Slashdot Mirror
Novell and Microsoft Claim Customer Support
munchola writes "Novell and Microsoft have commissioned a survey to prove that customers love their interoperability and patent deal. According to the survey 'Ninety-five percent approve of the collaboration between Novell and Microsoft,' while 'four out of five believe their organization would consider doing more business with Linux dealers if Linux providers establish an alliance with Microsoft.' As CBRonline notes, however: 'Few people have claimed the deal is bad for Novell or Microsoft's customers. The question has been whether it is good for the open source movement, open source developers, or indeed Novell itself. Those issues do not appear to have been addressed by the survey.'"
The people on Slashdot and other such forums and Novell's paying customers are mostly not the same people.
Basilisk Digital
Not to spit on the results of your own personal survey here (actually, it really is), but could that possibly be because 'me and my Linux pals' aren't exactly a representative sample of the computing community?
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
Customers *always* like to hear that their vendors are playing nice-nice together; the details matter little -- at least in the short run. ... Or maybe it's just that Microsoft and Novell have wowed 'em with these cool billboards that are beckoning drivers in the Bay Area and Massachusetts:6
http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/963
How can a survey like this go unnoticed by the Slashdot audience untill after it's been conducted ?
Did anyone here actually participate in this survey ?
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
Don't be absurd. Marketing types know how to write surveys that give them the results they want. There are courses on this.
From the article: "PSB is a strategic communications firm that specializes in research-based recommendations for its clients. PSB has conducted research studies for Microsoft over the past 8 years." Wow, a POSITIVE survey that was commissioned by Microsoft, to the customers of Microsoft, by a company who regularly does commissioned reports for Microsoft. Who woulda thought?
If MS really cared about interoperability, they would not have been playing dirty tricks with APIs, protocols and file formats for the last twenty years. MS wants no part of Open Systems. Their talk about intellectual property rights is just a veiled threat, "buy from us or we'll pay some SCO-like operation to sue you."
The question that was missing from that survey is "do you trust Microsoft to keep their promises and not attempt to lock you into proprietary products?"
Since the actual wording of their agreement is still a secret, how do you know that they're providing any "protection" at all?
Since they've both stated that this agreement will expire in 5 years, why would I want to risk their products 6 years from now? Migrations are expensive.
When was the last time an end-user (not a distributor/vendor) was sued for patent infringement?
Statistically, if an end-user is being sued by Microsoft, that end-user already has a license agreement with Microsoft.
Microsoft does that all the time. Many of those stories are posted on
One of the PRIMARY advantages of Open Source for the end-user is the absence of license requirements. I have to spend time/effort/money making sure that the copies of MS-Office we use are licensed and that I have proof of those licenses. And that proof is acceptable to Microsoft should they ever audit us.
Yet I can deploy Linux without any CAL's or anything. And OpenOffice.org without any per seat requirements. And so on.
So, the "business case" is savings TODAY versus a nebulous threat that has never been exercised against any end-user in the past