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Microsoft 'Open Value Subscription' is None of the Above
daveofdoom writes "This week Microsoft launched an SMB program that contains the words 'open', 'value' and 'subscription', none of which are common to Microsoft products, culture, or marketing. Digging in a bit I found myself confused not only by what the program portends to be but why it would be called 'Open Value Subscription' unless they were hoping to leverage buzzwords and concepts related to open source and SaaS (software as a service). It's such lame and dishonest branding the marketing group should be ashamed."
Open is like bio, green and other feel-good words. It means that someone wants you to believe that there is more to something than there really is. In this case, and in the case of OpenDNS, they want to hide the for-profit nature of the business behind the impression of participation. It's double plus good. Shame is a forgotten concept.
So, if it's not used like "Open Source", then it's a hijacking of the term? Come on. That's a pretty big stretch.
My understanding is that this program allows SMB's to become license-compliant while limiting their initial capital outlay, i.e., more pay as you go than all up front.
I really fail to understand why this CNet blogger has a bug up his butt over this.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Consumers (especially in SMB) are not that dumb and they are seeing added expense in this day and age as something their wallets cannot endure. The more you tack on an expense, the more the wonder why they shouldn't get this for free and begin to look for an alternative.
Linux picks up the customers that Microsoft shaves off with moves like this and more often than not, they tend not to lose them (as long as we aren't talking about the desktop... thats where they lose them to Apple).
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
Our city government does something very unusual with regard to taxing leased property... specifically automobiles.
If a resident or business of our city leases a car, then the city levies an inventory tax against the leasing company once per year as long as the lessee resides in or the business is based inside the city limits and the vehicle is registered here, because the city claims that lessor still owns the vehicle, so therefore it is still a part of their inventory, and is being kept, stored, and/or operated while being registered in, and based here in this city.
The vehicle leasing companies, have fought the city hand, tooth, and nail over this issue for years, but the city always wins since state law is on their side and nobody has been able to push thru state legislation to change the law. And when they've tried to make a federal case about it, the federal courts refuse to hear the case, because it's purely a state law issue due to technical reasons and the fact that the leasing companies all must, by state law, have a business presence located inside the state to be able to lease vehicles here at all.
Of course, the lessor always makes the lessee pay for the tax in the long run, by jacking up the cost of leasing the vehicles. And some of the big leasing companies have in recent years ceased doing business in our state altogether since our city is not the only one in the state collecting these taxes. Almost half the cities with population 50K or larger are doing it now.
If commercial software ends up becoming a lease-only deal, this city is ready to begin taxing the hell out of it in the same way they're doing to leased vehicles, since legally, software is considered "personal property" in the inventory of the software vendor