biased can this website get?

[Aqua_boy17]

Good points. I thought the article might be a troll until I saw it was written by CW's editor in chief and then I became puzzled. I mean, it talks about one instance at one company where there was probably a little bit of ego brusing and some pissing contests going on. This was IMHO a personality conflict, not an intimidation crusade by Microsoft. The company owner must be a golf buddy of the author.

Seriously, if there were numerous reports of MS staffers showing up on company's doorsteps toting baseball bats, this would be news. But this situation is not. At my company, we have an Enterprise Agreement with MS which gives them the right to come on sight and audit our usage. We true-up at the end of each year based on what we're actually using and everyone goes home happy.

In this case, the guy in question should have just escalated this with Microsoft's management and tried to speak with someone more reasonable. The fact that he decided to call a lawyer first makes me think he was a little nervous about something he might have overlooked. Just my 2 centavos.

Re:How biased can this website get?

[Anonymous Coward]

Fact is... If the company was in compliance they had no reason to be threatened by a sales puke at Microsoft. There is no reason that a vendor can have to force open the door of any company to take a look for evidence of non-compliance. An independant audit of the purchasing records is sufficient to prove compliance if a complaint is filed in a court of law.

As to the incessant Microsoft bashing... Would you rather the customer(s) just roll over on these items? The news never spread? A precedent be set to consider this decent and lawful behaviour? Any corporate employee that has a customer facing position in the company is a direct reflection on the corporation as a whole. Those sales pitches are scripted and required by management. If the leadership is evil then the corporate entity is evil. The only way to fight this kind of garbage is through education of the masses. If you don't care then don't read the article. This information is important to those that are fighting for a level playing field and more consumer choice in the marketplace. Simply because it isn't important to you doesn't mean it should be surpressed or ignored.

Re:How biased can this website get?

[spun]

What, are you new here? No, by your slashdot ID, I'd say you've been around long enough to know this site has an anti Microsoft bias.

But all bias aside, this is a pretty egregious sales tactic. They are basically threatening their customers. I mean, when's the last time you heard of a used car salesman saying something like, "Well, the fromitz on your car is expired and the McPhearson Valve looks like it's ready to blow. You'd better leave it in our shop so we can see what else is wrong with it. We really can't let you drive that thing outta here, you'd better buy this new Vista Cruiser."

Used car salesmen can be seedy, but this takes the cake. No amount of excuses and afronted rhetoric from Microsoft flacks and fanboys will change the fact that this is far far worse than we typically see in the sleaziest of legitimate professions. It is more on par with the tactics of organized crime.

Re:How biased can this website get?

[e4g4]

First of all, have you seen the little icon for microsoft related articles? Sure, there's a heavy bias here, but at least it's no secret. Secondly, the article seems to indicate that the behavior of Janet Lawless goes far above and beyond the scope of a "hard sell." In fact, in the excerpts quoted in the article, I don't see the word "sell" anywhere (go ahead, control-f it). And with an obfuscated title like "engagement manager," I doubt the CIO of AWC had any idea he was talking to a member of the sales team (In fact, the article seems to indicate that it was the attorney who caught on first). At least with a car salesman, you know that a) he probably has a quota to fill and b) his salary is dependent on commission from his sales.

Suffice it to say that the difference between the "hard sell" and deliberately misleading and *threatening* behavior is quite substantial. Elaborate sales scheme doesn't even begin to describe it - it's far more analagous to a mafia-esque "protection" scheme. I mean really, how many car salesmen do you know that come out of the woodwork and tell you they believe that your car doesn't meet EPA standards and that you should bring it to the dealership to be "inspected" - so that they can sell you a new one?

Re:How biased can this website get?

[dwiget]

This is not, even remotely, "hard sell". This is "use scare tactics and some percentage of our customers will just roll over and throw money at us to kee the 'bad thing' away". It fargin' stinks, this should be looked into by appropriate authorities.

Re:How biased can this website get?

[Alioth]

If you want pro-Microsoft or "unbiased" articles, then don't go to a website that advocates open source software. This is after all Slashdot, *not* Cee Colon Backslash Dot.

Re:How biased can this website get?

[Anonymous Coward]

balk at hard sales? intellectually, you'd think so, BUT IT ISN'T TRUE. these kinds of people get these jobs BECAUSE THEY GET PEOPLE TO BUY MORE STUFF!

it is true!

everyone says they hate the hard sell, but a significant majority of folks actually buy more based on the hard sell.

for guys like me - it sucks.

but reality is reality, people. these sales companies put in the guys who get the job done - just like car dealerships and real estate agents.

you may not like these people, BUT YOU DO BUY FROM THEM MORE THAN YOU BUY FROM OTHER PEOPLE.

i worked in real estate for a short while and the slimiest guy around got all the business. he was an incredible short term manipulator - but at the end of the day, he'd throw his clients under the bus for a payday.

i actually tried to offer a service to my clients. no pressure - just information and advise.

he outsoled me 40-1 in his first year. and yes, he'd use lines like "you better make an offer now, this property is gonna go fact. i'm getting offers up the b*tt." it was a total lie, but indiciative of the tactics he used to manipulate people with his hard sell.

the irony is that his good friend and his brother and law didn't buy / sell their homes with him b/c he's such an *ss.

*ss or not, after a 40-1 beat down, i *know* what makes people buy and respect coupled with low / no pressure sales doesn't do it. oh, yeah, i put lots of mileage on my car taking people around who couoldn't make up their mind.

yeah, high pressure sales DOMINATES b/c it works. PERIOD.

Re:How biased can this website get?

[mabhatter654]

When dealing with MS scare tactics a lawyer should be your first call. This guy was entirely correct in doing that. If MS had a real beef with him they would send specific instructions for him to follow. Then the lawyer would get with him and balance the risks. There in lies the first line of defense.. the lawyer will ask for specific licenses that allow inspection and specific software in question. If MS can't come up with that the lawyer will GTH them.

Re:How biased can this website get?

[level_headed_midwest]

Then to be more true to its roots, should /. become ./ ?

Re:How biased can this website get?

[jcr]

anti Microsoft bias.

That's not bias, that's experience.

-jcr

Re:How biased can this website get?

[Aqua_boy17]

I respectfully disagree. The simple act of counting licenses requires legal advice? Come on, can't we do anything in this country without involving an attorney anymore?

The knee-jerk reaction to contact a lawyer for anything and everything in the US is the main reason for our being by far the most litigious society in the world. This serves nothing except the legal community and is an impediment to our overall progress and productivity. As I said, a simple phone call to one of this person's superiors at MS probably would have been enough and the issue would have been defused then and there.

I am no MS apologist, but this was not an 'intimidation campaign' by Microsoft. It was an arrogant and abrasive employee who thought way too much of herself and who needed to be put back in line. I stand by my remarks.

Re:How biased can this website get?

[mabhatter654]

When your business is at stake, you call a lawyer, that's why most companies of any size keep one on retainer all the time. "counting licenses" is ALWAYS a problem. Look at the Earnie Ball situation as a example. The people "tried" to be license compliant, but got nailed for $50k + because they didn't "properly" remove the software from computers moved around in the office.
My own company has a PC tech dedicated to maintaining the licenses on all our PCs. He keeps spreadsheets with all the numbers and wipes every machine that comes in and puts fresh, license compliant installs on each and every one. Still, with a minimum of $100k at stake, if we got one of those calls, the lawyer would be the next phone call. Consider it the equivelant of a policeman "just asking" you to put on handcuffs and get in the car... These people are cocky suckups with a multi-billion dollar corp behind them.. such "threats" are entirely out of line unless they are serious.

Been going on for a while now...

[BulletMagnet]

I've gotten I think 4 or so of these calls now. I answered the 1st one, and it turned out Redmond was trying to force a sale of MAS90 (Microsoft's accounting package) when I told them I worked for a construction company and we use an accounting package designed for Construction (Timberline) they said "we can make it work for a construction company" He got the hint after repeating "Not interested" 3 times.

I've had Reception add "any calls from Microsoft" to the forward straight to voicemail. If the BSA wants to talk to me about my license counts, I'm not one bit worried.

Re:Been going on for a while now...

[Anonymous Coward]

I answered the 1st one, and it turned out Redmond was trying to force a sale of MAS90 (Microsoft's accounting package) when I told them I worked for a construction company and we use an accounting package designed for Construction (Timberline) they said "we can make it work for a construction company"

Jesus Christ! Does your name end in a vowel? Does this MS dweeb watch the Sopranos?!?

I don't think that idiot knew that construction==mafia and that he came real close to being part of a foundation!

Re:Been going on for a while now...

[SatanicPuppy]

I always just tell them that:

a) I don't have authority to make that purchasing descision (which technically isn't true)

b) All software descisions are made at the corporate level, so they;ll need to talk to corporate first. (It's like the proton meeting the anti-proton...Who cares who wins?)

c) I don't have any free money in the budget for this period (sometimes they call back after this one, so it's a last resort)

For god's sake don't stay on the phone with the jokers. Only bad things will come of that.

Re:Been going on for a while now...

[NineNine]

You had a salesperson call you trying to sell a product. It has nothing to do with this article, is a completely normal practice, and it happens every day. Calm down and breathe. You're a bit hysterical about nothing at all.

Re:Been going on for a while now...

[lemon_dieter]

How can you make money if you're letting software do all of your work for you? I have had far greater opportunities to buy-out and compare sub's scopes by ditching the software gig entirely. The local profit margins are at 3-4%, but when you do your job as a Manager it's not hard to realize 10-15% just by sitting down and doing work that other people aren't willing to.

Is it that hard to find time to do quality work?

Brilliant

[KevMar]

Its underhanded and brilliant at the same time.

Any company that knowingly (or thinks they are) in vialation will quickly signup for whatever universal license agreement that will cover them. Most of the time those people have already looked at the options and know what they need to do.

Unfortuanatly they did not back off when someone called the bluff. Know when to fold um.

Im not justifying it, im just saying its thinking outside the box. And i would guess that its very effective.

You must be new here

[ColdWetDog]

If there were any real alternatives to technology in today's Microsoft dominated juggernaut, these "practices" would send customers screaming to the competition. Unfortunately, so far, there aren't.

Well, there is this interesting operating system that I heard about on this website called "slapdash" or something like that. Seems like it scales pretty well and some big computer companies like IBM are playing around with it.

I think it was called 'Linux' - could be wrong about that.

Re:You must be new here

[Firehed]

To be completely honest, you're only lying to yourself by saying that Linux is a real alternative to Windows right now. Yes, it's "an" alternative, but not a "real" alternative. I can assure you that Ma and Pa Jones have absolutely no intention of fucking around in a console to do otherwise-basic operations using operators that make no sense whatsoever (obviously, grep is derived from grope, which translates to searching in a rather stimulating manner - the search is obvious, and you give your hard drive and CPU a workout). Hate or deny it as much as you want, but until Linux is remotely user-friendly, it'll stay with the hardcores and the servers. OSX could well find a decent spot in the marketplace, but FOSOSs have a ways to go before they can really become a viable alternative.

Re:You must be new here

[PitaBred]

We weren't talking about Ma and Pa Jones. Do you really have that short of an attention span? This article is about businesses. It's quite viable for a number of people in business, where you have an IT support infrastructure. It's just inertia that keeps them with what they're used to in probably 70% of cases that really don't use anything Microsoft-specific. (bear in mind all numbers come directly out of my ass, but are based in experience). I'd say that with tactics like this, MS is doing the hard work and making it easier for people to go against the inertia.

Re:You must be new here

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry but Linux isn't for the everyday computer user yet (not even on the business side). I enjoy playing with it but I know for a fact that my employer would never consider switching it. Windows will always remain as the primary desktop operating system until someone can come out with something that is easy to use and you don't have to have someone custom make drivers or software for. The main reason is that most non tech people wouldn't be able to figure it out. I mean we just installed new Xerox color multifunction printers at my work and I have had to tell people 15 times how to print a damned envelope. And these arn't the bottom of the barrel employees either. Most of them are very smart and well paid. The problem is that they arn't tech people. The most tech they get is turning on their TV or the Comp and doing some web browsing. I'd love to see someone replace windows but right now microsoft tends to have the most versatility and you don't have to hunt for things that will run on it.

Re:You must be new here

[rolfwind]

I take it you haven't used Linux in years to be spouting off that FUD. Ubuntu is as user-friendly as it gets for completely free (or perhaps Mepis). All I would say is a requirement is a decent internet connection to download programs/updates.

And for a lot of people, all they use the computer for is email/internet. Add in openoffice (already included) and a surprising large portion of the population is taken care of. Before I hear cries of "photoshop" this and that, already granted but that is a different segment of the populace. It's also nice using an OS where I can download what I need in most cases and that it's legitimately free, not loaded down with bloat/spyware, or have a friend reminder pop up every 30 seconds of how I should register some software.

If by it's not a real alternative "right now" you mean it's not "perfect." Well, no, but neither is windows. With that attitude, nothing will get developed far enough to be "perfect" because no ones using it. But it's good enough for a lot of people, so it is an alternative.

Seriously, I don't know if you were trolling or what, but Desktop Linux today is far ahead of Desktop Linux of just 2 years ago and light years ahead of Desktop Linux 1999. On my personal linux workstation, I haven't used a commandline in months and I'm a semi-power user.

And yes, I have introduce Linux to Newbs (former Windows users) who have stuck with it. These aren't l33t hackers either.

Re:You must be new here

[WhiteWolf666]

My parents can't be trusted with a Windows system. It gets infested with crap.

They run just happily on SuSE systems. Yes, I install software for them, but it is very rare that they need new stuff. They can use the klik:// stuff easily, too.

Linux is here today, for many of us. My parents, my grandparents, etc. . . .

Re:You must be new here

[Kadin2048]

Hello ... oh, it's for you. It's 1995 calling, they want their bullshit back.

Your whole ease-of-use angle just falls completely flat. Configuring a modern Linux desktop is no harder nor any more metaphorically abstract than the average Windows or Mac OS X desktop, in fact I'd say that it's probably easier to configure a secure Linux machine than a Windows machine, because you don't have to do anything to the Linux machine, while on the Windows one, after you have it running, you have to install your anti-virus, anti-spyware, etc. I don't know where you're getting your FUD about using the command-line; with something like Linspire or Xandros, you can avoid the CLI completely for administrative functions if you really want to. I think that all but the most thickheaded users eventually realize that there are tasks for which the terminal is more efficient than a GUI (even some of the most diehard MacOS 9 fans had to grudgingly admit this after the OS X transition, prior to which the idea of a command line to most Mac users was anathema), but they don't have to use it if they don't want to.

But anyway, this is all a moot point because your straw man about Ma and Pa Kettle is irrelevant in a discussion about corporate desktops and servers.

Linux is quite useable right now for a corporate desktop, where you want to give the users something that's basically pre-configured and locked down. "Here's your standard-issue computer. Don't change the settings. Don't install any software. Don't run any funny email attachments. Don't install stupid wallpaper. Don't install [verboten application]." It's much more practical to have Linux machines configured to run everything as non-root users than it is on Windows, due to the number of Win applications that are retardedly designed to be run by an Administrator.

The thing that keeps companies on Windows despite the vast downsides, in terms of security, stability and expense (that last one being the biggest and the most germane to this discussion) is because of the vast amount of legacy code that most businesses have. It only takes one non-portable application to make switching seem less practical, and many businesses have multiple non-portable applications (e.g. maybe they have Exchange for email, use Access for a database, and have some custom junk written in VB that lacks sources; any one of of those problems is probably solvable, but together it starts to really increase the complexity of a move).

The thing driving Windows in the enterprise isn't ease of use -- that might have been true in the Slackware days, but it's not anymore (and if it was true that ease-of-use was such a concern, it wouldn't explain why businesses haven't just migrated to Mac, which has long been considered an easier-to-use platform) -- and it's certainly not TCO: it's the perceived availability of software and support, and consequent Microsoft vendor lock-in.

Re:You must be new here

[arivanov]

While you are correct that 70% of the Microsoft shops are not microsoft centric in their primary business function and workflow and can convert, very few businesses will even consider.

The reason for this is that 95% of the businesses which are Microsoft shops have a sales, marketing and middle management that is MS Exchange addicted and is living under the false impression that it is good process and business practice to drag any person from any other part of the business into a meeting on a whim based on his schedule in Exchange. They are the primary and usually unsurmounatble obstacle to conversion.
Just try going into a Microsoft shop and saying to the sales team "You will no longer drag Engineering into meetings. You will submit requests via an issue tracking (or CRM) system instead so they can have a correct resource allocation". The screams will reach CEO level with a speed which will make you wander if Einstein is right about C being the absolute speed limit.
In order to convert even a part of a Microsoft addicted business you have to create suitable processes and most importanly kill the S&M idea that the world is flat and they are the only pinnacle sticking out of it. This is a long and painfull process. Once it is complete parts of the business can use the right tool for their jobs (linux, BSD, Solaris, MacOS, even Windows which is configured to a specific business task). But not before that. And Microsoft knows this and does their best to provide "solutions" which allow you not to compartamentalise your business.

Re:You must be new here

[Nutria]

It's just inertia

And Exchange, and QuickBooks, and all the other important apps that are only written for Win32.

As someone who has solely used Linux at home for 5 years, and who must use Win2K at work, it is painfully but sadly obvious to me that there aren't enough apps (I said apps, not languages and utilities) for Linux/Unix.

Yes, it's MSFT's fault for illegally strong-arming itself into monopoly, but that's not the point. Until the ISVs start writing for *ix, *ix can's be brought onto the common user's desktop.

Re:You must be new here

[NutscrapeSucks]

The reason for this is that 95% of the businesses which are Microsoft shops have a sales, marketing and middle management that is MS Exchange addicted

I've worked in a few places that operated just like this, except with Lotus Notes.

Probably the worst thing about working in a "Microsoft-Addicted" business is the attitude that Excel+Email is the universal tool for solving everything. Because Microsoft pushes tools and not solutions, people thend to be very ad-hoc about process related stuff.

Re:You must be new here

[TheJediGeek]

People who are that non-technical would have the same problems with Windows as Linux. Where I'm at right now is entirely Windows and nearly everyone here can barely figure it out. However, if I were to set up a machine with Linux and OOo, it wouldn't really be much more difficult for them. They might not be able to install whatever they want, but how is that a bad thing? For the vast majority of business uses, Linux would do what they need with little changes or training for the users.

Earlier this year, I installed Firefox on all the machines and got everyone to start using it instead of IE. That's a bulk of the retraining that would be required with a decent Linux setup. "Click on this now instead of the thing you used to click on"
I can see where people would jump to thinking that Linux would be too difficult for most people, and that would be true if they had to install it or other apps. If you have a halfway decent IT dept that can get the machines set up properly with what is needed, there shouldn't be any real issues for most users to use it instead of Windows.

Re:You must be new here

[E-Rock]

If you're really having problems with people scheduling out of Exchange/Outlook, either stop publishing your free/busy data, or add an all day recurring meeting where your availablity is 'busy'.

Finding a company where Sales and Marketing aren't at the top of the pile will be much more difficult.

Re:You must be new here

[drinkypoo]

The problem with linux on the desktop is the same as it's ever been: You can't go down to best buy and buy a 1,001 of the best screensavers compilation for linux. Even if you could, odds are it wouldn't run when you got it home because of some customization you needed for some simple piece of hardware, like your wifi card.

Even with ubuntu, you have to go add a repository (the multiverse or whatever stupid name they use for it, I just did it but I forget) just to install acrobat reader, or mplayer plugins for firefox. For that matter, you have to actually know that you need the mplayer-plugins from the multiverse. This took me a bit of googling to find. The average user has no hope.

Then there's the other problem, that support lags behind windows. The latest flash player, for example, isn't available for linux yet, so even once you figure out how to install it (it's got a package in the multiverse too; the package downloads the binaries from adobe's servers) you may not be able to view sites.

Linux is great, linux is good, I'm pretty happy with ubuntu dapper beta on my stinkpad so far (updates have been flowing regularly, thank goodness) once I got it installed. The partition creation/selection part of the installer in flight 6 was broken, and I still have no idea how I got it to work... But then, it's beta.

Until users can trivially install the software they need (like acroread) without having to google for instructions, Linux can not possibly be ready for the mass-market desktop.

Re:You must be new here

[rolfwind]

Those are valid points but:

The problem with linux on the desktop is the same as it's ever been: You can't go down to best buy and buy a 1,001 of the best screensavers compilation for linux. Even if you could, odds are it wouldn't run when you got it home because of some customization you needed for some simple piece of hardware, like your wifi card.

The nice thing about linux (for me) is that I didn't have to buy software in years for it:) I understand some people might want something (like Photoshop) that's only available on Windows and don't want to use wine, but I think the majority of non-techies are just websurfers and do some IM/email with an office app pitched in.

Ironically, it's the computer professionals who will be harder to please as some good software is windows only, stuff like photoshop, etcetera, as the only technical market that is almost fully served by linux right now are the programmers.

Of course, I may just be biased, I've been using Linux so long now, as when I installed Windows XP to use some stupid program, I kept comparing how primitive/annoying that was compared to my linux box, XP doesn't even read ext3/2 partitions or bitching it doesn't come with any software!

Re:You must be new here

[drinkypoo]

Basically there are two kinds of people who should be running Linux on the desktop today: nerds and grandmothers. These are just blanket descriptions though, kind of like when one of the instructors of my "Promotional Strategies in Gaming" class at UNR referred to over-55 women as "purse clutchers"... But let me expound anyway.

We all know who the nerds are, they're the people who can run linux without needing a dummies book. They can google around, or irc, or read forums or whatever, and figure out the solutions to non-trivial problems. They are clearly candidates for linux on the desktop (which is why I finally put linux on my laptop, h0 h0 h0. Too bad it doesn't support the ITE8210 RAID controller in my desktop system.)

The grandmothers are the people who just want their computer to do two or three things, and do them reliably, and well. They don't install new software; their grandsons do that for them when their parents drag them to grandma's house every year for the holidays. They basically need a web browser, an email client, and maybe a DVD player. They would be well-served by WebTV if it weren't such crap and if it would support a sufficient resolution.

Everyone else is better off with OSX or Windows, in that order. Linux is still complicated! It's gotten so much better than I don't even know where to start giving examples, but probably the best one is that with pretty much any distribution it's no longer necessary to write a configuration file for X. I'd say that was the hardest thing to get right "back in the day" when I started using Linux.

Re:You must be new here

[D-Cypell]

The thing that keeps companies on Windows despite the vast downsides, in terms of security, stability and expense (that last one being the biggest and the most germane to this discussion) is because of the vast amount of legacy code that most businesses have.

Don't underestimate the draw of office. The requirement to run MS office is probably one of the few legitimate arguments for the absolute requirement for windows.

Yes, there are alternatives. Open office is getting better, but OO writer still seems to lack something over word, ditto Calc vs Excel. For all the crap that MS bundles into office (including the handy virus runtime), they did managed to create a pretty decent office suite.

Even with retraining and a legion of staff that can use OO effectively. There is still a niggle that perhaps the doc file you created with OO will not view right in Word. It is not practical to expect everyone to convert to OO on the same day. You can use PDF but oddly, you can be more certain that the recipient of the document will be able to view a .doc than a .pdf.

Re:You must be new here

[Grishnakh]

None of these things are important.

You can't go down to best buy and buy a 1,001 of the best screensavers compilation for linux.

You don't need to buy screensavers and put them on your computer at work. In fact, your IT department doesn't want you putting that crap on your system.

Even with ubuntu, you have to go add a repository (the multiverse or whatever stupid name they use for it, I just did it but I forget) just to install acrobat reader, or mplayer plugins for firefox.

IT can pre-configure all that stuff for you.

Then there's the other problem, that support lags behind windows. The latest flash player, for example, isn't available for linux yet

Who cares? Corporate intranet sites don't use flash, and you're not supposed to be surfing Flash sites at work anyway.

Until users can trivially install the software they need (like acroread) without having to google for instructions, Linux can not possibly be ready for the mass-market desktop.

Users don't need to install software. Linux is more than ready for the corporate desktop, which is the subject of this article.

Re:You must be new here

[DavidTC]

Well, of course Sales should be at the top of the pile. They make all the money!
</sarcasm>

The problem is that in most companies there are three tiers: Sales (and Marketing, if seperate) at the top, Manufacturing actually making the thing in the middle, and Infrastructure, which does not directly make any products but enables them to be made and the rest of the company to operate.

The tier is a good idea. It is, indeed, more important if the assembly line is broken than if email is broken or the restrooms are out of order. In companies where the 'manufacturing process' is virtual and ideas are part of, however, email being down may effect the 'manufacturing process'. But that's all nitpicking.

The actual problem is that someone without critical thinking made Sales at the top. Sales is infrastructure, that provides 'money upkeep'. It's the least important infrastructure, in that you could, in theory, neglect it for months without it impacting manufacturing.

This is obviously not a good idea, much like it's not a good idea to neglect to file required business paperwork or neglect to change lightbulbs, but, nevertheless, incoming money is a rather indirect need in any competantly operated company.

Note I'm not saying that Sales needs less resources, per se, but they need a lower priority. They should have less of an impact on the rest of the company workers, ones who are attempting to produce good and services (Which is the only thing that actually is making money.) and the other infrastructure people. (Granted, they usually leave the other infrastructure pretty much alone.)

There is the same problem with 'Management', which, while not a division, nevertheless takes up quite a lot of time of the actual workers, when in reality any company could probably operate without any 'managing' for a month or so, barring random clerical work they do. (In fact, they usually have someone to do the clerical work for them.) Of course the problem is that Management is, by defination, there to take up time worker's time by interacting with them, so the solution is to actually have much less management.

Re:You must be new here

[Vancorps]

haha, sorry, but ease of use is one of the reasons many businesses use Windows still and will continue to. As for OS X I'll go out on a limb and suggest you haven't had to administer more than 10 OS X machines. Where is the policy support? Where is central patch management? Where is central software management? Yes, all are available but we're talking about ease of use. SMS and MOM on the Microsoft side are far easier to use than at least any of the OSS implementations I've seen for Linux or OS X.

Novell, yep, they are still around and they are one exception to the linux table. E-Directory and Xen products will manage most anything so they probably rank at the top of the heap but they are indeed costly still and getting local support for them is difficult.

I'm sorry but Windows for many businesses small and large is still the best option from frontend services. Linux is working out great for here with Oracle. We run SUSE Enterprise for AMD64 along with 64-bit Oracle 10g. It's slick. I wanted to run Gentoo on them but getting Oracle support on a Gentoo box is kind of difficult and when push comes to shove I need my database supported!

That said, for the desktop, home users will chat, they will use webcams, they will digital cameras and camcorders, they'll use scanners. Hell, a lot of business users will use all of this, most of them just plain don't have support for Linux, although a lot of them support OS X which has come a long way but it still needs to learn how to play with others. File-sharing both NFS and SMB support on OS X seems to be terribly shakey especially with any form of encryption in the way. Of course its backend makes it endlessly configurable but thats not easy now is it?

A lot scriptable but that adds to setup time and complicates changes to the environment, we pick up half the network for instance and go to auction. With SMS and DFS all users crossover seemlessly without me having to even visit them. The auction infrastructure is setup in a day and scales out three times the size of headquarters. I'd call that easy!

That said, I'll add its all about administration. A good linux admin which I'll admit I'm mediocre at can and probably already has scripts setup to configure all sorts of stuff so to the end user it may all appear seemless but in my experience this sort of shift is hard.

I like the GUI world Windows offers because when I need to do something a little weird its up to me to see where the option is. In the CLI world I have to google the result and copy someone elses script and modify it for my own needs. That doesn't sound easier. Granted archiving log files and Oracle database management tasks are much faster using scripts. Basically look at Linux for what it is and don't delude yourself into thinking its easy. OS X is fairly simple to use but everytime you want to do something a little different you have to struggle and when there's a problem forget about being able to diagnose it from an application error message that may or may not say anything about the problem. I'll point to OS X not being able to talk to an SMB share on a remote subnet. I have to change the ip address to static whenever I move the Macs from subnet to subnet physically. I've seen strange behavior using wireless connections too. If it would tell you why its not working or give you some error other than access denied life would be a lot easier on OS X. Difference in philosophy though, I don't envy an OS X Admin. I'm glad we only have a few here at my company.

Re:You must be new here

[drinkypoo]

Users don't need to install software. Linux is more than ready for the corporate desktop, which is the subject of this article.

However, it is the subject of this comment thread, which only demonstrates that you should read the parents to messages, and not just read and respond to the comment that is rated high enough for you to see the whole thing without clicking around.

All of my points are entirely valid when we're talking about the home desktop, which is what we're talking about in this particular stage of this thread.

Re:You must be new here

[angrytuna]

While I tend to agree with you in general, I had a really positive experience with Ubuntu recently autodetecting an old turtle beach sound card after a machine shutdown and restart. That experience sort of made my day, and also marked the end of my uncle's transition from his horribly spyware ridden W98 install to a recent kubuntu build on the same ancient hardware.

It's certainly still fairly hard at times for the average joe to set up a linux machine (for reasons such as you mention), and perhaps there are maintenance issues down the line that he'll have problems with, but he otherwise seems quite comfy on his new OS.

So, I guess that while I agree with you, for what he does with his machine, it seems to be working just great, as long as he didn't have to deal with the actual install procedure.

Re:You must be new here

[killjoe]

Are you under some impression that it's not possible to get programs for linux that allow you to share calenders and schedule appointments?

If so you need to disabuse yourself of that notion right now because it's not true. There are numerous open source and commercial softwares that allow you to do that.

Re:You must be new here

[anotherzeb]

While it would be linux (or maybe other FOSS) all the way if it were up to me, I can see an issue when it comes to sharing documents created with Microsoft software between businesses. For example, if company a uses Word version x, which outputs a .doc format that OpenOffice can't read (yet), then companies that it sends these documents to need to be able to read them. It doesn't seem to me like the best idea to be doing this, but companies still send each other latest version .doc and .xls files, so all companies involved need to be able to read / edit / create these. A much better idea would be for all companies (trading partners, call them what you want) to agree to use .rtf documents, but I don't see this happening on a daily basis. Maybe this is leading to an attitude of 'Jack uses Windows so I have to' among companies, which is ideal for Microsoft, but not themselves or each other. Any clues about how to get round this?

Re:You must be new here

[Firehed]

But you can't even get a (legal) DVD player for Linux. I'm not saying that Linux can't be an alternative, but it still needs a lot more all-around support to be genuinely useful to the common folk. I've toyed with it, and if I spent some time I could be familiar with it again. But as many geeks can't be bothered to deal with the hassle of doing things we otherwise take for granted, you certainly can't expect most others.

Don't get me wrong - I'd love to see a lot more systems with Linux. I spent a while bitching at my school's IT department for not using at the very least Firefox, but 95% of the computers in the school only need those "grandmother" word processor+browser requirements, and they could save themselves a hundred grand a year in licensing. I remember back in the days of DOS and how you needed to know how computers worked in order to really get anything done. Considering that half of the hardware on the market doesn't have Linux drivers (hardly the fault of the OSS community, but that doesn't make it any less of a problem), you can't expect widespread acceptance. Put it this way - what can you do in Linux that - as a "normal" user - that you can't do in Windows or OSX ten times easier? Yes, I've had times where I wished there was that old Linux box hanging around, but not too many home or business users have a daily need to compile a years-old MUD they coded back in seventh grade. Yes, the whole "free" thing definitely works in Linux's favor, but piracy aside, people are willing to pay a certain amount for convenience, and OSX and Windows are clearly within the limit.

I think F/OSS is the way forward, and really hope it turns out to be the case. But let's face facts here - until the ease-of-use is equal to, or at least close to that of Win/OSX, the price of convenience is worth it. While this post too will probably get modded down as flamebait, consider it from a non-ubergeek perspective. I got a Macbook Pro two days ago, and I'm already fairly competent with OSX. I used Linux for a couple months as a spare machine (that got a decent amount of use) and I left just as confused as I started. Yes, it's easy to use what's already there - FF, OOo, etc, but while installation remains more complicated than double-click or drag-n-drop, it's going nowhere fast. I genuinely hope that changes, but it's really just another one of those chicken and the egg scenarios. I think the whole China $150 PC thing will boost development a lot, but last I checked, Linux was effectively DOS with a gui and different command names.

Re:You must be new here

[mangu]

Until users can trivially install the software they need (like acroread) without having to google for instructions, Linux can not possibly be ready for the mass-market desktop.

Funny that you mention this, because I haven't a good idea on how to install acroread for XP. Do you go to superdownloads.com for that, or should you buy a CD at CompUSA? Who sells this "acroread", how can I install it in XP if all I know is the software's name?

In (K)Ubuntu I know it's very simple: click on the button at the lower left corner of the screen, go to the "System -> Packet Manager" menu, type the system password, type "acroread" in the box labelled "quick filter" and click on the button labelled "install package". It's the same way for every one of the 18000 or so packages that are available in the standard KUbuntu distribution.

I don't even have to know the name of the software, if I want to a software to run my scanner, for instance, I type "scanner" in the quick filter and Adept will show me all the packages which have scanner either in the name or the description. By reading the respective descriptions, I can tell the picture scanners apart from the virus scanners.

For anyone who can read and understand plain English (or whatever is the language in his installation), Ubuntu is more ready for the mass market than XP. Only power users know exactly where to get those CDs from which they rum "setup.exe" to install software.

Re:You must be new here

[Anonymous Coward]

Add Visio to your list.

I had to make a Visio diagram of our layout of connections from our MDF to our 20 IDFs in our biulding. We have a really simple layout. Each IDF is connected back to the MDF via two fiber connections (one to each core switch in the MDF) and one ethernet connection connects each IDF to the other IDF on the same floor. That is it. That is the all the connections. I already had a chart document that shows what port is connected to where and it was broken up by floor. For some reason, the IT manager wants to see that in Visio. I am not talking about a network diagram, just the MDF--> connections. So.. I spent about a day (I'm not good with Visio) making a Visio diagram showing 20 seperate IDF's connecting back to an MDF and an ethernet between IDF's. Although he was happy, it really is completely useless to look at that thing. There are times when a picture is worth a thousand words but not every time.

Re:You must be new here

[batkiwi]

Accept|Tenative|Decline

Which of these three buttons, attached to every meeting request, should you be clicking?

Re:You must be new here

[LibertineR]

"You will submit requests via an issue tracking (or CRM) system instead so they can have a correct resource allocation".

If the company is using MS CRM, odds are strong that those requests are STILL going to be routed through Exchange.

Re:You must be new here

[batkiwi]

"Yes, it's MSFT's fault for illegally strong-arming itself into monopoly,"

They did nothing of the sort. No legal entity anywhere has issues with MS becoming either the monopoly for OS or for Office software. It's when they used that leverage to push into OTHER markets that it became illegal.

Re:You must be new here

[frank_adrian314159]

I understand some people might want something (like Photoshop) that's only available on Windows and don't want to use wine, but I think the majority of non-techies are just websurfers and do some IM/email with an office app pitched in.

This statement shows you don't understand the problem. There are three key phrases here:

"don't want to use wine" - Do you understand what it is like to actually install Wine? To get it working with J. Random Windows program? It's not a question of don't want, it's a matter of can't. The bottom line is that people don't understand copying system DLL's around from here to there to get the damn thing working.

"people might want something (like Photoshop) that's only available on Windows" - It's not so much that they want it, it's that they don't know any alternative. What is the Photoshop replacement on Linux? I know it's the Gimp, but 99% of these people don't even know about the existance of Paint Shop Pro on Windows, let alone an alternative that might run on Linux. And, even if they think Photoshop is too expensive and want something else? Well, Adobe offers a dumbed down version that might make them happy or they ask a friend. And most people's friends will probably be Windows users and still won't know any different.

"the majority of non-techies are just websurfers and do some IM/email with an office app pitched in" - You are correct about this statement, but you think that the consequence is that this makes it easier for a user to install Linux and destroy any value they might have invested in previously installed software. Oddly enough, the fact that they needed to install this software against their will makes it even more precious to them (something about the pain investment). That they do so little with it actually means that the perceived cost-benefit ratio for switching is extremely low.

The bottom line is this: Until Linux people understand that users (a) are basically ignorant about computers and their operation, (b) are unmotivated about learning about them, (c) don't want to spend a lot of time fiddling with their machines; understand that, for most users, issues (a) and (b) outweigh (c) by a large magnitude because users perceive (c) as just an unfortunate symptom of machines as they are; and, most importantly, cater to the issues (a) and (b), they will not make significant inroads. In fact, given that OS/X has a better user experience than any Linux desktop, that there are Macintoshes that give adequate performance for a reasonable cost, and that Apple still can't make major inroads into the PC market, it would seem to indicate that this is largely an unsolvable problem. Face facts. You're simply screwed on this front. Joe Sixpack will never give a rat's ass about what OS he runs (or how badly it runs), as long as he doesn't have to get off his fat ass.

The only thing that might have a chance to change people's mind would be the availability of machines insanely cheaper than the current PC that (a) could do everything that a current PC can do and (b) that ran Linux. The problem is that Microsoft is too smart to let the OEM cost of Windows rise to a point where it's a significant percentage of the system cost. If they need too, they'll sell it to the manufacturer of the $100 machine for $5.00. And there is nothing illegal about pricing like that.

My advice to Linux folks is to find some way to make stupidity and inertia work for you instead of against you or just enjoy the market share you have in a sense of quality instead of quantity.

Re:You must be new here

[Anonymous Coward]

There is still a niggle that perhaps the doc file you created with OO will not view right in Word.

Whenever I hear this argument, I always think it funny how nobody seems to care that in many cases you cannot move Office documents from one version to the other without having display and formatting problems. I deal with this a lot when passing PowerPoint files from Office97 to 2k to XP and/or back. It is just written up as normal, or just what you need to expect when going from one version of Office to another, but when it comes to OO, it suddenly becomes a fundamental flaw.

Re:You must be new here

[drsmithy]

The reason for this is that 95% of the businesses which are Microsoft shops have a sales, marketing and middle management that is MS Exchange addicted and is living under the false impression that it is good process and business practice to drag any person from any other part of the business into a meeting on a whim based on his schedule in Exchange.

I know a hell of a lot of Engineers who are similarly "addicted".

Of course, this is largely because it allows them to game the system and avoid management harassment by marking their calendars "busy" or "in a meeting" when they want to be left alone...

With that said, quite frankly I find the hostility against the sort of scheduling/messaging integration Exchange & friends offers to be completely irrational. It's an excellent example of the kind of automation and communications streamling computers are *supposed* to be providing for us. You should not be blaming the system because certain users are narcissists, or because it makes it easier for your boss to figure out whether or not you're actually working. When one person can find out if persons A, B and C are free at time X just by having a quick look in their schedules and then schedule a co-ordinated meeting in a couple of minutes, that is a *massive* improvement over having to communicate and co-ordinate a suitable time over the course of half a day (or more) while people are in and out of the office.

This isn't organising meetings between management and/or sales staff, either, its between technical staff with multiple projects who are teamed together on some but not others. The functionality provided by Exchange & co. allows them to significantly manage their time better.

In order to convert even a part of a Microsoft addicted business [...]

In order to "convert" a "Microsoft addicted business" you need to offer them a product that provides the same functionality at a dramatically lower cost, or provides dramatically better functionality. Until then, you will not be able to sell them on a conversion - and rightfully so, as well. Why would any business want to take a step backwards in efficiency ?

There's a reason why Exchange is so popular. It's because it does an important job better than anything else. Very few other products - and *nothing* in the OSS world - even comes close.

But not before that. And Microsoft knows this and does their best to provide "solutions" which allow you not to compartamentalise your business.

You seem to have that arse-about-face. Integrated scheduling/communications makes it *easier* to "compartmentalise your business" because it makes inter-department communications and co-ordination so much better/easier.

Re:You must be new here

[Wavicle]

Configuring a modern Linux desktop is no harder nor any more metaphorically abstract than the average Windows or Mac OS X desktop

A few years ago I bought an Epson Stylus Photo R300. Fairly new printer at the time. It's a very high quality consumer-level 6 color inkjet printer. To install it on windows I inserted the installation CD, hit "next" a few times, plugged in the USB cable and I was done. Once installed I found there were a bunch of cool print driver features I could use - like print preview at the driver level so I could see exactly what would be printed. Saved me about a hundred bad prints throughout the first year.

I didn't install it on my Linux systems because there was no driver for it. Once there was a driver for it I had to upgrade two different printing systems (CUPS and GimpPrint I think). I still haven't figured out how to get a driver-level print preview.

Installing for Linux required about 9 months and upgrades to two pieces of software. Installing for windows took about 9 minutes. Not every complaint about Linux is false.

Re:You must be new here

[pyrrhonist]

<DEVILSADVOCATE guise="average Windows XP user">

Funny that you mention this, because I haven't a good idea on how to install acroread for XP. Do you go to superdownloads.com for that, or should you buy a CD at CompUSA? Who sells this "acroread", how can I install it in XP if all I know is the software's name?

By "arcoread", do you mean Adobe Acrobat? It's in the "Start" menu, and was there when I bought the PC. I didn't have to install it. It's made by Adobe, BTW.

In (K)Ubuntu I know it's very simple: click on the button at the lower left corner of the screen, go to the "System -> Packet Manager" menu, type the system password, type "acroread" in the box labelled "quick filter" and click on the button labelled "install package". It's the same way for every one of the 18000 or so packages that are available in the standard KUbuntu distribution.

Hmm, I'd never remember all that. Everytime I want to run something I just go to the Start menu. Sometimes I can't find what I want there, but I can always get it at the store. Like that time I wanted to play, "Super Hi-Res Chess 2.2", but it wasn't in the Start menu. I just bought it at CompUSA, and now it's in my Start menu.

I don't even have to know the name of the software, if I want to a software to run my scanner, for instance, I type "scanner" in the quick filter and Adept will show me all the packages which have scanner either in the name or the description. By reading the respective descriptions, I can tell the picture scanners apart from the virus scanners.

Oh yeah, I have a scanner too. It came with a software disk. There's some really cool stuff on there that can take my typed documents and scan them right into a Word file. It's, like, totally killer.

For anyone who can read and understand plain English (or whatever is the language in his installation), Ubuntu is more ready for the mass market than XP. Only power users know exactly where to get those CDs from which they rum "setup.exe" to install software.

I don't know about the "setup.exe" rum, but when I want to install software in my Start menu, I just put the disk in and a box pops up that does it for me.

</DEVILSADVOCATE>

Kudos to anyone who spots the Apple reference!

Re:You must be new here

[the_womble]

Mangu, you do not understand.

Easy = exactly the same as in Windows.

Nothing could possibly be better than Windows by definition.

Even if your Linux distro could foretell the future and installed software automatically before you knew you needed it, people like this would still "know" that the way Windows does it is easier.

You and I and a lot of other people know Ubuntu or Mandriva is generally a lot easier to use than Windows, but it is a waste of time trying to convince people who have an emotional investment in Windows and do not want to believe that Linux could be more user friendly.

Re:You must be new here

[Anonymous Coward]

It's "competently" and unlike your theory fantasy world practice has shown that you can make money selling without ever producing jack shit, if you have to that's just an unfortunate side effect of your business plan. Bet you're one of those retards who belive that quality assurance is to ensure high quality.

Re:You must be new here

[SnprBoB86]

Thank you! The grand parent poster is a moron.

If the meeting isn't important, decline it.

Re:You must be new here

[Gordonjcp]

You can't go down to best buy and buy a 1,001 of the best screensavers compilation for linux.

Your boss: "What's all this '1001 Best Screensavers' crap on *my* PC?"

You: "But it was cheap in Best Buy"

Your boss: "Good thing it's cheap, because you're fired. 'Bye now..."

Even with ubuntu, you have to go add a repository (the multiverse or whatever stupid name they use for it, I just did it but I forget) just to install acrobat reader, or mplayer plugins for firefox.

Most IT departments will roll out a fairly customised Windows install anyway. There's nothing to stop them customising Ubuntu - in fact, there's less to stop them than with Windows.

The latest flash player, for example, isn't available for linux yet, so even once you figure out how to install it (it's got a package in the multiverse too; the package downloads the binaries from adobe's servers) you may not be able to view sites.

Your boss: "What's all this Flash shit on *my* computer?"
You: ... you know the rest

Re:You must be new here

[Anonymous Coward]

How is declining a meeting going to convince the managers that they don't need Microsoft Exchange?

Re:You must be new here

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a reason why Exchange is so popular. It's because it does an important job better than anything else. Very few other products - and *nothing* in the OSS world - even comes close.

Which important job is that? Because it really sucks at all the things we try to use it for.

Re:You must be new here

[Been on TV]

...people might want something (like Photoshop) that's only available on Windows...

Suggest you take a good look at what software is available on Mac OS. Many Linux people seem to be rather ignorant about this, assuming Windows is the only alternative. Combine this with the large catalog of F/OSS software running on OS X.

Photoshop and Excel started out on the Mac and are indeed available on this plattform still. Granted, the most professional users of PhotoShop do their work on Apple's dual-core dual processor G5 workstations.

Re:You must be new here

[jimicus]

This part is true; I've evaluated several.

However, at the last check (about 5 months ago), not a single one provided the pretty integrated solution that Outlook and Exchange does. At best, they require a separate plugin for Outlook. I found that adding a plugin which sucks to a PIM which sucks does not tend to reduce the overall level of sucking - indeed, with any significant number of client PCs and a requirement that everyone shares their calendars in an integrated system, Exchange rapidly starts to look attractive.

At worst, they provide nothing more than a web-based interface (yes, this will get screams from those who "must" use Outlook), with one or more of the following:

• Poor multi-language support
  
• Bits which sort-of work, mostly don't.
  
• Help files in a completely different language.
  
• Very poor community in terms of users and support. I think this guy has a point.
  
• (this is the real killer to the sales, marketing and management folks who are focused on appearance and functionality, with little concern about Microsoft), THEY DON'T LOOK ANYTHING LIKE OUTLOOK.
  

If you're lucky, you'll be able to get a usable solution and find a web-based system which doesn't completely suck and you'll get buy-in from the rest of the business.

Now watch this get modded into oblivion because it doesn't tow the party line that There is a Good Open Source Replacement for Everything....

Re:You must be new here

[Anonymous Coward]

If your problem is the sales/marketing folks getting the engineering folks into pointless meetings, then the problem isn't exchange. It's the sales/marketing folks thinking it's ok to get engineers into meetings on a whim, and engineers thinking they have to attend every meeting. I work at a shop that's just about as MS centric as you can get, and I've never had this problem. Whenever someone sends me a cold meeting request without any explanation, I always either flat out ignore it or decline (no response to sender). Your engineers SHOULD be doing the same. If they think a meeting isn't worth their time, it's probably not worth their time. Either work out firsthand what it's all about, or send the manager - after all, what else is he going to do all day?

Re:You must be new here

[biffta]

There's a reason why Exchange is so popular. It's because it does an important job better than anything else. Very few other products - and *nothing* in the OSS world - even comes close.

If I were starting my own business tomorrow I'd get everyone using Gmail with a google calender! Sure company emails would look a tad unprofessional but weigh that up against the costs of outsourcing your entire email and organisation software plus backups for free and i think you'd be onto a winner.

Re:You must be new here

[nysus]

My elderly Aunt uses her computer mostly for Internet and e-mail. I told her I'd install Linux for her (after her last version of Windows got corrupted somehow) but she pointed out that she simply couldn't do without her Windows-based Scrabble game from Hasbro.

So, besides Photoshop, there are tons of niche products that might tie someone to Windows.

Re:You must be new here

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps you could take a look at Scalix (www.scalix.com). Working great here.

Re:You must be new here

[NekSnappa]

Hell where I work people think that PowerPoint is a CAD app.

Re:You must be new here

[ratboy666]

Your printer is probably going to be supported in Vista. Or not (Microsoft is going to have to sign all drivers, which means new versions for all products). If it isn't (and some day it won't be), Linux will still support it. Or, you can keep your current Windows... oh, you won't be able to, Eventually, something will die (hardware), REQUIRING XP reauthorization. Since Microsoft will no longer be doing that (at some point) XP *will* die.

Oh well.

But don't worry, that printer is new and shiny right now.

Ratboy.

Re:You must be new here

[Anonymous Coward]

"They don't look anything like Outlook..."

That's a good thing isn't it? Outlook 2003 is an assault on the visual senses. There was a good OSS groupware comparison in a Welsh IT rag recently (see http://www.itwales.com/997890.htm). OSS groupware is not perfect but, like Word, the majority of staff use a fraction of Outlook's functionality. Scheduling meetings, invites etc. is all fine, even if you are paying for a MAPI plugin to work with Outlook (see Zimbra, OpenXchange, OpenGroupware et al.)

Re:You must be new here

[just_another_sean]

Look I'm one of the most die hard Linux fan boys here. But you didn't address a single point in the parent post. He said right up front not everyone just needs word processing and email. Then you go on to say, to paraphrase, that "most people just need email and office".

He has a very valid point. One that can't be addressed by just the Open Source community. UPS World Ship is used by a lot of businesses, including mine. And no UPS looks like they have no immediate interest in releasing a Linux version. We also use StarShip for shipping at my company. Guess what? No Linux version. These are commercial apps with no open source equivalent. I'm not talking about Photoshop or WinSoundAwesomeSuperFX 2010 here, I'm talking about specific business apps, released by specific business that just don't understand or refuse to care that not everyone of their partners and customers are running Windows. Open source developers could come up with an open version of StarShip I believe, cloning UPS's proprietary software that links into their proprietary network would be much harder without their cooperation.

If your running a call center or a simple small business then office/web/email probably are enough. But it is not FUD to say that a company has a) a lot of third party applications that only run on Windows or b) they've developed a lot of in house applications that only run on Windows. Right now that is the sad truth.

It's getting better and I agree that Desktop Linux is ready for prime time. But just like I don't feel that Windows is appropriate for running my web server on when I can choose a *nix solution I also accept that right now I can't run my warehouse shipping software on Linux. I hope that changes, I would gladly pay for an open source replacement, but for now that's the reality I have to live in.

Re:You must be new here

[yuggoth]

My elderly mom uses her computer exclusively (yet) for playing games: a REALLY old DOS-based Mahjongg game, and those Windows killer applications Solitaire, Spider Solitaire and FreeCell. I told her I'd build her a new computer with Linux for Christmas (since her old machine was a rather slow and noisy Pentium with Windows 98) but she pointed out that she simply couldn't do without those exact programs (she didn't want any alternatives, especially for Mahjongg - she prefers the 16-color EGA graphics because she has difficulties recognizing the photorealistic tiles on current Mahjongg games).

So, I gave her my old Celeron with Debian Sarge, set KDE to the Windows theme, installed Wine for the Windows games and dosemu for Mahjongg, and she's been happy with it ever since. This weekend, I will install a DSL router at my parents' house and introduce her to the wonders of e-mail without having to worry about viruses...

Re:You must be new here

[Dr. Manhattan]

You can't go down to best buy and buy a 1,001 of the best screensavers compilation for linux.

After getting my parents onto Firefox and Thunderbird, I moved them over to Ubuntu 5.04. They had no problems at all using the system. The only setup problem I had was a printer tweak (one single checkbox needed to be selected).

The only thing they commented on? "The screensavers are so much better!" :->

Re:You must be new here

[Slithe]

>> but last I checked, Linux was effectively DOS with a gui and different command names. Isn't that what Windows is? But seriously, I have found software installation to be a lot easier under Linux. Instead of manually downloading, installing, and updating all third-party software, you can simply launch Synaptic, browse or search for the packages you want, click on the packages, and click "Apply"; or, if you want to update the packages, click "Mark All Upgrades", and then click "Apply".

Re:You must be new here

[Anonymous Coward]

Look at who got modded up, and who got modded "Troll".

Why waste your time reading trolls?

Re:You must be new here

[Wavicle]

If it isn't (and some day it won't be), Linux will still support it.
Since Microsoft will no longer be doing that (at some point) XP *will* die.

What is it that the Linux folks are always accusing Microsoft of? FUD? Isn't that what you just wrote?

Re:You must be new here

[aztracker1]

"XP doesn't even read ext3/2 partitions or bitching it doesn't come with any software!"

There's ext2 (not sure on 3), drivers you can get for 2k/xp/2003... as for the windows doesn't come with any software... If I had my way, windows wouldn't come with IE, OE, or Media Player... I'd install Firefox, Tbird, MPC, and OOo pretty quickly from the start... I honestly don't like all the software linux comes with, it would be *REALLY* nice to have a complete and reliable base set of APIs you could count on being in at least *MOST* distros as a base, user/gui install. That isn't the case.. backwards compatability is often a big issue for trying to do closed source software... and what linux needs for broad appeal is the support for it... that and a consistent installer acrossed different distros...

I like F/OSS a lot.. and have been following PC-BSD pretty closely, because it, imho, represents where we should be going.. a basic install.. I would like to see a companion ISO with some of the more common PBI's in it... but the base install is pretty nice/lean. It works well, and is pretty clean. Honestly, I don't like the gimp, I like Paint Shop Pro (will use photoshop if I have to), there's a few other windows programs I like... but there isn't much (as a user) holding me here... Just my own $.02 .. just thought it funny, you complaint about windows is my complaint about *nix.

Re:You must be new here

[SirKron]

So, use Microsoft Project Server for your projects and resource allocation. It will connect to Outlook and fill your schedule with projects tasks so you are unavailable for those meetings!

This is very common

[eebra82]

It's bad enough when Microsoft strong-arms other software vendors into submission as a means of thwarting competition. But when it engages in underhanded tactics to intimidate users in order to land a software deal, we have a very disturbing situation on our hands. And someone needs to have the guts to speak out about it.

This is not uncommon. In fact, I don't know any super large company that would not put pressure on vendors and small companies that rely on the bigger ones. This is the case with so many other businesses and occurs everywhere in all countries. I used to work for a small business (~30 employed) and we had only one big client which will remain nameless, but you have all heard of it. Because they knew we needed them to survive, they delayed wirings and pushed us down to a stupid low cost production model. We basically had our salaries cut every year to survive at all. First they told us that they would find someone else or produce it on their own. We were forced to agree. Next, they stripped us down even further by announcing that they would no longer need our services. We were looking at a feasible bankrupcy here. Shortly after, a company affiliate purchased what was left, fired most of the staff and outsourced it.

I might add that this fit perfectly into the schedule of this company. Our products were updated once every 7 months, and it so happened that our services were not needed just after the last shipment. All in all, they just made us desperate, stripped us down and then bought what was left, acquired the technology and kicked most of us out.

I don't feel bad about this today, but I wish to inform you that this is not an uncommon phenomenon.

Re:This is very common

[BillAtHRST]

Not saying your co. could have done this, but there's an interesting article about a similar situation here: http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/102/open_snapp er.html

What has happened to Microsoft?

[LibertineR]

Why the hell are they intimidating people?

Have they forgotten how effective BRIBING people can be?

Have all the creative people left the company?

Will someone PLEASE put Ballmer back in charge of Sales?

Re:What has happened to Microsoft?

[lxs]

Have they forgotten how effective BRIBING people can be?

Gates didn't become the richest man in the world by giving money away.

Re:What has happened to Microsoft?

[OwnedByTwoCats]

It's not giving money away if you give a little to get a lot.

$50,000 campaign contribution to the Republicans turns around into a $50,000,000 contract.

Re:What has happened to Microsoft?

[LibertineR]

LOL! You dont really believe that, do you? Have you ever heard of "opportunity funds"?

Engagement?

[erbmjw]

One definition is

a hostile encounter between military forces

Perhaps it should be expanded to include a hostile encounter by corporate forces

Ironic

[$RANDOMLUSER]

So the intimidation manager is actually named Lawless?

Re:Ironic

[level_headed_midwest]

So *THAT'S* where Xena went to...

Sales Force Scare Tactic.

[twitter]

Winkydink says:

note that Computer World doesn't call this a "sales force scare tactic" as the headline implies. That term isn't even used in the article.

The article says:

The attorney, suspecting that Lawless' actions were part of an elaborate sales effort, basically told her to back off.

and it adds up:

The fact is, if Microsoft really has reason to believe that a company is using unlicensed copies of its software, it sics the Business Software Alliance on the company. It doesn't turn the matter over to one of its sales managers.

Telling your sales force to threaten and intimidate customers is a scare tactic designed to sell crap. These idiots think they have the world by the nuts.

The complexities of license compliance and the threat of a BSA raid is one of the best reasons to avoid the non free software offered by M$ and the other BSA member companies.

Re:Sales Force Scare Tactic.

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone thinking of modding this person up needs to see these two posts from yesterday:

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=185310&cid=152 98619
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=185310&cid=152 98527

This is not how we should be fighting Microsoft. No not mod these extremists up and give them a louder voice than the rest of us, please!

Re:Sales Force Scare Tactic.

[pete6677]

I've never understood why some people buy stuff they don't want just because they were "intimidated" into buying it. Kind of like the way bullshit used car dealers operate. Does this actually work? How? Maybe my brain was wired differently than the people who buy things like this, but seriously, why would some company purchasing agent buy software they don't need just because they were threatened? They must do no research into the issue before signing the purchase forms.

Nobody

[bahwi]

Nobody expects the MSFT Inquisition!

This is why many people to moving toward Linux.

[Dex5791]

If Microsoft wants to drive people more toward Linux and other Open-Source software, this is one sure fire way to do it. There whole licensing scam has made them a lot of money but also a lot of created quite a few resentful customers.

I am waiting for...

[eronysis]

I would like to be the first to welcome our new Account Overlords! kekekeke

Re:I am waiting for...

[sjwest]

That extra one billion dollars is so damm hard to aquire.

Familiar Story

[btavshan]

Sounds a lot like the biotech company I used to work for. When the IT department decided to switch a lot of the servers to linux and thus canceled the site license for MS software, we were immediately "accused" of "licensing incompliance". I believe it took a great deal of haranguing with salespeople to get their agents to back off...

Get legal!

[Matt Perry]

Not sure if your licenses are in order? Get legal.

PUT THAT COFFEE DOWN. Coffee is for closers.

[OrangeTide]

Glengarry Glen Ross quotes:

"PUT THAT COFFEE DOWN. Coffee is for closers." -- Blake

"Your name is "you're wanting", and you can't play the man's game, you can't close them, and then tell your wife your troubles. 'Cause only one thing counts in this world: get them to sign on the line which is dotted. You hear me you fuckin' faggots?" -- Blake

"You got leads. Mitch & Murray paid good money. Get their names to sell them. You can't close the leads you're given, you can't close shit, *you are* shit, hit the bricks pal, and beat it, 'cause you are going *out*. " -- Blake

Re:PUT THAT COFFEE DOWN. Coffee is for closers.

[Anonymous Coward]

All good but you forgot the best line out of the movie, especially for any of us that have done those kinds of sales.

"A-B-C. A-Always, B-Be, C-Closing. Always be closing, always be closing". -Blake

SOP

[IANAAC]

From TFA, MS is sending their sales people after customers claiming the customer is not in license compliance and they need to send an inspection team in. They are very threatening, implying if the company doesn't comply, they'll face legal prosecution. Once the inspection team gets in, they try to get the customer to buy more products.

And they've been doing this for YEARS. It's nothing new. When we went to Notes from Exchange, it happened. It also hapened when we pased over SQL Server in favor of Oracle on a Windows platform.

Anybody who's been involved in purchasing licenses from Microsoft (or anyone else, for that matter) knows this,

It's not new, but not every has experienced it.

[khasim]

Microsoft has been doing this for years.

But not every one of their customers has experienced it. So it is "new" to them.

The reality is that many of Microsoft's customers are "pirates" but only in the sense that they do not keep the kind of records that Microsoft demands when doing an audit.

It isn't enough to have the box the software came in, along with the hologram and the license certificate and so on and on and on.

You also need to be able to PROVE that all of that isn't fake.

And since Microsoft specifically REFUSES to track the license keys and such, the only way to "prove" that the software is legit is to have the original sales receipt from an approved Microsoft vendor.

And that's even if you're not really pirating their software. In past versions, they've made it as easy as possible for companies to pirate their stuff AND as difficult as possible for companies to ensure that they are in compliance without spending lots of hours recording and checking their licenses.

So, even if you had 50 machines and you had bought 50 licenses ... you were out of compliance if:

#1. Those licenses couldn't be found.
#2. Those licenses weren't matched to receipts from MS vendors.
#3. The machines had been "imaged" with a common image without purchasing the MS license agreement that authorized that.

It's all about driving sales.

Re:It's not new, but not every has experienced it.

[NutscrapeSucks]

OK -- let's look at this from a common sense perspective. Microsoft comes in and all your holograms are in order and you're a good customer. I find it highly unlikley they will bust you because you lack sales reciepts or can't "PROVE" that they aren't fake.

After working in IT for more than 10 years, I can say that most shops are out of compliance simply because they don't really care. Usually there's a token effort made by purchasing a volume license, but after that it's carte blanche because "We have a site licence". More often than not, the desktop techs will install anything they want without any accounting whatsoever.

Re:It's not new, but not every has experienced it.

[GigsVT]

Oh it happens. I work for a not very large company, between 1 and 50 million in revenue each year. MS came in and said "OK, you can pay us $20,000 a year for 'software assurance' on your copies of MS Office, or we will audit every PC you own, and charge you large fines for every little thing that's not right"...

We paid their protection money. When faced with extortionists like that, sometimes it's easier to just pay.

Re:It's not new, but not every has experienced it.

[NutscrapeSucks]

Oh, I've been there too, so I know it happens. Although in my experience management caves because they know their license management is a mess and they really have no idea what's out there.

Re:It's not new, but not every has experienced it.

[Anonymous Coward]

The reality is that many of Microsoft's customers are "pirates" but only in the sense that they do not keep the kind of records that Microsoft demands when doing an audit.

BS.

In North America, where can you buy a major branded PC (Dell, HP, IBM) without a Microsoft tax-license? Oh, I know Dell has some exotic Linux muncher, and perhaps IBM and HP do too... but say I want a normal D810 or just go to Costco and get an HP... how can I buy those without a M$ license?

My guess is for those of us like me, you buy it, never open it up and the first thing the computer sees is an open source version of Suse and you eat the M$ tax.

Saying they are getting ripped off is a PR move for North America. For China, they are not stupid enough to pay that much for the OS and SW tools so Dell, HP, IBM sell it with Linux and then someone loads M$ on it. That's a China issue, not a US/CA issue.

So when are we going to get a choice Dell, HP, IBM, Sony? (The Sony root kit does not work on Linux!! ;->

MAS90 made by MS? I think not.

[Red Flayer]

MAS90, MAS200, and MAS500 are made by Best Software (formerly Sage Software, though originally Best Software).

MS's accounting software is Dynamics. Redmond did not call you to sell a competitor's product.

Furthermore, MAS products are generally not sold directly by Best, they are sold via resellers.

You just happened to have an agressive sales person contact you, that's all. In no way is that trying to "force a sale." There was no implied threat of lawsuit for failing to have licenses or anything like that.

bad summary.

[twitter]

Once the inspection team gets in, they try to get the customer to buy more products.

They never got to that point because AWC's lawyer told them to stick it.

It it works like a BSA raid, M$ will get a court order for an inspection based on some kind of "evidence", which could be anything from an anonymous phone call by a disgruntled employee to some program the secretary installed phoning home. AWC would then have the choice of paying for the inspection or another even more expensive "service" from a list M$ offers. The raid itself would involve massive disruption of work.

This is the appropriate response.

Re:bad summary.

[Anonymous Coward]

"We looked at Apple, but that's owned in part by Microsoft."

Such bullshit. Can't people come up with a better lie...

http://ask.metafilter.com/mefi/30833
https://us.etrade.com/e/t/invest/analysis?content= 3&site=analysis&sym=AAPL&ah_flag=

its all Xena's fault

[OzPeter]

After the show finished .. she changed her first name to Janet .. and now she works for Microsft

Balk?

[overshoot]

So what are the customers going to do? Stop using MS software?

Apparently they still haven't figured out who holds the whip. Microsoft is about to educate them.

Correct Response, ala Ernie Ball year 2000

[twitter]

How to really tell them to back off. Saves money and time. Things have only gotten easier in the last six years.

Idiots?

[overshoot]

These idiots think they have the world by the nuts.

They're only idiots if they don't have the world by the nuts.

That's an aptonym if I ever heard one.

[Corf]

Ahh, the lovely ironies of the world.

Suddenly I am reminded of . . .

[mmell]

"He will join us, or die!"

Although given the M$ icon here at /., perhaps:

"Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated."

is more in order.

This is why....

[TheNoxx]

Yet again, I can add another reason as to why I don't want MS in the gaming market. I mention this because MS is pushing Vista as the next best thing since sliced bread for gaming (if you haven't heard their nutjob sales reps going "DIRECT X 10 WOOOO!", just do a google search), and I'm sure they'll try to hook it up with the 360. This might be a little off-topic, but they and their "business" tactics need to be kept as far away from the still young gaming industry. You know that as soon as they get a foothold, they'll stop developement and real innovation and use the same strong-arm intimidation to keep developers and distributors in tow. Want to improve the image of games as an art form? Too bad, MS is pushing the same shit in HALO 12.

Looks like the MS fanboys have mod points.

[khasim]

If you don't like the facts, that doesn't change the facts.

Just keep mod'ing down anyone who posts facts you don't agree with.

Here's the problem!

[955301]

Janet prefers to communicate in person and gets frustrated when people talk down to her:

https://portfolio.du.edu/pc/port?portfolio=jlawles s

Hmmm, I think google let me down this time...

I heard from these guys I think...

[All Names Have Been]

... I believe I've had contact with these jerks - I got a call from someone at MS stating that "They would like to help me ensure that we have the software we need for an organization our size." which quickly devolved into "send us copies of all your license certificates, then we'll send someone out to help check these against all your machines." (apparently they've got some tools for this?)

When nicely told to stick it, the final word from this ass was (and I quote) "How confident are you that you have everything in order?"

I'd really hate for something to happen to your nice store there, Mister. You sure you don't want to hire us to make sure nothing gets broken?

My advice: Ignore them and they will go away

[Proudrooster]

These has been a common tactic for years. I have trained all my higher-ups to ignore any offers to review licenses. Companies will call the higherups and tell them they can potentially save money by reviewing their licenses and getting into a new type of license program. Vendors are constantly switching license schemes e.g. network connections, to MIPS, to number of processors, to number of dual core processors, to number of instances.

Database vendors like Oracle also like to come in and do reviews/audits so they can help you save money and (sic) purchase the optimal license agreement. In reality, you already have the best license deal and the vendor wants to kill it and replace it with one that costs more.

We learned long ago that these sales weenies are just fishing for anyone who will talk to them. If you ignore them, they will go bug someone naive enough to talk with them. They have no legal authority and are, dare I say sharks, trying to rewrite your license agreement to get you to fork over more cash.

Stay legal on all your licensing and simply factor licenses into the purchase price of every machine. If you know that you purchase licenses with every machine and keep your license count current for upgrades and maintenance, the matter will take care of itself.

Note, young inexperienced managers will fall for the "cost savings" sales pitch quite often since they want to be perceived as doing something for the business. If they are foolish enough to start licensing conversations, make sure that you explain how much time and cost the audit process with take. Ask who is going to pay for the labor to install auditing software. Explain that vendors are not allowed access to servers and PCs. Ask them who is going to assume the security risk for any audit software and who will take responsibility if it causes problems in your production environment. After all, I am sure that all audit software is bulletproof and well written. Itemize all the costs and risks then make sure your manager's manager and/or customer see this risk/cost assessment.

My advice: Just ignore them and they will go away AND put your grumpiest and savviest technical manager in charge of any license renewals.

You can't just put a standard "image"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow... I didn't realize that you needed a special license to be able to setup a standard image as long as you had the right number of licenses.

Yes, Idiots.

[twitter]

They're only idiots if they don't have the world by the nuts.

That's wrong and they don't. It's been easy enough to escape their "product" for six year, as proved by Ball Guitar Strings, GM, Lowes and many others. Even if it was difficult to get away, it's stupid to insult and harass your customers. You should not make customers angry enough to use abacuses when there are dozens of firms ready to replace your product with something that's cheaper and easier.

Hurm... not much news today, eh?

[Churla]

I have worked for several software companies, large to small. Any large company I have worked for has people who do this. Their goal is to get companies to purchase licensing to overcover in many cases the application.

Anybody here claiming MS created this, or pioneered it, or is even the worst at it, doesn't know the software industry and has never met many mainframe software salespeople.

Just MHO and I could be Crazy... WHich would also explain my being around here.

Yeah, the poor guy has lost it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Trolled to death. Kind of like Slashdot in general.

The EULA

[Anonymous Coward]

The EULA is probably the most important MS innovation.

Re:The EULA

[Overzeetop]

I thought it was pioneered by the makers of VisiCalc (and no, I don't remember who created it)

Please, no!

[geobeck]

Will someone PLEASE put Ballmer back in charge of Sales?

It's one thing to have some sales sleaze saying, "Dat's a nice server youse got there... shame if anything should happen to it," and quite another to have the top sales maniac saying, "I'm going to fucking KILL YOU!" and throwing chairs at your server.

Off-topic digression*:

If anyone out there likes making game hacks, someone write up "Ballmer Kong". The Ball-ape stands at the top, lobbing chairs down the scaffolding, while your character, a penguin, jumps over the chairs, or blows them up by throwing apples at them.

*Yes, I know; that's a superfluous redundancy.

Re:Please, no!

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

So, just out-innovate Microsoft. Design a server case that catches chairs and throws them back!

insult to injury for any 'Software Assurance' cust

[hguorbray]

I wonder if they are doing this to any of the poor saps who were hoodwinked into the Software Assurance Subscription program 5 years ago.

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1681636,00.as p

Let's see -how many OS upgrades would I have gotten in the 5 years since? 2 -if you count XP SP1 and SP2.

Homer: an extended service warranty? how can I go wrong!

Or even

[Tony]

. . . used car salesmen.

Any time there's money to be had, people are going to intimidate other people. There are too many greedy fucks in the world, and Microsoft does not have a monopoly on greedy fucks.

Is that you, Alanis?

[Odin_Tiger]

Not irony. Irony is a contradiction of meanings or expectations. This is merely a humorous coincidence.

Proper response

[Todd Knarr]

I think all the response this tactic deserves is an icy "If you want to discuss license compliance, let me transfer you to our legal department where someone can assist you.". Then you do just that, making sure your lawyer knows before the MS rep can talk that the rep has stated or implied that you lack licenses for some software.

Of course, also make sure you've got original media and license certificats and keys for every copy of software you've got installed, or relevant current license agreement documentation covering the installed software. Remember that there's what MS might like you to have to produce, then there's what you legally have to or should be able to produce, and the two aren't neccesarily identical.

She was a nice sounding lady

[Anonymous Coward]

She called from Microsoft and her name was "Nicole." A very pleasant sounding woman.

She wanted to "help" me with our software licensing. I indicated that we had migrated most of our servers to Linux, files to Samba, and our databases to MySQL. We chuckled about this a bit and went our separate ways. Little did I know...

The following week I received a followup call, and another the next. "How many employees do you have?" they asked. "We can help you get a better price with another licensing program."

The last call was from the anti-piracy division, and now we've been audited twice since the call from "Nicole." Thankfully we've been on top of our licensing, but this has only increased our desire to erase anything with the Microsoft brand from our network. I've also migrated many other systems from Microsoft since, and will continue to work against them. A company that does retaliatory audits won't get any more of my business, and as little business from my sphere of influence as possible.

Article title...

[SeaFox]

When I saw this article title in the RSS feed, I figured it was about Microsoft trying to sell their Software Assurance program again after everyone who bought it last time got zilch for their investment.

Imagine my surprise when it was completely unrelated.

Engagement manager's name is Lawless!

[grudan]

Anyone else notice how appropriate the engagement manager's name is!

Re:Engagement manager's name is Lawless!

[chiskop]

Mr. Bounder: Yes. Ooh, it's going to get people making jokes about your name all the time, eh?

Ms Lawless: No, actually, it never struck me before.

Read

[BoxSocial]

Lol I didn't even read the fucking article.! WTF WITH THAT?!

Re:MAS90 made by MS? I think not.

[BulletMagnet]

Let me recall...

MS Drone: "What accounting software do you use?"
Me: *sales call* "Timberline" .... (began tuning out)
Drone: *starts sounding like Charlie Brown's teacher*
Me: "Not interested, thank you for the call"
Drone: *starts sounding like Charlie Brown's teacher, but speaking a bit faster*
Me: "Still not interested, thank you for the call"
Drone: "Are you interested in CRM?"
Me: "I have plenty of software upgrade initiatives planned for this year, I'll call if I need something..." (Hang Up)

You're right, it wasn't MAS90....and had I been paying the least bit of attention, I would have recalled this....thank you for correcting my gaffe.

they might convince me if they were nicer...

[radarsat1]

My experience with Microsoft marketing has been pretty bad so far.
My first-hand impression is that they will do anything including lie to your face to get you to listen to their latest gimmick.

This is totally aside from the fact that I don't particularly like their software. I admit that because of this fact I'm probably biased, but my ACTUAL experience directly with the people is pretty bad too, so it totally doesn't help the case.

Anyways, first thing that happened: As a student, I attended a .NET promotion thing they were doing for students. We were promised a free copy of Visual Studio 7 if we attended, which I thought sounded pretty good and worth sitting through some ads for. After two hours of being marketed to, sitting through tons of stuff that really didn't interest me much (for example advertising their new tablet PC for 45 minutes when it was supposed to be an information session on .NET), what happens? They get up there and have the gall to announce that, "Oh, sorry, the VS.NET CDs weren't ready, so we don't have any to give you... but we'll send them to you." I wrote my address, never received anythign.. (after emailing them even)

Another thing that happened: I attended a conference on real-time computing. I thought I'd check out a talk called "Choosing a real-time operating system". I figured it would be an interesting overview on all the options out there (and there are a lot of interesting ones!), but after I got in there and they closed to door: "Hi, so this is an information session on how to choose a Microsoft real-time Operating System." Turned out it was for choosing between CE and XP. What a load of shit.. I was really pissed.

So all in all, my impression is not at all good. They run their company like jerks, and their sales reps are jerks.

Frankly I think some of their products are pretty good. A lot of their development utilities are really nice. XP works pretty well for it's target audience. But damn... stop lying to me and trying to trick me. It's not cool.

Actually this has nothing to do with sales...

[MSFanBoi2]

This happens just like this when someone, usually from within the company, notifies Microsoft they thing software piracy is occuring. SOftware piracy is illegal. PERIOD.

Re:Actually this has nothing to do with sales...

[RecycledElectrons]

> This happens just like this when someone, usually from within the company, notifies
> Microsoft they thing software piracy is occuring. SOftware piracy is illegal. PERIOD.

Bullshit. This is what happens when MS wants to extort money from innocent people. What's worse, MS has the money to bribe the politicians so that peaceful change is impossible. Check what JFK said is inevitable when peaceful change is impossible.

Andy Out!

Re:Actually this has nothing to do with sales...

[Opportunist]

Well, check what happened to JFK...

Re:Actually this has nothing to do with sales...

[Opportunist]

This has nothing to do with piracy. I can't see a single boat there.

Snide comments and the FUD about "software 'piracy'" aside, when someone from within the company rats on his former employer, the BSA is at your doorstep. Not some sales manager.

article text

[0232793]

Rotten Effort
Don Tennant Today's Top Stories or Other IT Management Stories

May 08, 2006 (Computerworld) -- It's bad enough when Microsoft strong-arms other software vendors into submission as a means of thwarting competition. But when it engages in underhanded tactics to intimidate users in order to land a software deal, we have a very disturbing situation on our hands. And someone needs to have the guts to speak out about it.

Fortunately, someone has. Last week, Dale Frantz, CIO at Auto Warehousing Co., brought to my attention an alarming business practice that shows Microsoft at its shoddy and arrogant worst.

AWC was contacted several weeks ago by Janet Lawless, a software asset management engagement manager at Microsoft, who claimed that "a preliminary review of [AWC's software licensing] information indicates that your company may not be licensed properly." Lawless urged AWC to "understand that the potential inconsistency in licensing is an urgent matter and needs immediate attention." She wanted to send a consultant to AWC to conduct an inventory of its installed software.

Frantz was stunned. He says he always errs on the side of caution with respect to software licenses. He does regular audits and maintains extensive records of purchases, license keys and registration codes. Frantz had no doubt that he was 100% compliant. When he told Lawless that, she ratcheted up the threatening tone of her e-mail correspondence.

"Simply commenting on your licensing environment does not address our concerns in a tangible, proven manner," she wrote. "We continue to believe that Auto Warehousing may not be licensed properly. Since this is a compliance issue, I am obligated to notify an officer of Auto Warehousing of the situation and the significant risk your organization may be subject to by not resolving this situation in a timely manner."

At that point, Frantz got his corporate attorney involved. The attorney suggested that an olive branch be proffered to avoid legal action, so Frantz offered to send Lawless detailed records of all purchases of Microsoft software in the past five years. But Lawless blew that off as well. She seemed determined to get a consultant into the IT bowels of AWC.

"Thank you for your offer to send your purchase records to me," she wrote, "however our Software Asset Management (SAM) program is the only unbiased way to create an accurate baseline and resolve this matter."

That did it. Frantz informed Lawless that he wasn't going to waste anymore time with her, and he left the matter with his attorney. The attorney, suspecting that Lawless' actions were part of an elaborate sales effort, basically told her to back off.

Indeed, according to Microsoft's Web site, the responsibility of someone with Lawless' title of "engagement manager" is to "perform as an integrated member of the account team, drive business development and closing of new services engagements in targeted accounts." So why was someone in a sales position leaning so hard on AWC about a supposed licensing compliance concern?

When I phoned Lawless to find out, she referred me to Microsoft's PR machine. The responses I got through that channel stressed that Microsoft's aim is to help customers navigate the complexities of software licensing and that one of the roles of engagement managers is to assist in that effort by informing customers of a potential licensing risk. I was told to attribute the responses to Lawless.

The fact is, if Microsoft really has reason to believe that a company is using unlicensed copies of its software, it sics the Business Software Alliance on the company. It doesn't turn the matter over to one of its sales managers.

The folks at Microsoft should have done their homework. They would have realized that trying to intimidate Dale Frantz would be a fruitless effort. And what a rotten fruitless effort it was.

A fly on the wall...

[FooGoo]

Balmer: What's your name?
Gates: FUCK YOU, that's my name!! You know why, Mister? 'Cause you drove a Hyundai to get here tonight, I drove a eighty thousand dollar BMW. That's my name!! And your name is "you're wanting." And you can't play in a man's game. You can't close them. (at a near whisper) And you go home and tell your wife your troubles. Because only one thing counts in this life! Get them to sign on the line which is dotted! You hear me, you fucking faggots?
(Gates flips over a blackboard which has two sets of letters on it: ABC, and AIDA.)
Gates: A-B-C. A-always, B-be, C-closing. Always be closing! Always be closing!! A-I-D-A. Attention, interest, decision, action. Attention -- do I have your attention? Interest -- are you interested? I know you are because it's fuck or walk. You close or you hit the bricks! Decision -- have you made your decision for Christ?!! And action. A-I-D-A; get out there!! You got the prospects comin' in; you think they came in to get out of the rain? Guy doesn't walk on the lot unless he wants to buy. Sitting out there waiting to give you their money! Are you gonna take it? Are you man enough to take it? What's the problem pal? You. Balmer.
Balmer: You're such a hero, you're so rich. Why you coming down here and waste your time on a bunch of bums?
(Gates sits and takes off his gold watch)
Blake: You see this watch? You see this watch?
Balmer: Yeah.
Gates: That watch cost more than your car. I made $970,000,000 last year. How much you make? You see, pal, that's who I am. And you're nothing. Nice guy? I don't give a shit. Good father? Fuck you -- go home and play with your kids!! You wanna work here? Close!! You think this is abuse? You think this is abuse, you cocksucker? You can't take this -- how can you take the abuse you get on a sit?! You don't like it -- leave. I can go out there tonight with the materials you got, make myself fifty thousand dollars! Tonight! In two hours! Can you? Can you? Go and do likewise! A-I-D-A!! Get mad! You sons of bitches! Get mad!! You know what it takes to sell software?
(He pulls something out of his briefcase)
Gates: It takes brass balls to sell software.

Re:A fly on the wall...

[miller701]

Alec Baldwin's only in 3 minutes of Glengarry Glen Ross, but after that speech, you end up thinking he's the star of the movie!

"account team" sounds like sales to me...

[argent]

This happens just like this when someone, usually from within the company, notifies Microsoft they thing software piracy is occuring.

They get a sales manager to lean on them? Not an attorney?

Indeed, according to Microsoft's Web site, the responsibility of someone with Lawless' title of "engagement manager" is to "perform as an integrated member of the account team, drive business development and closing of new services engagements in targeted accounts.

This happens with risky closed-source, proprietary

[RecycledElectrons]

This happens with risky closed-source, proprietary software. If you are 100% open source, you can tell them to fuck off. If they still come after you, shoot up their next shareholders' meeting.

Andy Out!

And so ends Linux licensing FUD

[stinky wizzleteats]

So much for turning to commercially licensed closed source software as a way to reduce your exposure to IP legal threats.

Re:And so ends Linux licensing FUD

[Anonymous Coward]

Why was parent modded Funny? It's Insightful, if anything...

"Good customers" don't have any choice.

[khasim]

Microsoft comes in and all your holograms are in order and you're a good customer. I find it highly unlikley they will bust you because you lack sales reciepts or can't "PROVE" that they aren't fake.

Ah, that's where you are mistaken.

If you are a "good customer" of Microsoft's then you have a LOT of time / effort / data invested in their products. Migrating to anything else is VERY FUCKING EXPENSIVE. Not just in money, but in time and effort and all the tiny incompatibilities that will result in your users asking what the fuck you were thinking when you decided to drop Microsoft.

So the easiest source of revenue is for Microsoft to "audit" their "good customers" and hit them with a bill for the most common errors that IT departments make.

After working in IT for more than 10 years, I can say that most shops are out of compliance simply because they don't really care.

That's not uncommon.

The problem is that Microsoft is threatening those customers who DO care and DO spend the time and money to stay legit.

AND

Microsoft is NOT putting any time / effort / money into providing any easy way for their "good customers" to track their licenses (or even validate that a license is legit).

This is Microsoft we're talking about. They have BILLIONS of dollars. They have very smart people. They should be able to work up a system where I can enter each and every license I have and validate that it is legit and that it is mine.

But they aren't interested in that. That approach would cost them money to implement and it would result in fewer sales because "good customers" would already have had Microsoft approve their licenses.

And that is why this whole situation is so fucked up. It's all about Microsoft making the situation as difficult as possible so they can wring every last dollar from it.

Here's an example:

You buy 50 workstations from Dell. Each comes with WinXP.
You then buy a retail version of WinXP. That's 51 licenses for 50 boxes.
You image one box using the full retail license and dump that image on the other 49.

You're out of compliance because Microsoft licensed Dell to only license each copy of WinXP to a specific machine. The licenses are non-transferable. You've just "pirated" 49 copies of WinXP. That's 49 licenses at $200 retail ... $9,800 minimum.

And that's if you're 100% legit on 50 machines. And provided that you can "prove" that that 1 retail copy wasn't also "stolen".

Re:"Good customers" don't have any choice.

[NutscrapeSucks]

Is your story possible? Sure. But I think you are OVERSTATING your case here. The likelyhood of being seriously squeezed by Microsoft because you rolled out the wrong image is actually fairly low IMO.

I should point out that I went through a Microsoft "audit" once that consisted of looking at reports from the SMS server. Of course that company was actually doing something to track and *pay for* software licenses. No nitpicking over keys or certificates. But that was several years ago.

Stop using MS software?

[argent]

The only MS application software that's close to indispensible is Office, and that runs just fine on Mac OS X.

So that leaves Windows and non-Microsoft software that needs it.

You already want to avoid Windows for your servers, right? If you don't, consider it... replacing a dozen Windows boxes with a single UNIX box might not make the UNIX installed base numbers look all that much better, but Microsoft is smart enough to know that's not the bottom line.

Depending on what you're currently using, it might be expensive to find alternatives that don't have the Windows dependencies. It might not be possible. But I'll bet there's Microsoft licenses you have that you can afford to shed. So when Mr. Lawless calls you can say "Oh, hi, after reading about you we switched out data center over to Solaris and Linux, and we're doing a Mac rollout to the desktop next week. Can we have a refund on the remaining time on the 40% of our existing licenses we no longer need...?"

Re:MAS90 made by MS? I think not.

[dgood]

MAS90, MAS200, and MAS500 are made by Best Software (formerly Sage Software, though originally Best Software).

Actually, it was originally made by State of the Art Software, who was bought by Sage software (a UK company), who then also bought Best Software and decided to use the Best name for their US operations.

Not that I expect anyone to care...

Wow.

[Wovel]

The blurb on slashdot, is not very telling and about the worst part of the article. If you read the article you will see a clear case of Microsoft trying to extort a company into paying for their professional services. The best line is where MS claims this is the only unbiased way to resolve the issue. The extortion is clearly criminal. if there are people who actually bought into this act, it would be a good time to look in Criminal and Civil RICO.

Wave which flag?

[vik]

Er, there are other countries in the world besides the US.

Though to concede some of your point, it's mostly these that seem to be kicking the Microsoft habit.

Vik :v)

One more good argument for OSS

[Opportunist]

Back in the 1930s, if you wanted to get a mafia boss with a squeaky clean file behind bars, sick the IRS on him. It's almost impossible to get ALL your tax records perfectly legal, so if you can't get them any other way, that's the way to go.

Today, if you want your competitor gone, sick the BSA on them. I bet my rear that NOT A SINGLE COMPANY that uses MS products got all their bases covered. With different licensing models and licensing terms, it's virtually impossible to get everything perfectly licensed.

Switch to OSS and you can simply give 'em the finger if they decide to show up at your door.

Ummm, you DID read the article, right?

[khasim]

Is your story possible? Sure. But I think you are OVERSTATING your case here. The likelyhood of being seriously squeezed by Microsoft because you rolled out the wrong image is actually fairly low IMO.

That's great. Of course, the article seems to contradict your opinion, but that doesn't mean your opinion is invalid.

In the article, the Microsoft rep didn't even have any evidence that the guy had rolled out an image (and there is no "wrong" about the image, it is pure license bullshit).

But the Microsoft rep seemed to trying tactics that would seem to qualify as "seriously squeezed".

But if your opinion is that Microsoft would not try that, that's great.

I should point out that I went through a Microsoft "audit" once that consisted of looking at reports from the SMS server. Of course that company was actually doing something to track and *pay for* software licenses. No nitpicking over keys or certificates.

You might want to pay attention to that "No nitpicking over keys or certificates".

In other words, that company was letting Microsoft fuck them out of additional licensing revenue and Microsoft was returning the favour by not fucking them as hard as they could have fucked them (and inviting all Microsoft's friends to fuck them, too).

Yeah, that's great. Microsoft is actually being nice when they ass rape you without lube because they could be ass raping you with sandpaper or lemon juice or sandpaper and lemon juice and salt!

Thanks, but I think I'll maintain my anal sovereignty. If Microsoft wants a shot at my ass, they're going to have to get a search warrant and I already know all their tricks.

Re:Ummm, you DID read the article, right?

[NutscrapeSucks]

Thanks, but I think I'll maintain my anal sovereignty.

I just have to say that I'm cracking up. But, whether it's a convicing argument or not is another question.

Remember that big mistake a year or two back...

[CFD339]

...where MS tried to force IT shops to upgrade sooner? They declared that upgrade pricing would be valid for six months only, after which shops that hadn't upgraded would pay full boat. IT managers pretty much told them to go to hell. It was the best thing to happen for Linux as a server platform in corporations all at once since the 2.6 kernel release. I recall a quote from on manager saying, "This would give the control over millions of dollars of my budget -- to be spent within a few months of whenever they demand it. That's just not going to happen."

As I recall, Microsoft backed off that stance almost immedately but it was a bit late. They woke up a large number of shops to their "single source vulnerability".

Re:Remember that big mistake a year or two back...

[weicco]

I don't get it. If my local hifi-reseller decides to sell some amplifier with discount price for a couple of weeks or so, he is forcing me to buy it? I'm looking it at other way around, I get new amp with lower price (if I need one). Or is there something that I'm missing in the picture?

Something better.

[twitter]

So the intimidation manager is actually named Lawless?

Loveless has a better ring. M$ Agent Loveless is the EULA enforcer.

Obligatory Simpsons Quote

[Enrique1218]

Ha...Ha!!!!

Thank you, Nelson. Your wisdom spans the ages.

You give them an inch, they will always go for the mile. Well, good thing they had lawyers. It is always good to fight sleaze with sleaze.

Racketeering?

[thewiz]

IANAL, but this sounds like racketeering to me and it seems to fit the definition:
The act of engaging in criminal activity as a structured group is referred to in the U.S. as racketeering.

M$: We need to check your license with our auditing software.
IT Guy: Here's all of of licenses and the machines they are installed on.
M$: No, we need to run the audit to see how much software you're pirating.
IT Guy: We're not pirating anything! Our records are accurate!
M$: Either you let us inventory your systems or we break your computers and then your legs.

Isn't RICO applicable here?

Sleazy Bitch

[litewoheat]

Janet Lawless is nothing more than a sleazy sales bitch. I doubt that her tactics are institutionalized at Microsoft. I'd bet that if this was followed up on we'd find that Miss Lawless is now unemployed. We all know that many (not all) IT sales people are scum and most are stupid too and are no better than used car sales people.

Not between equals.

[twitter]

one could possibly force them face you in court and explain why they didn't just politely work with you and your concerns in the first place. Right to audit ought not to mean right to intimidate.

Meet the DMCA. If the BSA has "evidence" of your wrongdoing, you get to pay for the audit and the "violated" company's legal bills. See here for a reference story and what to do about this kind of extortion. Essentially, you are screwed and have to pay the fines demanded without a fight. A fight would cost the average company half a million dollars, more if you include the cost of business disruption.

Software contracts and licenses are not normal contracts. The "agreement" between you and a non free software company is that you are so greatfull for the software that you will do as you are told.

Treating customers like this, Microsoft has completely lost it.

Re:Not between equals.

[Anonymous Coward]

See here

Yes, that's a fantastic case. He migrated all of 72 desktops. You sure make a very convincing case.

Re:Not between equals.

[einhverfr]

I am confused...

Doesn'tt he DMCA only cover copyright cases and not contract cases? I.e. it might pertain if you have the software installed too many times, but it wouldn't apply if you didn't purchase enough CALs, or am I missing something?

Re:Not between equals.

[einhverfr]

BTW the fact that it is not a contract between equals just provides one more basis on which to challenge it. IANAL, though, but I think that a greater scrutiny is used when evaluating contracts between such non-equal parties.

Engagement Manager - common with Infy, TCS, Wipro

[Anonymous Coward]

This title is very common with Indian IT companies. So is Microsoft now copying their business model ?

It speaks volumes!!

[suezz]

I think it speaks volumes when microsoft has to resort to tactics similar to the mpaa and riaa - guilty until proven not guilty.

I don't know much about their products since I don't use them and have no plans to but I wonder about their products when they have to resort to these tactics.

Shouldn't the product sell itself?

I use nothing but linux and it is really really easy to install as long as you do your homework and buy hardware that is compatible - but that is any os.

To those businesses tired of being strong armed by software vendors I suggest you really try linux. It is robust and stable operating system and has all the applications you will ever need. No more trips to the local computer store to buy the 10.00 special on software. You will have all the software you will ever need or want. And you will be able to get your work done and run your business instead of counting licenses.

The three or four I would recommend trying are Ubuntu, Suse, Centos and or Fedora, and Mandriva.

go ahead and give them try they will just work and all it will cost you is a little time but your business will be better off in the long run and you will get the time back easily in money saved by license fees.

if I was Frantz...

[kahrytan]

If I was a business owner or IT manager, I would have said thanks for the notification and inform them I will be switching to Linux this week. I hate strong arm tactics and such tactics will never work with me.

Unfortunately, Linux is not an alternative

[walterbyrd]

I like Linux, I'm using linux right now.

But, for most businesses, it's no alternative to windows.

Linux is good OS, but it doesn't run the apps that most businesses need. FYI: there are more apps than just wordprocessors and web-browsers. For just one very small example: UPS worldship software, used my many businesses, doesn't run on Linux.

Tons of specialized proprietary software doesn't run on Linux. I recently installed some specialized software for an auto-body shop. And guess what? It only runs on windows.

Sure Linux is fast, secure, stable, and inexpensive. But nobody runs an OS just to run an OS: it's all about the apps.

Re:Unfortunately, Linux is not an alternative

[Gordonjcp]

So ask for Linux versions. If you don't get them, you'll take your business somewhere else. If you need the software *that* badly you can probably pay someone to write it for less than the cost of all those Microsoft licence fees.

Re:Unfortunately, Linux is not an alternative

[Keen Anthony]

So ask for Linux versions. If you don't get them, you'll take your business somewhere else. If you need the software *that* badly you can probably pay someone to write it for less than the cost of all those Microsoft licence fees.

While this may be an option for (typically large) companies that have a relationship with custom software design houses or that maintain their own software design house, the vast majority of commercial companies don't have the necessary access or internal foresight and knowledge to pull this off. Since they can't just contract for custom written software and have no one who can educate them on alternatives, they are left with what remains, Microsoft and Windows.

Re:Unfortunately, Linux is not an alternative

[rseuhs]

I agree with you, however there are still 2 ways of running Win32-software:

The Microsoft-way is running everything on Windows, using all Microsoft-formats and protocols and using lock-in techniques like Active Directory.

The (IMO saner) way is to run Windows where you really need it (on many, possibly most desktops) but use Unix/Linux on the server and even more importantly use open standards and formats whereever possible. (For example use Mozilla/html/LAMP instead of client/server/Win32 or IE/html/ASP)

Not only will you be less dependent on Microsoft, you also won't need to upgrade so often because Mozilla and OpenOffice run on much more versions of Windows than their Microsoft-counterparts. (For example OO and Mozilla runs from Win98 on and AFAIK the newest MSO will require Win2K or even XP and IE7 will require XP, too)

Re:Unfortunately, Linux is not an alternative

[murdocj]

If you need the software *that* badly you can probably pay someone to write it for less than the cost of all those Microsoft licence fees.

Lol. Right. As an example, the last company I was at did software for a particular manufacturing industry. Our customers relied on this software to run their business. Yes, they needed it badly. No, they couldn't recreate the software for the cost of buying 50 or 100 Windows licenses. The software had hundreds of programmer-years worth of work in it.

Why weren't we running on Linux (you ask)? Well, about 5 years ago we had to get off our O/S platform and we looked at going to Linux. There was no market for our system running on Linux. It was not saleable. Believe me, if customers had wanted to buy Linux, we would have happily gone there.

Re:Unfortunately, Linux is not an alternative

[plague3106]

So ask for Linux versions. If you don't get them, you'll take your business somewhere else. If you need the software *that* badly you can probably pay someone to write it for less than the cost of all those Microsoft licence fees.

Bull. In some industries, there are few if any choices, and a lot of those are Windows only. And no, it wouldn't be cheaper to pay someone to recreate off the shelf software for linux. http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/howtobu y/licensing/pricing.mspx

$15,000 for 105 licenses, $1000 for the standard 2003 R2 server, $42,000 for XP pro. Note this is all pricing according to MS; you'll likely get volume discounts when you actually perchase. Now, $58,000 is less than I make a year, and that doesn't include benefits. Do you really think you can hire a TEAM of programmers to build software that ALREADY available off the shelf for less?

Re:Unfortunately, Linux is not an alternative

[plague3106]

The (IMO saner) way is to run Windows where you really need it (on many, possibly most desktops) but use Unix/Linux on the server and even more importantly use open standards and formats whereever possible. (For example use Mozilla/html/LAMP instead of client/server/Win32 or IE/html/ASP)

Bull. Linux wasn't cutting it as my home server. I was tired of wading through text configuration files and googling on the internet to get something as simple as a USB printer working. You think companies want their admins spending thier time doing this? I ended up replacing my Linux server with SBS 2003, because I wanted to get things running and make changes easily, not spend my time in text files and googling on why something isn't working as its supposed to.

Re:Unfortunately, Linux is not an alternative

[h4rr4r]

For one I am a Linux Admin. Text configuration might be a pain for you but in the real IT world it is a blessing, no hidden menus, it can all be done via ssh, etc. I have no idea what problems you could have had with a usb printer, more likely that was just a bit of trolling. I also have a couple windows servers in my server room. They are a pain in the ass, every time they need updates they need rebooted, they crash at least 10 times more frequently than the linux or HP-ux machines and they cost us more. Before you go shooting off at the mouth with "linux is hard no companies use it, wa wa wa" you might want to realize how many companies do use it in the server room. You are the reason it cannot be rolled out to client desktops, you who think any change is bad and anything not MS is bad. Before you speak about Linux not being fit for an enterprise server talk to a few enterprise administrators.

Re:Unfortunately, Linux is not an alternative

[Anonymous Coward]

I like Linux, I'm using linux right now. But, for most businesses, it's no alternative to windows.

The thirty year history of PCs show it still boils down to market share. Businesses want someone to have an 80% share.
The market leader commands $250 a seat more than the nearest competitor. A dollar a day in order to not rock the boat.

Money makes a problem go away for the boss. Just another 1 minute manager decision in a day with dozens of decisions.

Re:Unfortunately, Linux is not an alternative

[Znork]

"For just one very small example: UPS worldship software, used my many businesses, doesn't run on Linux."

For this small example, take a look at Mercury Web Shipping.

"Tons of specialized proprietary software doesn't run on Linux."

And tons of specialized proprietary software doesnt run on Windows. The only conclusion you can draw from that is that proprietary software limits your options, yet another reason to avoid it.

For most things you want to do, a specific program might not be supported (and might not even work with Wine(x, codeweavers,etc), but there are often fully functional replacements.

"But nobody runs an OS just to run an OS: it's all about the apps."

Actually, I'd say it's all about the functionality.

Re:Unfortunately, Linux is not an alternative

[plague3106]

Text configuration might be a pain for you but in the real IT world it is a blessing, no hidden menus, it can all be done via ssh, etc.

Windows admins don't have to deal with 'hidden' menus. This is a bit of trolling on your part. RDC has been around a while now too, not to mention that many of the admin tools let you connect remotely. Don't comment on something you've never done.

I have no idea what problems you could have had with a usb printer, more likely that was just a bit of trolling.

I have a Lexmark 4200 4 in 1 printer. Linux won't reconize it. USB was working properly, because the USB UPS was working fine.

. I also have a couple windows servers in my server room. They are a pain in the ass, every time they need updates they need rebooted, they crash at least 10 times more frequently than the linux or HP-ux machines and they cost us more.

Bull. You just don't know what you're doing. We have Windows servers here, and in ever job I've had. None of them crashed frequently, if at all. Wait one did, but that was a bad raid controller; Linux fails on that too. Oh, try patching the Linux kernel and not rebooting too. Do you even know what you're talking about?

Before you go shooting off at the mouth with "linux is hard no companies use it, wa wa wa" you might want to realize how many companies do use it in the server room.

I realize that companies use Linux, and figure out how to make it work. They also end up paying more in the long run. These same companies are using XP as a client still.. what does that tell you?

You are the reason it cannot be rolled out to client desktops, you who think any change is bad and anything not MS is bad.

I don't think any change is bad, and I don't think things non-MS are bad. I ran Linux as a server for almost 8 years. I ran it is as a desktop for over 2. I switched back because I just wanted to get things done, not google and read hundreds of thousands of pages to figure out how to do X, when X is a simple option in Windows. People use Windows because they WANT to and Linux doesn't fill all the nitches.

Before you speak about Linux not being fit for an enterprise server talk to a few enterprise administrators.

I have; they perfered Windows. And if you look at my post, I never said it wasn't fit, I said it was taking up too much time to get it working the way I wanted it to, and I really wasn't asking that much of it. FWIW, I've never admined a Windows server before, but I got it up and running much more quickly than I ever did running Linux.

Re:Unfortunately, Linux is not an alternative

[Tweekster]

For 50G you can get a team of consultants to knock out a product for less than that.
A: it wont take the full year, more likely a month maybe 2 depending on the app.
B: Most apps really are not that complicated to require that many people for that long.

You are basically saying all apps will require the time period of a year to write and you are hiring that person to write it full time and just one person. It is much easier to come up with the requirements and hire a firm, give them the specs and tell them to call you when it is done.

I know we have gotten many applications done for maybe 10G's tops. You may have examples of super complicated applications, but those are not the standard but rather the exception.

Re:Unfortunately, Linux is not an alternative

[Anonymous Coward]

For just one very small example: UPS worldship software, used my many businesses, doesn't run on Linux.

Interesting, isn't it, that the largest competitor to UPS has a web-based system that should be able to be run from Linux ( I've never trie it ).

WorldShip is not very good software, IMHO, and not because it runs on Windows.

Re:Unfortunately, Linux is not an alternative

[legirons]

"But, for most businesses, [Linux] is no alternative to windows.""

Linux's license is easier to understand, costs less, with less documentation to keep track of. Lower TCO!

Re:Unfortunately, Linux is not an alternative

[bigpicture]

I think that there might be some businesses that run their business apps on Linux. What about the banking houses? But if they wrote their business apps in-house then writing in-house Linux apps would be no problem.

In the end it will all be about how badly they hate M$ lock-in. I think that the word on that is already out.

Re:Unfortunately, Linux is not an alternative

[Ozone71]

Our company writes our own software. Its Win based, so no way can I use Linux in the office....Of course you will ask why we do not just jump to linux.. well its not that easy. 10 years ago we ran our backend software on a VAX, with OS/2 as a graphical workstation. When Microsoft and IBM split, we stuck with IBM... and lost heavily when OS/2 vanished overnight. Since we were vax based, we could have gone to Linux, Even version 1 of the next generation was poratble between WinNT and DecAlphas... but we had to make a choice and pick one main line to follow. So.. the company made a decision..Microsoft was growing in popularity, we were burned once but not following them. Better to go that way. Now.. 10 years of development later (and easily 500 programmer years) we are where we are now... WInXP graphical interface, Win2003 back end. For the industrial devices that connect to out system, all of the programming and diagnostics tools are Win based. Our clients also run windows for their office apps, so it would be pointless of us to give them a Linux app to run on their Windows machines. Field technicians are screwdriver and wire guys... not IT people. Different Indusrty, different skill sets. If you give one of these a dual boot system (Win for corporate apps and Linux for field apps) they would just throw the laptop in the bin.... The investment required now to jump back to a Unix style platform is prohibative. But lets look at where we are: - Unix Engineers charge about 3x as much as an MS engineer. Easier for customers to swallow an MS solution. - Our systems run on isolated networks, so we just do not see the viruses and trojans that Web connected users see - Training new customers on a brand spanking new system is halved as they do not need to learn new toys. - Win2003 is proving to be solid. Our systems are typically based on install, configure and forget. If you do not play with it every day.. it just stays running. I Love Linux, and would be happy to switch to it, but its OS Inertia. The cost to us and to our clients to move, not in licences, but in developments costs, in training and in system downtime and commissioning... its just too massive a leap.

Re:Unfortunately, Linux is not an alternative

[h4rr4r]

Windows admins don't have to deal with 'hidden' menus. This is a bit of trolling on your part. RDC has been around a while now too, not to mention that many of the admin tools let you connect remotely. Don't comment on something you've never done.

RDC is still a GUI, this means I cannot use it from my phone, pda, old computer,etc. In addition, the menus may not be "hidden", but they can be a pain to find, compared to grepping. Any time you have to dig through something in a GUI that is more than three levels deep it is hidden in my estimation.

Bull. You just don't know what you're doing. We have Windows servers here, and in ever job I've had. None of them crashed frequently, if at all. Wait one did, but that was a bad raid controller; Linux fails on that too. Oh, try patching the Linux kernel and not rebooting too. Do you even know what you're talking about?

1. I do know what I am doing. I even have a nifty degree to prove it.
2. Crash frequently is something you may be defining differently, to me any machine that cannot maintain a year of up time is crashing too frequently. The crashes we are currently experience are due to software that crashes and brings down the whole machine. How a piece of user land software can do this to a supposed server OS boggles my mind.
3. Unless it is a major security issue kernel upgrades are not done in a manner that would affect uptime from a user's point of view. A new server is built it is put in place then the old one can be upgraded and moved back to or repurposed. This can be done in windows as well but then it would have to be done once a month.
4. I have yet to have a Linux (RHEL) update so completely change a machine that software could not be made to work; as in XPSP2.

I realize that companies use Linux, and figure out how to make it work. They also end up paying more in the long run. These same companies are using XP as a client still.. what does that tell you?

I would love to see data to back up this paying more in the long run. I cannot imagine it to be true unless they are hiring unqualified people. The fact that they use XP in a situation where uptime is not a major factor, nor reliability an issue tells me nothing I did not already know. That being that Windows has its place, on desktops. I think it is a fine desktop OS. Where I am currently employed, we have migrated many users to OSS software so that we may eventually abandon windows all together. I was not the one to suggest this. The bean counters did, and upper management when they realized that we could save a large amount in helpdesk issues, licensing and administration costs. What does that tell you?

I have; they perfered Windows. And if you look at my post, I never said it wasn't fit, I said it was taking up too much time to get it working the way I wanted it to, and I really wasn't asking that much of it. FWIW, I've never admined a Windows server before, but I got it up and running much more quickly than I ever did running Linux.

1. They were most likely windows admins? If that is all they have ever managed, it is not really a fair comparison.
2. Getting it up and running quick maybe a major concern for a home server, but in an enterprise setting being able to do this is far less important since testing will take far longer than any OS takes to configure.
3. The fact that you could not do it is not a very convincing argument. The plural of anecdote is not data. Also a lack of support from a printer manufacturer is not a fault of the OS(I am assuming a proprietary driver was needed)

Re:Unfortunately, Linux is not an alternative

[plague3106]

RDC is still a GUI, this means I cannot use it from my phone, pda, old computer,etc.

Ya, because alot of admins need to get to their work computer from some old dustbucket they are still clinging too. If your PDA is running Windows, you probably can get to the box via RDC. Do you really want an admin trying to fix a critial problem on his cell phone?? My god, what a lame attempt to bash using a GUI. Big fucking deal.. we've moved out of the 70s you know.

In addition, the menus may not be "hidden", but they can be a pain to find, compared to grepping. Any time you have to dig through something in a GUI that is more than three levels deep it is hidden in my estimation.

Funny, I haven't had any problem finding anything.. but I guess if you hate GUIs so much there's nothing anyone can do for you. Please, stick to your green screen terminal in the basement. The rest of us will move on with newer technology.

1. I do know what I am doing. I even have a nifty degree to prove it.

Apparently you don't, if you can't administer a Windows server effectively. Let me gues, its an InfoTech or InfoSys degree, or better yet, MIS. Yippie. Worthless degrees.

2. Crash frequently is something you may be defining differently, to me any machine that cannot maintain a year of up time is crashing too frequently. The crashes we are currently experience are due to software that crashes and brings down the whole machine. How a piece of user land software can do this to a supposed server OS boggles my mind.

Funny, since we haven't had any crash in over 3 years. Let me know when you find a user land program that crashes Win2k3. Oh, and to be fair, don't run it as an Admin.. since I know of user space programs which can bring down a linux box when you're running as root too. Its pretty clear your experience with windows servers is using the Win9x series as a server..

3. Unless it is a major security issue kernel upgrades are not done in a manner that would affect uptime from a user's point of view. A new server is built it is put in place then the old one can be upgraded and moved back to or repurposed. This can be done in windows as well but then it would have to be done once a month.

Wow, more ignorance on your part as well. You've never used any modern windows OS have you? I'm sorry, but if you have ONE server that can NEVER go down, you're not doing yoru job right. A server that critial should always have a backup. Taking 2 minutes to reboot a server after installing security patches isn't a big deal.

4. I have yet to have a Linux (RHEL) update so completely change a machine that software could not be made to work; as in XPSP2.

What software are you refering to? We don't have any problems running any software we need on XPSP2. I suspect this is more incompetance on your part.

I would love to see data to back up this paying more in the long run. I cannot imagine it to be true unless they are hiring unqualified people.

You mean unqualified like you? The studies are out there, go look. Oh, and paying $10,000 for software licenses and $70,000 for an admin is cheaper over, say 5 or 6 years than paying $0 in software licenses (which, less face it, compaines pay for the RHEL) and $85,000 a year.

The fact that they use XP in a situation where uptime is not a major factor, nor reliability an issue tells me nothing I did not already know. That being that Windows has its place, on desktops. I think it is a fine desktop OS.

Most office workers need their PCs all day to do their job. If their PC is down, they don't get work done. Uptime during business hours is critial. Windows has been doing just fine running many of the companies I've been employed at.

Where I am currently employed, we have migrated many users to OSS software so that we may eventually abandon windows all together. I was not the one to suggest this. The bean counters did, and upper management when they

Re:MAS90 made by MS? I think not.

[Anonymous Coward]

You just happened to have an agressive sales person contact you, that's all. In no way is that trying to "force a sale." There was no implied threat of lawsuit for failing to have licenses or anything like that.

Yeah, Microsoft did something that wasn't a crime one time. Therefore the things they did at other times weren't crimes either. Probably. Give them a break. You suck. Everybody hates you for hating Microsoft so much.

One word:

[Crizp]

Managers.

Battle?

[CoderDog]

Forget "engagement management". It looks more like "battle commander."

How long before MS battle commanders like Lawless are bucking up their troops, after the hardest engagements, with dismissive comments like, "To save the customer, it was neccessary to destroy the customer."?

Rally the peasants! We must storm the gates of MS with flailing keyboards and mice! (Oh, damn! I've got wireless gear!)

The fundamental difference between MS and OSS

[Anonymous Coward]

... Microsoft's aim is to help customers navigate the complexities of software licensing ...

This phrase from the article highlights the differences between MS and OSS.
Microsoft makes the software easy to use and makes licensing difficult.
Open Source software makes the licensing easy to use and makes the software difficult. :-)

The Battle MS has won

[Kineel]

The battle that Microsoft has won is not the desktop, it's the support group. No, I don't mean MS support, I mean your desktop support group. Companies have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a tech support staff to keep all of those computers working. They are not about to swtich to a new OS (or an old one in the case of Linux) and have to retrain their entire support staff.

That's the battle MS has won. And the number of people trained to support Microsoft on the Desktop is growing every day. Linux (or OS X for that matter) will have to make a much much bigger dent before it can overcome that hurdle. And forget about saying that OS X doesn't require tech support. That argument doesn't hold up in a real business. When things break, you don't want the VP of Marketing fixing his own system.

Re:MAS90 made by MS? I think not.

[Skuld-Chan]

The irony here is that Best software owns Timberline too.

Why, yes, I am...

[shummer_mc]

I agree... to a point. I'll admit that I recently have been moving to Ubuntu. I quite like it, by the way.

However, I'm a bit of a hack. So, I went off to install a database engine that I have some experience with (iAnywhere ASA). Now, I'm not much on Linux... I'm just switching. So, I download the tar file. Hmmm.. read the setup. It's a shell file. Should I run it? How do I run it? Will it screw something up? Let me just cut to the chase... I never got it working (it wasn't too high on my priority list).

Linux really needs a universal installation engine. I LOVE repositories. I LOVE lots of things about Ubuntu (much better than Suse, imho). I had to search around and figure out how to get this tar converted to a deb then installed.... What a mess! Once I got it "installed" (probably incorrectly) it wasn't able to load its plug-ins in the manager (Sybase Central).

On a positive note, I learned a few things (that's what makes Linux fun). On a negative note, I doubt many of my colleagues (developers in a windows shop) could have figured it out.

So, as long as it's in a repository... yes. I agree. When it's not... hmmm. No. I disagree.

Re:Why, yes, I am...

[Anonymous Coward]

The repository isn't the only place to get a package. For example, on my Ubuntu system I regularly get "deb" packages for different pieces of software by searching. Then it's just one line to install the package, and it even shows up in the package manager software (Synaptic in my case), for easy removal, tracking, etc.

Thank you!

[nonlnear]

It's absolutely horrific the way Americans rape the word ironic. (Well, the American media, at least.) They're always saying things are ironic when they are actually just humorously coincidental. Funny thing: whenever I give this same rant in conversation I use the same wording as you - humorous coincidence.

The problem seems to be that in order to comprehend true irony, you have to have two different ideas in your head at the same time. That's not going to happen to your typical MTV drone. Not that the OP is an MTV drone...

lon3st4r

[lon3st4r]

a preliminary review of [AWC's software licensing] information indicates that your company may not be licensed properly

Ya buddy! I got microsoft code in here! Gimme some time and I'll chuck that out. Call me back in a weeks time. :)

how do they get it wrong every time?

MS treats paying customer like trash?"

[KwKSilver]

What else is new? I understand the next time I boot the Windows partition on this box, & it tries to get security updates, I will be challenged to prove that XP is genuine. Well, it came on the machine from HP. What the fork does MS want? Think I'll burn the FreeBSD 6.1 install DVD for AMD64, first. I think FreeBSD would be happy to be where the XP & recovery partitions are. Then I can upgrade the Breezy patition to Dapper. F' 'em. MS gives me the creeps.

Most people don't know there is a real alternative

[Nice2Cats]

Most people don't actually care.

My experience has been more that they don't realize that things can be different.

"Microsoft" is a synonym for computers for them, since they have never seen a computer with a different operating system. They don't remember "Atari" or "Amiga" (now that makes me feel old), and have never touched a Mac or a PC running Linux. So they assume that things must be the same there, too.

Colleagues at work stare at me when I tell them that neither my Apples nor Gentoos have any virus protection at all, that I don't have to reboot it for every little thing, that I can plug my camera into my iBook and it just works. For them, the Windows way is the way all computers work.

What has really opened their eyes is Firefox. It is so much better than IE in all respects that those computers that don't have it installed are being avoided. Firefox shows people that things can be different, that there is a life without Microsoft, and that this life can be pretty good. Slashdot readers need to remember that not everybody has a job where computer literacy is high. Lots of people out there just suffer through Microsoft in quiet desperation, never guessing that things could be different.

Exchange Alternatives

[igb]

Oracle Collaboration Suite runs on typical Oracle platforms (we run it on Solaris/Sparc, but I think it's OK on Linux x86) and provides a pretty good Exchange work-alike. There's a connector for Outlook which provides pretty much Exchange look and feel (although it's not entirely bug free), an excellent suite of native clients (Solaris, Linux, Mac, Windows) and a Java client and a web client. It's not absolutely seamless, but only the most fervent of Exchange fiends would object. Cheap, too: a few tens of dollars per head.

ian

Re:Most people don't know there is a real alternat

[Nefarious Wheel]

What has really opened their eyes is Firefox...

And Thunderbird, I think. And any experience with a recent Mac. I've been a Microsoft sofware specialist for decades, including a long time as an Exchange Server product specialist. At home we use Firefox, and I've just switched from Outlook to Thunderbird because it just works better. It ain't perfect, but it's not Outlook and it's not Notes (which I will continue to vilify at any opportunity -- flame me if you wish, I'm immune to Notes pash).

Wife has an iMac G5 and a G4 Powerbook, as well as her work PC at home. It took her all of 10 seconds to connect both Macs to our home 802.11G LAN and connect to the Internet (not counting the phone call to me for the password) as opposed to several hours fiddling with the network I set up for our small army of XP Pro boxes, and I know networks.

So I'd say, get some form of applications parity on Linux or Mac platforms, get it known, get it advertised, and other Microsoft die-hards like myself will switch in a hot minute. Trust me, I'd rather change TV channels with Channelocks at the back panel than muck with computers at home; I get enough of that at work. I honestly think it wouldn't take too many more cross-platform apps to bring other folks into line. People find out.

Thunderbird vs Outlook

[throx]

Now there's something I do have to weigh in on!

What I really want is some way to share my calender, contacts, tasks etc. through my mail client in the same way Outlook does against Exchange Server. I hate the fact that despite IMAP being able to offer me the same folder view of my mail on lots of different machines (and I routinely use 3 or more at home before I even get to work), I have to keep contacts and calenders in sync because Thunderbird stores them locally.

No - I don't want a magic "sync" button. I want the whole thing seamlessly stored on the server along with my mail store. This is the single compelling feature of Outlook/Exchange for me and I really, really, really don't want to be forced down that road for a home network.

Re:Thunderbird vs Outlook

[Nefarious Wheel]

kk should have mentioned that I don't use Exchange at home, just had Outlook connected to a POP3 server. For personal use I prefer Thunderbird, but at work it's still Exchange.

I generally don't share calendars at home, I just ask my wife.

Re:Most people don't know there is a real alternat

[throx]

Firefox is an excellent example of things being better in OSS, but it's because it offers improved functionality with a better end-user experience right out of the box. If more OSS apps paid this much attention to the out-of-box experience and user interface then Microsoft would die in a hot second.

Other Companies?

[pentalive]

What other company sells a windows-compatible OS that you don't have a right to copy for any number of other machines?

(No not Apple, pretty close but they don't run on x86 machines... uh...)

Missing functionality in open source

[ghakko]

It's a common misconception that a complete open source consumer desktop is all that's needed for businesses to ditch all their current proprietary software. The enterprise, on the other hand, really needs easy-to-use tools for managing large networks of users, printers, computers.

One major problem is a lack of a directory service on par with Microsoft's Active Directory--a directory service that's seamlessly integrated into just about everything: authentication & public key management, printing, desktop settings, package management, filesystem access control and contact lists in IM and e-mail. (Novell's eDirectory is a proprietary product, and does not count as open source.) Right now, there are many individual components--OpenLDAP, PAM, NFS4, POSIX ACLs, GConf and Evolution--which are more or less complete in themselves, but are poorly-integrated with each other. Getting them to work in concert with the directory service as glue is fiddly, frustrating and in many cases, would involve substantial amounts of coding.

Also needed is groupware on par with Exchange Server (Novell's Groupwise does not count because it's not open source.) that can seamlessly integrate scheduling, contact management, backup and archival, search, IMAP/POP access, load-balancing & replication and server-side mail filtering. Again, there are a whole lot of individual open source components which have to be stitched tediously together to get anywhere near the same functionality.

Maybe we need an open "support" community?

[moeinvt]

Just spouting off an idea that I had 5 minutes ago. Feel free to use for target practice.

I fully agree with the parent in that Linux/open source is not an alternative for most companies. Maybe we could form an open "support" community to provide collaborative volunteer tech support to businesses willing to deploy an open source solution in their shops? Sure, there are open source solutions to 90% of commercial apps, and customer demand could easily make it 100%. However, an eclectic collection of point applications with a labor intensive deployment requirement and a painful switch for the user base isn't a "solution". If there were an out of the box OS, Office, e-mail, messaging and SUPPORT package, it would be a much more realistic alternative.

Anyone willing to donate some time for tech support in addition to or as a substitute for your code development efforts?

Re:Maybe we need an open "support" community?

[plague3106]

Maybe we could form an open "support" community to provide collaborative volunteer tech support to businesses willing to deploy an open source solution in their shops?

How is the tech support supposed to support themselves? Volunteer means they don't get paid. They'll also be needed mostly during the day, when people are actually at work. Finally, as a business, would you want to rely on the charity of volunteers to keep your IT infastructure going? Sorry, nice idea, but it wouldn't work.

BOFH

[HaydnH]

This reminds me of a recent BOFH:

Episode 14

"Have you read the memo from those software people?" the Boss asks, tapping some paper on my desk.

"It's in my In Tray, I just haven't got round to reading it yet."

"It's on your DESK!"

"Yes, and my desk is my In Tray."

>Sigh< "Well can you read it now please?"

"Sure."

"RIGHT now please?"

"It's that urgent?"

"It wasn't two weeks ago when I put it.. on your.. In Tray, but it's urgent now."

"Why?"

"Because it's a special offer which expires today and they've just rung me about it and are going to call back in 10 minutes."

"Oh really. Well how's about we have a gander at it then while we wander back to your office for the call.. Blah, blah, secret weapon, blah, blah German spies, blah, blah."

"What the hell are you reading?" the Boss blurts, snatching the paper off me. "Secret weapons!?"

"It's just something I say to myself when wading through weasel words," I say, wresting the paper back from the Boss.

"What does it mean?"

"It means they're trying to shaft us."

"What? You haven't even read it all yet - there's more than one page!"

"Yes, but it starts 'Dear Valuable VIP Customer'. They may as well say 'Please drop your pants and bend over the table by that unnecessarily large hammer action masonry drill'."

"They're one of our software vendors, it's just a renewal notice."

"That remains to be seen," I say, flipping the page. "Blah, blah, blah, royal shafting."

"Where?"

"There," I say, pointing to the last page of the renewal invoice.

"It's just the bill!"

"Yes, but see the little boxes for you to tick the products you want to renew with larger boxes for the number of licenses that you wish to renew?"

"Yes."

"And all the boxes are empty?"

"Yes."

"How do they get filled in?"

"I suppose I fill them in."

"With what?"

"I tick the Boxes and enter the numbers."

"Which boxes and which numbers?" I ask.

"I DON'T BLOODY KNOW!" the Boss snaps, getting a little tired of the interrogation.

"And there's my point. We don't even USE some of this software, so suddenly you'd start paying maintenance on software we don't have. More importantly, after we've been paying for... I dunno... three years, they'll say there's a major release and we need to pay for that, which we we'll do because we're paying maintenance on it so we must be using it somewhere. The best bit though, is the number of licenses. We're a Valuable VIP Customer..."

"What does that mean?"

"It means they think we're stupid and have lots of money to spend. If we're that valuable surely they'd REMEMBER the number of licenses we had and just prefill in the form for us."

"So they're... ... ...?"

"Wanting us to do one of two things - mistakenly fill in the form with an overly large number so they make a bit more cash. OR, mistakenly fill in the form with a low number so they wait a couple of months before saying that a routine license review noticed we underestimated our licenses by a certain amount and that because the expiry period has passed these licenses now cost an extortionate amount. 'Which would still be cheaper than involving the legal representatives of our two companies'..."

"So how many licenses do we use?"

"Who knows? The larger the company the more obscure the number of licenses held. When it's completely impossible you become a Valuable VIP customer."

"So what are we going to do?"

"Well you could go from room to room counting licenses."

"I don't thi..."

"Or we could force an application out to every desktop to report licenses - which would upset the civil libertarians who'd think we we

The issue is the built in interdependancy

[CFD339]

With your local hifi, you know that if you skip the deal, you won't be forced later to buy the product at all, or fail in your mission critical business deliverables.

Suppose MS comes out with a new version of office and you, as an IT director don't want to spend millions of dollars on it today. Because of the interdependancy of what Microsoft actually calls "The Microsoft Stack" you can't be sure that you won't be required to buy it a year from now. In fact, you probably will be. Past performance shows that your users will be shipped new PC's with newer Operating Systems that don't support the old office version, or the email system won't run on the old operating system, or the new office files won't be readable to be users without the new version of office, etc, etc, etc.

Microsoft's mistake was making it more obvious than it had to be that Microsoft's decision on what to release actually controls a large portion of the budget in big corporate IT shops. The move they attempted would have grabbed control not just of the expense then, but also the time in which the expense would have to be budgeted and paid for. By holding off on purchase and not bending to the whim of the Microsoft release schedule and revenue stream, you were being threatened with paying twice the budget later.

All this would be fine if you had more choice, but if you've bought into the Microsoft stack from end to end, you really don't. The move woke up more shops to this problem and many (obviously not the majority,yet) starting worrying more about this single source issue.

Re:The issue is the built in interdependancy

[weicco]

Okay, that sounds logical. But the weird thing is that i know people who are using Office 97 on their Windows boxes and I think they are running Windows 2000 or XP, don't remember which. And in any case your old MS software doesn't stop functioning the moment they release a new version.

But there are valid points in your reply which I didn't consider earlier. BUT when I think those cases a little more I can figure out solution for almost every case. Not a nice one, requires a lot of coding, but a working one :)

Re:The issue is the built in interdependancy

[phillymjs]

And in any case your old MS software doesn't stop functioning the moment they release a new version.

No, but it might as well if Microsoft "improves" the file formats sufficiently (which they did quite a bit in the 90s).

If one major entity you do business with upgrades, then YOU have to upgrade-- because the only alternative is to ask them to save everything to an older format, which they will either balk at or forget to do half the time.

It hasn't been quite so bad since the whole monopoly lawsuit, but they are slowly getting bolder again.

~Philly

Wasn't this on BOFH?

[stuntpope]

Reminds me of this.

Standard Title

[Zebra_X]

Engagement manager is a standard title for someone that has high level contact with clients. He or she is usually responisble for the big picture and is accountable for sales numbers. This person is also the go to guy for the client if they have issues. This person will also have a large expense budget and will take clients out for "meetings".

MS Engagement Manager: You MUST eat your 3 lb. lobster and drink your champaign!
Customer: NOOOOO!!!!!

I'm not sure where the intimidation factor is here?

Looks vs content, initial buy in vs real usability

[QuestorTapes]

>> "They don't look anything like Outlook..."

> That's a good thing isn't it? Outlook 2003 is an assault on the visual senses.

Agreed, BUT it's only a good thing in terms of actual usability and technical proficiency. In terms of getting that -initial buy in- from the business people; the initial agreement to -try- something else, it's a -huge- liability.

On the last half-dozen projects I worked on, -appearance- was the number one issue for users. It had to be "just so" and alternatives, even if they were superior, were not permitted.

I will count to 10

[franksands]

MS should hire this guy as an "Engagement manager":

-I will count to 10, if you don't make a deal with us, I will shoot her...one...two...
-You will never get what you want!
-You don't think I'll do it!?...three...four

Linux is a clone

[rs232]

"There's no innovation that we've seen come out of -- at least -- Linux,"

Ballmer said.

"Linux is a clone of a 30-years-old operating system (called Unix)."

Extortion 101 (was Re:Sales Force Scare Tactic.)

[quarkscat]

MS Salesman: Wouldn't you like to buy an Enterprise license and support agreement?

Corporate ITO: Well, we have really have a mixed IT environment. What's the advantage?

MS Salesman: You might not get audited by the BSA. I understand that the audit process
                                              can be very disruptive to a business' daily operations. Plus, we can almost
                                              guarantee that you will not have any problems getting replacement License
                                              6 OS and Productivity Suite authorization keys. You might even qualify for
                                              timely security patches.

Corporate ITO: Well, aahhh, okay. Here's a blank check for you ...

Hey mods - how is this off topic?

[mmell]

Or is /. letting M$ fanbois moderate?

Linux makes more long-term sense...

[Dr. Evil]

...for proprietary special-purpose applications like the ones described. The reason being that Purolator and auto body specialty shops just need to run those specific packages. When MS cuts support for Windows, the parent companies have to redevelop their apps for the new platforms.

If they used Linux, they could keep shipping their old software until they want new features. They also wouldn't have any licensing concerns when cloning, copying or shippping their media. For somethign like Purolator, a Knoppix-style distribution could also save persistent data online, making upgrades trivial and backups unnecessary.

These PC's are special purpose. Windows is good for general purpose computing.

There are real alternatives

[heybo]

If there were any real alternatives to technology in today's Microsoft dominated juggernaut, these "practices" would send customers screaming to the competition. Unfortunately, so far, there aren't.

Well yes there are alternatives. It is a sad fact that people think a free OS is not any good. When in fact it is better and there are no licenses hassles. The main reason the company I work for is switching to Open Source. No more license hassles plus the savings on the price of the software itself.

Just think. I don't have to clean my machine weekly, pay for anti-virsus, rebuild machine machine on a regular basis. Sure I had to take the time to "learn" an new system, but then again at one time I had to learn to use Windoze. Plus security built in it from the ground up.

license audit madness

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, having been an anonymous /. reader for years, I finally had to register because I just had to chime in on this topic. This sounds a lot like an experience I've had with Oracle lately. "Oh we think you're out of compliance." "Why?" "Because of the size of your company." As far as I know (and I hired an external contractor to come in and review our licenses as well so I feel pretty comfortable with this statement) we still have plenty of licenses to spare. But Oracle has dragged me thru a full audit, longer then the consultant or Oracle Sales rep has ever heard them doing before. I'm sure they didn't appreciate the fact that when the continued to proceed past the preliminary survey and phone interview that we felt they were becoming a hostile business relationship and would be migrating our products away from Oracle. Needless to say they've continued pushing asking for more and more data. To date not a single thing I've sent them could possibly show a compliance issue. But they have in fact soured the business relationship with the company I work for. The new directive from the VP of IT in my company is we will never use any Oracle product for anything again. Between this and what I've now read regarding Microsoft, I think we will be looking to go open source for as much as possible.

My company too!

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft used that exact same tactic with the company I work for back in 2002 - threatened us with audits, and sent in their drones. We caved and they got a big bag of money. Funny thing is, we're a well-known NOT FOR PROFIT organization. MS displayed a stunning level of greed, and I'm glad this tactic is finally getting some publicity.

fud

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the F in FUD

Re:MAS90 made by MS? I think not.

[Red Flayer]

I started using the MAS line of products in 2000, so I'm not sure of prior to then -- though a lot of the old reference docs did say SOTA MAS90. Last year (or the year before?) Sage told us they were rebranding Best back to Sage, then about six months later decided to change back to Best. For while, we were getting MAS200 docs from Sage while getting Abra docs from Best. I guess they just wanted to burn through the old letterhead inventory :).

That's it exactly. And more....

[CFD339]

....Office is just one example and mostly stands alone. When you starting thinking in terms of integration among versions of office, outlook (not express), exchange server, win32 workstation & server platforms, all together it gets very very ugly.

A few guys running office 97 isn't what MS or IT

[CFD339]

...care about.

When you deal with a company environment of 5 or 10 thousand workstations on a constant rotation process for upgrades, new ones start coming preloaded with newer versions of office. Newer Outlook clients require newer exchange servers. Newer exchange servers require newer server platforms. Older outlook or office users start finding it hard to read stuff from the newer ones. Customers send word documents in latest version formats and you can't read them.

From an I.T. management perspective, what's easily handled if its just some guy working at home because a big problem at a scale of many thousand guys working at home and in the office.

This is old news

[capt_mollusk]

Really old news. MS has been doing this sort of thing for years, the old "your company is underlicensed" trick. "Would you believe you need 500 licenses?" These stories have been reported before, and IT managers have been insprired to switch to OSS as a result, although not very many.

If you don't mind me asking...

[Gordonjcp]

... what exactly *is* this industry?