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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."
It's such lame and dishonest branding the marketing group should be ashamed.
I'm sure they will be ashamed all the way to the bank. Let's face it, Microsoft marketing does these things because they work, as proven by Microsoft's success.
That's so lame. If they actually leased the software, there'd be a potential tax advantage for the buyer. But no...
...wouldn't be ashamed labeling sulfuric acid "delicious baby formula." You're barking up the wrong tree with that one.
I mean, proud.
Seriously, what is a marketing department for, if not to bamboozle people into buying your product who otherwise would not do so?
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
I saw a commercial for beer on TV that featured a hunk in a hot tub surrounded by beautiful women. I tried drinking their product and I found myself fat, alone, and depressed at home watching reruns. The marketing department should be ashamed! Their product doesn't actually cause the things the marketing department suggests it does!
Windows Genuine Advantage! Because the advantage it brings is genuine and is most definitely not anything like false advertising.
that this was to be tied somehow to F/OSS-like models.
From what I read on the MSDN site, there is no reference to any type of development, but more of a partner services sale structure.
It appears Dave Rosenberg is forcing a nefarious connection to support a column he wrote back in the summer of 2006.
If we don't fight for ourselves no one will.
Honestly, learn to read. Just because they use the word Open in the title doesn't mean it's OSS.
It doesn't pretend to be open source, it doesn't mention open source anywhere in the press release. It's a licensing model for resellers.
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
Consider this case. Say you're a company that needs to invest in 200 copies of a high-end piece of software that costs $5000 a seat. You're now looking down the mouth of a $1,000,000 bill that needs to be paid off in 30 days. This can be upsetting to your accounting folks. Now consider the lease option. Microsoft basically lets you finance your software licenses at a cost of something on the order of $10,000 a month, which is much more palatable for your accountants to manage throughout the year. Best part is, if you hire an additional 50 workers, you can just bump up the lease instead of paying out another increment of $250k.
Also, sometimes leasing things works out more favorably than owning in accounting.
This type of licensing makes no sense for personal use or small quantities of licenses, but on a large scale, there are potential benefits for customers over paying the full price up front.
No, no, no it's just a little thought. I'm just trying to plant seeds. Maybe one day, they'll take root - I don't know. You try, you do what you can. Kill yourself.
Seriously though, if you are, do.
Aaah, no really, there's no rationalisation for what you do and you are Satan's little helpers. Okay - kill yourself - seriously. You are the ruiner of all things good, seriously. No this is not a joke, you're going, "there's going to be a joke coming," there's no fucking joke coming. You are Satan's spawn filling the world with bile and garbage. You are fucked and you are fucking us. Kill yourself. It's the only way to save your fucking soul, kill yourself.
Planting seeds. I know all the marketing people are going, "he's doing a joke..." there's no joke here whatsoever. Suck a tail-pipe, fucking hang yourself, borrow a gun from a Yank friend - I don't care how you do it. Rid the world of your evil fucking makinations. Machi... Whatever, you know what I mean.
I know what all the marketing people are thinking right now too, "Oh, you know what Bill's doing, he's going for that anti-marketing dollar. That's a good market, he's very smart."
Oh man, I am not doing that. You fucking evil scumbags!
"Ooh, you know what Bill's doing now, he's going for the righteous indignation dollar. That's a big dollar. A lot of people are feeling that indignation. We've done research - huge market. He's doing a good thing."
Godammit, I'm not doing that, you scum-bags! Quit putting a godamm dollar sign on every fucking thing on this planet!
"Ooh, the anger dollar. Huge. Huge in times of recession. Giant market, Bill's very bright to do that."
God, I'm just caught in a fucking web.
"Ooh the trapped dollar, big dollar, huge dollar. Good market - look at our research. We see that many people feel trapped. If we play to that and then separate them into the trapped dollar..."
How do you live like that? And I bet you sleep like fucking babies at night, don't you?
"What didya do today honey?"
"Oh, we made ah, we made ah arsenic a childhood food now, goodnight." [snores] "Yeah we just said you know is your baby really too loud? You know?" [snores] "Yeah, you know the mums will love it." [snores]
Sleep like fucking children, don't ya, this is your world isn't it?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
If every lame and dishonest practice of marketing groups were to be published on
This isn't news for nerds. This isn't stuff that matters. Total nitwits are paid to come up with this crap, imho it doesn't deserve any additional coverage.
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Actually, lameness and dishonesty are generally marks of distinction in the advertising world. In fact, just the other day my creative director was telling me, "What is this crap?! It's neither lame nor dishonest!"
Seriously though, you can't expect anything beyond the most vague truthiness from marketing. Even the FTC's guidelines for truth in advertising are brilliantly open for interpretation.
While I'm all for a good Microsoft Bashing Session, just about every marketing department everywhere could be pinned for this type of "deceptive" practice.
Mod my comments down. It'll be fun.
The first suggestion was "Anal-rape ball-and-chain vendor-lockin" but that just didn't have the same ring. The focus groups suggested only about a quarter of the current customer base would buy into the project with that name.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Microsoft has referred to their MSDN stuff as a subscription, or at least used to. I dunno, I weened myself off the redmond teat a long time ago and no longer have to deal with their crappy products.
And now that I think about it, Value is a pretty normal thing to put in the name of something. So that leaves us with Open, and if you read what the thing actually is, a slightly flexible account without exact license numbers on it, that actually makes some sense.
In other words, this is a pretty normal product name, a guy going off in a post for no reason to abuse Microsoft when there are plenty of GOOD reasons to abuse Microsoft, and an editor who really, really can't tell what is news.
7. What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.
> "It's such lame and dishonest branding the marketing group should be ashamed."
The two subspecies that are parasitic on businesses, marketoids and attournasaurus, are able to function in large part because they *don't* feel shame. Their conscience has been eaten away by malignant greedanoma. The same could be said of many politicians, but politics and business are symbiotic with each other. They gang up to prey on the vast herds of sheeple that, contrary to nature's way, continually run *towards* the predators, and attract their attention by throwing money at them for any reason the predators invent.
Welcome to Earth. Loonie bin to the universe.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
I'm guessing that the submitter is a Linux guy looking to make some anti-Microsoft noise on a slow news day. Why?
Digging in a bit I found myself confused not only by what the program portends to be but why it would be called it 'Open Value Subscription' unless they were hoping to leverage buzzwords and concepts related to open source and SaaS (software as a service).
It's not an attempt to trade on buzzwords and concepts related to Open Source and SaaS. Microsoft has used the term "Open" for years in their licensing programs (at least a decade that I'm aware of).
For years there have been three main categories of volume licenses. They are "Open" (for small businesses who only buy a handful of licenses at a time), "Select" (for large businesses with higher purchasing requirements) and "Enterprise" (for the largest organizations). As you move up the tiers the per-license cost gets lower and the associated benefits increase. For example, if you have an Open license you are expected to buy a license before deploying software. With the higher level agreements you are required to perform a regular "true-up" where you audit the number of licenses in use, compare that count to the number of licenses you own, and then buy enough to cover the gap. At the highest level you are only required to true-up annually. As you can imagine, this makes it a lot more difficult for the BSA to come in and claim that you're using unlicensed software.
The "Value" part of the name refers to features that are included with the volume license plans, and the actual "Value" increases as you move up the tiers. "Value" benefits can include a set number of Microsoft Consulting hours per year, a number of "free" support incidents, and a number of units of training on Microsoft products. Some even include vouchers for Microsoft certification exams.
The "Subscription" part of the name refers to the fact that you are paying an annual licensing fee. This used to be simply called Software Assurance, but nobody was buying it. Instead they started bundling more benefits and called it what it is, an annual subscription.
So there's no mystery there, and certainly nobody trying to trade on the good names of "Open Source" and "SaaS."
I just love how people who know nothing about Microsoft other than "I'm supposed to hate them" are always jumping to the most nefarious conclusions based on the most flimsy and innocuous of evidence.
Microsoft's use of the word 'Open' for something that is not 'open source', even though they weren't refering to 'open source' is against the intent of the word 'open' and the Prophet Richard M. Stallman, hallowed by His name, peace be unto his greasey smelly armpits, has declared any use of the word 'open' must refer to 'open source' (making the word 'source' redundant) and therefor must also come under GPL 3, a.k.a. the Holy Words of the Prophet, may God smite the toes of the unbelievers.
RMS, the Lord is with the mites that inhabit his beard, is pursuing:
Remember, if Microsoft uses the word 'Open', we must automatically, and by the word of the Prophet, a thousand blessings on his klingons, assume they are refering to 'open source' and their own twisted interpretation.
We must also make a point to find some way to daily point out how everything Microsoft and Bill Gates does is evil, and post it to /.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
Am I the only person who read this and thought Microsoft had launched a Suck My Balls program.
The summary uses the acronym "SMB", which is used in TFA...At no point does anyone define this term or give enough contextual clues for it to be obvious...it must mean "small and medium business"...
I agree with your points and the lack of defining what SMB means had me perplexed as well. I usually associate SMB with the Samba project (server message block). The problem is that the submitter and the author of the original article are both techno-dweebs. They therefore assume that everyone is clairvoyant, knows everything that they know and are capable of reading their minds. In a perfect world, Slashdot would've rejected the submission for failing to clarify what "SMB" means.
on what the definition of "il" il?
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
This whole article is summarizing Microsoft Launching it's Open Value Subscription in the US and in Canada.
According to some of my own research, in which I went to the following websites:
http://blogs.msdn.com/mssmallbiz/archive/2008/01/01/6933535.aspx
http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/programs/open/openvalue.mspx (note, this site is confusing.)
http://www.sellsoft.ie/microsoft_osl.html (much better description, but third party site)
I found out that the whole Open Value Subscription program is essentially a third option for those seeking to purchase site licenses for Microsoft Software. This option would allow you to run Microsoft software for a three year period, after which you have three options:
1) Discontinue use of the software
2) Renew the subscription for three more years
3) Purchase the license outright (a.k.a. buy the right to run the software on a permanent basis on your computers.)
At first glance, this looks all fine to me. However, the only thing I'm worried about is what conditions might come with the license... will Microsoft attempt to force organizations to upgrade in order to renew their subscriptions? (This would be a great way to force businesses to switch to Office 2007/Vista...)