Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Asks Open Source Not to Focus On Price
Microsoft's supposed open-source guru Sam Ramji has asked open-source vendors to focus on "value" instead of "cost" with respect to competition with Microsoft products. This is especially funny given the Redmond giant's recent "Apple Tax" message. "While I'm sure Ramji meant well, I'm equally certain that Microsoft would like nothing more than to not be reminded of how expensive its products can be compared with open-source solutions. After all, Microsoft was the company that turned the software industry on its head by introducing lower-cost solutions years ago to undermine the Unix businesses of IBM and Hewlett-Packard, and the database businesses of Oracle and IBM."
So he's asking people to get a recent Ubuntu build instead of Vista?
Why does Microsoft think they can tell other people how to market their products? This just doesn't make any sense to me.
and for open source, the price point is zero.
this gives open source a boost in value instantly.
They're using their grammar skills there.
and indicative of Microsoft's sense of entitlement.
Wouldn't that be like the Replicators asking the Borg to use the bathroom?
In this case, once the foot is in the proverbial price door, anything can and will happen.
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
...are more important. As is leveraging a new paradigm
This is Lauren. She told us she wanted a stable OS with an Office Suite and some photo editing software for $0. We told her, you find it, you keep it.
Georgia Tech, the leader in Chia(tm) technology.
You can tell most Open Source advocates have never had to make costing decisions in large businesses.
Businesses are a lot more interested in the total value of something than its price tag.
Linux might be "free" but if you include the support contract, [re-]training, only then do you start to get close to its real cost in a business.
To get ever closer you have to look at how efficient it is for people to get their work done on that platform when compared to the competition.
I personally find getting almost anything done on Linux much more time consuming than either OS X or Windows...
Makes sense to me. Cost is irrelevant, as long as it's affordable. Much as some people like to claim open source has a zero cost, this is rarely true (overall, it is likely to have a lower total cost, you may end up paying more than your fair share if you are funding some of the development work and your competitors aren't). Value is a much more important in all cases. It doesn't matter if a product is free if it doesn't do the job. Of course, if it's free and does do the job well then it's likely to be better value than something that isn't free...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
There is more than one meaning for the word "free".
And the definition you aren't looking at *is* one of the most important value measurements of open source.
---
"I can't complain, but sometimes still do..." Joe Walsh
I also remember the day when Microsoft was the upstart rebel. Now they kinda suck like those before them.
BIG VALUE small cost
134340: I am not a number. I am a free planet!
We keep on hearing about a bunch of noisy companies. Now, if only they should actually do something other than have their PR mouthpieces run at the mouths.
Open source software is often the better option both on cost and quality. As a consultant, I've found that when you stand up open source and proprietary solutions side by side for a customer, the open source solution wins most of the time. Now ISV's prefer the kickbacks, training and marketing support they get from proprietary vendors, so the customer has to ask for the open solution to be compared, but when they do the results are significant.
Microsoft: Please compete with us on our terms??!?! Pretty please?!
Open-source: No.
Send your spendthrift head of state this
Since the article mentions Microsoft's attempts to undermine competing businesses, here's an interesting link to the Eupean Committee for Interoperable Systems' (ECIS) article "Microsoft: A History of Anticompetitive Behavior and Consumer Harm" (PDF): http://www.ecis.eu/documents/Finalversion_Consumerchoicepaper.pdf Published on 2009-03-31. Required reading. :-)
OSS software is a total boon to developers. I'm a developer, and we use OSS everywhere possible. Since we can easily support our software when something goes awry, we jump quickly and confidently.
But not every company has their own staff of developers. Companies that don't produce software have little incentive to hire developers if they don't contribute significantly to the bottom line. And for companies in this boat, OSS does, indeed, have costs that far outstrip the purchase price.
Windows Server licenses for needed servers might cost a grand or three. If this is sufficient to avoid the cost of hiring a developer (at around $100k/year) or an admin, (at ~ $60k/year) it's money very well spent!
Sure, I use OSS because it lets me sleep very soundly at night, with perhaps 1 significant unplanned incident per year in our hosting cluster of 14 servers. But part of that is that we already have paid the price of having developers on hand to maintain and understand our OSS-based servers.
And don't think that just because it's Microsoft, you can assume it's safe to laugh. I remember when MS Word was laughable. I remember when Windows was laughable. I remember when Excel was a toy compared to the "meat and potatoes" competition.
As a corporate culture, Microsoft learns how to dominate markets. They're losing right now, and maybe they won't turn things around in time. But they have massive assetts, they still have a monopoly in the desktop computing marketplace, and with Vista, they've shown a willingness to take risks if they are necessary to improve their software.
I know this is unpopular to state here on Slashdot, but many (most?) of the problems with Vista have been centered around making the changes necessary to more properly secure Windows. Software that was badly built that did bad things broke on Vista, and that's a necessary step to take in order to preserve their long term market share.
Don't laugh. Keep your head down, keep improving the OSS software, and be wary of Microsoft - they still have everything it would take to continue to dominate.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Ah, before we start looking for the "value" in comparisons with Microsoft and Open-Source, perhaps we should look to have Microsoft justify its "value" behind the Office suite being $60 for the average student, and $360 for the average office worker...
So they are effectively asking the FLOSS movement to do what they (the FLOSS people) have been doing all along? By focusing on reasonable licensing and distributed development models and neglecting the price issue in most cases?
Ezekiel 23:20
MythTV (even Tivo) boxes didn't record dead air when the broadcast flag was "accidentally" tripped a while back. The only DVRs I'm aware of that did were Windows machines. Value.
...focus on value. That's why we run Mac or Linux. Microsoft sounds more like Dunder-Mifflin everyday. "Yeah, we're more expensive, but to us you FEEL like a valued customer, not just another number." In this economic climate, people don't have the luxury to care about how their feelings about the product they're buying, they want to not be broke. Also, Microsoft's customer service blows... even though you aren't a number to them. You're a product key, which makes you an alphanumeral.
Open source
Pros:
1. (Generally) free up front costs
2. A multititude of versions readily available, all the way back to early alpha, and will likely always be available, accompanied by the source code
3. (generally/often) cross-platform support
4. A huge support base made up of both paid professional support and "community" support
5. If you have a nagging "must fix" bug that affects you and only you, you have the option of fixing it or hiring someone to fix it for you
6. 0% risk of violating "per-seat" licensing
7. Development might be in someone's bedroom, or backed by a big company. YMMV, batteries not included. This could be a "con" if it's the former.
Cons
1. No warranty
2. Programs are often buggy or incomplete
3. Some projects are run by arrogant BOFH/RTFM types.
4. May require administrator training, in the form of self-study or tutorial videos on youtube, or time spent on messageboards.
Proprietary/Closed Source
Pros:
1. Shrink wrapped package and professionally-replicated DVD (oooh, SHINY!)
2. Development backed by a professional company
3. Program is usually relatively complete and bug free
4. Training i$ generally available for a co$t - where your sysadmin will receive a year's worth of information in 3-5 days and will remember precisely none of it, so he'll be asking you for funding for books, time for self-study and will be spending time on messageboards and/or watching tutorials on youtube
Cons
1. High up-front costs
2. High risk of copyright/license violations if you install more seats than "allowed" by your "license"
3. Support is generally expensive
4. Only the latest version is commercially available
5. If you have a bug you and only you encounter, you're SOL. It ain't gonna be fixed. They have your money already, so why should they care?
6. You are tied to the one and only one platform the software runs on
7. Support is paid support only, and in many cases, if you need support on an older version, they will require you to upgrade prior to providing support. Some community support may be available.
6. All warranties are expressly waived/disclaimed.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
That quote from Ramji was taken completely out of context. It takes a bit of digging, because the distortion is already present in TFA, but here is the blog post to which TFA "responds". Note especially:
Due to the downturn in the economy, many business users are putting the kibosh on migrations to or from open source. [...] That's why Microsoft is advising open-source partners with whom the company is collaborating not to focus their customer pitches on costs, but instead to lead their sales pitches with "value," he said.
(Emphasis mine.)
Now this may certainly be bad and self-serving advice from Microsoft, but it is still very different from what TFA makes it out to be. Microsoft isn't begging OS vendors to change their sales pitches to something it can compete with. It's telling vendors how it thinks they should pitch in a time of economic difficulty.
We now return you to your regularly-scheduled Microsoft bashing.
The up-front costs of a system includes more than the sticker price, and that doesn't include non-up-front costs.
It includes taking the time to learn it, the time to train employees, the time to learn its power and limitations, etc. Initial training and the cost of post-decision-pre-purchase self-education should be considered an "up-front" cost.
Buy buying a "branded," supported product from a major vendor, you trade a sticker-price fee for reduced costs elsewhere. Another alternative is to buy a support contract from a major vendor or go to the bookstore. Either way, you can take advantage of existing tutorials or books to train yourself and your people.
On open- vs. closed-source:
90%+ of companies with under-$10000-per-box-hardware don't want the burden of compiling their own environments. They are better off buying an out-of-the-box supported solution. For them, "open source" vs "closed source" isn't nearly as important as "is there a big, reliable company that stands behind this" and "is there a contingency plan if our primary vendor runs into financial difficulties."
For Microsoft users, the answers are "yes" and "um, that could never happen, not in the next 10 years anyways, could it?" which is just a long way of saying "Nobody in recent times ever got fired from buying Microsoft."
For Linux users who buy from SuSE, Red Hat, or other vendors, the answer is "yes" and, "any number of other companies that have experience supporting Linux at the source code level, plus hundreds if not thousands of dedicated volunteer kernel coders and tens if not hundreds of thousands of other experts who have seen and understand various bits of low-level code."
Neither Microsoft Windows nor Linux is inherently a better value proposition than the other, the values vary by company and application. It may be that for most users, one or the other may be the better value, but there will be users for which the opposite is the better value.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
And, for me, I find Linux to be of far more value than Windows. This is in my home environment. Granted, a simple environment which consists of only two desktops (running Linux), a laptop (running Linux), and a MacMini (running MacOSX). I also have an Internet router with integrated print server. In this environment, I have a lot of development tools as well as "services" such as a real relational database (PostgreSQL). All of which was very inexpensive. Not $0, because I actually order and pay for my Linux system. I don't run the "Enterprise" distros because I don't need the hand holding.
So, as far as I'm concerned, if a person / business is starting from scratch, then Linux or maybe even MacOSX makes sense. But maybe Windows would too. It all depends on the person / business. I know many would say Windows is a necessity for interoperability with other people / businesses due mainly to Office. This is where I get upset. If MS Office would create a usable transportable format like OpenOffice does, then people could use MS Office, OpenOffice, KOffice, ... as was best for them. But MS, IMO, deliberately tries to defeat interoperability to "lock in" their customers. And that sometimes serves to "lock in" other businesses which depend on the first business. This may be "good business". But then, I guess using a .45 in a crowded venue to make money is also "good business". The only difference is that one has been legalized.
The recent Apple tax ads are a ploy for Microsoft to learn from Apple how to compete against OSS?
Pay attention to the source before going off the deep end:
IT departments are not cutting their spending to zero, Ramji claimed. Instead, they are focusing on strategic projects and cutting completely those they deem to be non-critical. That's why Microsoft is advising open-source partners with whom the company is collaborating not to focus their customer pitches on costs, but instead to lead their sales pitches with "value," he said.
The message is for Microsoft's open-source allies, not RedHat. Ramji is suggesting that they fish where the fish are. It's good advice.
I'm a Programmer. That's one level above Software Engineer and one level below Engineer.
"dont focus on the chairs steve is hurling...focus on his superior technique!"
Good people go to bed earlier.
Sorry, but the commons MS could have joined is already well aware that letting MS anywhere near our grassy field would leave it a muddy field. There would be no grass left to eat and MS knows this, thus you see why MS cannot be convinced to act in other than their own narrow immediate interest. Sadly, MS's herd must be allowed to die off so that the rest may survive.
...control!
With open source, you (not the vendor) have the option to control the features of the app. Want feature "X"? Write and contribute the code!
Well built "open data" proprietary software can prevent vendor lock in and will keep me happy. Have you ever tried to access the raw data in MS Exchange, or Sharepoint? It's a pain, in case you don't know. Some FOSS stuff isn't much better, even though you *can* drudge through the code and figure it out.
Give me a well designed, well named, *relational* DB and as a Sys Admin I couldn't care less what you do with the source. I will write my own add-ons in whatever language/method I like, accessing the well formed DB through SQL. This also has the ability to prevent a "dead fork", as I am merely adding on to the program, not attempting to change any of the core programming.
If MS would do this for Sharepoint, I would probably recommend it to everyone I see... but they make the db so hard to navigate and access, I would just rather use Drupal, although it does lack some of the nice features of Sharepoint. This is also the reason I don't like the new wave of using key-value pair DBs as it reduces my ability to easily use that data for other purposes.
Now some of you developers might be cringing at me mucking around in your apps data, but dammit, IT'S MY DATA! I can do as I please.
No comprende? Let me type that a little slower for you...
Source code is worth more than a binary.
Since when does MS listen to OSS queries?
OK no problem but he's playing into Linux's hands because value is simply benefit / cost.
Linux now looks better than ever because its free.
I own a MacBook Pro - its hardware, OS and apps work more nicely for me. It has a higher cost than many roughly comparable PC laptops. I find greater value in it.
I run a Linux server. It has the same hardware cost as if Windows were on but no issues with client access licenses, activation or any artificial limitation brought on by segmentation like Home, Pro, Ultimate etc.. It has comparable but slightly lower cost. I find greater value in it.
Do they want to continue? The value argument is a very poor one from MS. Ubiquity is the best card they've got to play.
Cheers,
Ian
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Yeah.... that's right... don't compare your software costs with our software costs.... But it's ok to compare the hardware cost of laptops in our new TV ads.. Makes perfect sense!
By spewing statements like these, Microsoft just does not get it. I mean, how can anyone put a value to my freedom to modify software as I choose? Microsoft, give us a break.
Correct me if im wrong, but isn't open source supposed to be freely distributed? I noticed that MS isn't talking about maintainable costs here, but "price".
Slashdot - I went there to fix their grammar that they're so bad at.
There's two ways of looking at Microsoft alternatives. Firstly if they're cheap some people will think it's because they're not worth paying for.
Alternately some users won't try out the software if it expensive.
The average user does not need Microsoft Office for features, it's all about compatibility.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
For me the biggest selling point of OSS is not its being free-as-in-beer, but being free-as-in-speech. The biggest selling point of OSS is _control_. You buy a proprietary program, it has a bug that bugs you and nobody else, and you are toast. In OSS you can pay somebody to correct the bug. At least you have the option. If you want to extend the program, you can do it. Difficult and costly, perhaps, but possible at least.
When you buy proprietary, and work to integrate your business's data flow in the proprietary solution, you are in fact a hostage of the software company that has the source code. If Microsoft decided now to start charging 10.000 dollars per Windows license, many people would be forced to pay. It would surely spell doom for Microsoft in the long term, but 'long' is the operative word here. The fact is that if they could do it, and you would have no practical alternative to paying, if your business processes are deeply integrated in Windows.
Remember, it's not for the money, it's for the freedom.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
confab...ducks lined up ready to fire.
Quite frankly, there are few things in the OSS world that rival that of what is in the closed source (for profit) world.
Adobe Photoshop is better than GIMP by a long shot. It's more expensive sure -- but it's just a lot better too. And it's become a standard.
Microsoft Office is far better than Open Office. Open Office works, it can type out documents, but it can't be used in other applications that have 'plugins' and addons like Bloomberg, Reuters, Pertrac and lots of other financial software. Plus, it lacks the integration of a centralized document repository with checkin/out capabilities like Sharepoint has.
Firefox is an amazing piece of open source software, and it's better than the competition. That's why it has succeeded.
For years I have heard (and will continue to hear) how Linux is better, or open source is more beneficial, etc.. businesses don't care about up front cost. They care about long term value and benefits. We can invest $1 million into a technology, be it Photoshop, Office, or Exchange if we can use it for a larger scale operation later on. The vision with Exchange is that we can build our own messaging apps and use Exchange as a delivery platform using .NET and MS APIs. It's cheap development too, and we don't recreate the wheel. Then there's Office, where we can develop Sharepoint applications and deploy them in a snap, integrating entirely with our Office suite on the backend. It all works seamlessly, and we can offer it on an outward basis to our clients as well.
Now while I can agree with lots of people who pay hefty license fees for Microsoft and don't want to -- they should be investigating other methods to save money. The problem is that most of the minds here on Slashdot are that of nerds and not of managers. So we see the technical merits of software and the benefits of open source, and completely miss the 'big picture'. It honestly doesn't even have to be Windows, or Microsoft. It could just as easily be IBM and WebSphere.
Honestly, I think that enterprises are going to continue to drive what the 'standards' are for smaller businesses to stick to. If you're a small parts manufacturer, is it cheaper for you to have an inventory system that integrates seamlessly (and quickly) with what the OEM you're dealing with has? Or are you going to create an open source version that works really well for you, but nobody else?
While everybody is trying to push the small business and mid market with Linux (many of whom don't have the resources and knowhow to set it up properly, causing even more backlash), people are not focused on the enterprises that drive this stuff down the throats of their smaller partners. You'd be surprised at how often it happens. And even then, I hear on a regular basis how Windows is insecure, and you have trojans and blue screens (hahaha, right?), but every corporate environment I've been a part of, Windows works just fine and is just as secure as anything else because they operate with the same principles of multiple layers of security.
All I'm saying is that if you want this to be the year of Linux on the desktop there has to be first, better software for Linux and better open source software (and that means pretty GUIs and good graphics) available for consumption, and then you have to sign on enterprise level companies and make them make an investment into it. In the meanwhile, I think everybody here is fine with Windows on the desktop as we are more and more productive, even though our licensing costs are high, our revenues are generally far higher.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
Support for your employees?? Might as well buy bras for your female employees and cups for your male employees as spend money on Microsoft support. They'll get much better support that way. You even get better information about FOS when you google than you do about MSOffice.
On ease of use and effectiveness aka "value", it's hard to beat OS X -- if nothing else it minimizes the dreaded corporate "help" desk. My low-tech wife dumped Windows for OS X and will never go back. Her opinion is probably worth more than mine on the issue of "value".
On pure cost, OSS wins -- but some of the savings has to be spent. Not so much on training or support contracts, but on reasonably competent administrators. Dummies can make OSS cost more than the alternatives.
I deployed apps on OSS that the company had absolutely no budget for and performed beyond their wildest dreams. When facing the "What can you do on a budget of $0?" question, OSS is the only game in town. But it's not automatically the winner in every battle.
What OSS does is set the bar for commercial software. There is no excuse for a proprietary system to do LESS than what OSS does for free. And yet not every proprietary system can jump over the bar. Indeed, there would be little incentive for anyone to innovate or compete on price if OSS was not driving the competition.
If your business HAS to use rock-bottom commoditized labor in IT, Windows wins. If I put 50 people in an office somewhere and I need a warm body to handle the care and feeding of hardware and users, there is something to be said for the ability to hire entry-level helpers at will.
If your employer thinks that Windows total uptime is reasonable, then your time is not valued all that much.
The hybrid scenario, where you keep Windows but use Open Office instead of MS Office, gives you some of the savings of OSS and some of the administrative convenience of Windows. It all depends on how many IQ points are left after driving down the cost of labor as low as it can go.
But when we all grow up, OS X is the system for adults. If downtime and user questions are to be minimized, this is the way to go. Expensive people can't just sit there waiting for yet another callback from the help desk.
Mandatory car analogy: I drive a car that is more expensive than most. To me, it has great value. I get freebies and perks that mitigate the cost in a number of ways. Resale value is quite good, and it's a blast to drive. But only people of my income level are well-served with that value. Others would be better off with a cheaper car. No doubt, a lower cost per mile can be achieved -- with some tradeoffs.
MS wants to play the "price" card against OS X but not against Linux. I'm not so sure they should be playing price comparisons vs. anybody. Assuming Windows 7 fixes most of the Vista issues, they have a better chance of cutting off the flow of OS X defectors than undercutting OSS. And in the end, the loss of upscale customers is really their #1 problem.
Out here in the real world, I've tried getting Open Source more involved in our day to day operations, but I keep losing badly because of the user interfaces and lack of other user-facing niceties. Free alone was not sufficient for my user-facing deployments to survive. The servers are one thing, but I would like to ditch Outlook and Office. I lost OpenOffice because the management did not want to retrain and the interface was too different and "lacked polish", and then lost Evolution because it was "ugly" and did not work like Outlook. Since I had to run Outlook and Office I lost my Linux terminal server. It was replaced with desktops running XP. Now I am losing Postfix because it doesn't work with Outlook calendars and doesn't have a global address book. The users want Exchange like "everyone else has". That means a Windows Server deployment. I have Open Source here, and it's gradually losing out because it can't compete on features. Free alone is not doing the job.
. . . with my comment on this article. Firefox kept crashing, so I had to switch computers.
Their they're doing there hair.
Please don't focus on quality or security either.
Please focus on... customer support! We heard Linux didn't have any of that. We tried logging on to #linux this one time but someone told us to RTFM and banned us from the channel.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Well, there is no difference between clicking the wizard in MS Server 2008 and clicking the wizard in Mandriva 2009. So, even when you take the cost of a trained monkey into account, OSS still wins, because you can use the same monkey.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Please pay no attention to the man behind the curtain...
After all, Microsoft was the company that turned the software industry on its head by...
by offering MS-DOS for a retail price of US$45 in the 80s.
And in light of free linux distributions, $129 for OS X ($199 for 5-license family pack), free Open Office distributions (avoid the download scams!!!) - how much are they charging for shrink-wrapped copies of their operating systems and Office?
Microsoft once rolled with the market. Now, they poke the open sores they created.
Sorry, that's just how I feel about them and their market strategies.
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
Microsoft really has no basis for griping about other people giving away software for free, when they've been doing it themselves as a competitive strategy for many years, from Internet Explorer to Visual Web Dev Express.
How you gonna read it, reply and have them see the reply RELIABLY?
Yup, by keeping the format secret and patented (!!!) MS remove your right to chose.
ODF gives you back that right.
Pity MS are so crap at using standards.
I work in an environment where the 'IT support' lives 500 miles away and visits once every few months if we are lucky. As with everything in a small company, problems need to be solved by the individual who has them and I'm sorry but from my albeit limited experience with it (at the risk of flamebaiting) nothing in any of the mainstream linux distros seems to be easy.
There may be a wealth of high quality, reliable applications available for nothing, but one of main reasons Microsoft and Apple, especially Apple, are successful is due to simplicity. Most employees can't spend half a day searching for 'font packs' or screwing around with wine or virtual machines to get a single proprietary software package to run in order to be compatible with the other 90% of the planet.
They are by no means perfect, but you can't really fault their compatibility for virtually anything a normal user would do.
Wait a sec... I've always thought that value = (quality of product)/(cost of product). Unless Microsoft is giving away free software, OSS still wins on that front.
I'm a Linux user myself (including desktop), and while it works for me, after quite a bit of tweaking, I'm fully aware that other people are not as well versed in technology as I am.
If there is a weak point to Microsoft it's the server, and server software development frameworks. Nail the core scenarios there. Get single sign on, directory integration and ACLs working out of the box. Continue kicking ass on the Java ecosystem side (can I have Sun Java in CentOS and RHEL while we're at it?). Fix busted ass userland user/group management tools that don't support domain users.
That should be a good start.
This is really pretty funny because as it was mentioned, they are spending millions on ads going after Apple on "the Apple tax". There are also millions of netbook units shipping and they were required to not only keep Windows XP alive but spend millions in marketing $$$ to get it used. And now they want OSS people to not focus on price?
They are like a spoiled child, 'I want you to buy Windows because Macs are too expensive', 'I want you to use Windows on those little notebooks and we'll pay you', and now, 'I want you free software people to stop talking about price'. I want, I want, I want but none of it is any good for consumers and businesses save one, Microsoft.
Like I said, it's a joke they are asking this and all the while, they have still not figured out how to make money on anything but Windows. It's like they are asking for more time to figure out how to tie the public into another Microsoft-only product even after 20 years of failure. And another $1 billion in R&D isn't going to help. It might buy them a few vendors to stay put but there's no future in that. IMO
I'd bet that Ballmer is pretty pissed this hit the press.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Thank you.
I always have difficulty in remembering all the stuff they managed to do over all these years.
This paper will certainly help me improve the histories I usually tell to people.
Microsoft is a marketing company more than a software company. This is a deft stroke of shaping opinion. Why?
Because the tacit assumption is that Open Sourcers focus on price, not value. They want to provoke the predictable "Microsoft software is too expensive" response. It lets them cast Open Sourcers as not being able to bridge the gap between technology and product.
Technology does something specific. A product solves a problem. All that this line of commentary does is to underscore Microsoft's message that Open Source isn't ready for business. Railing about expense without attacking the core problem of value only plays into Microsoft's hand.
What's more tragic is that they may be right. There are precious few Open Source technologies that are developed and focused to the point of being a product.
I think Mauve has the most RAM. --PHB (Dilbert Comic)
What is this "article" thing you refer to?
backports.org is endorsed by Debian, at least semi-officially. It's in their package search database.
Open source is about transparency, not cost... at least not ever directly about cost: there are hidden costs associated with LACK of transparency. This is another attempt by Microsoft to spin and mis-frame the issue.
If you are starting from scratch, Windows and Linux are fairly competitive. Linux includes support for more things out of the box. Windows has better help files. Good Windows admins are probably easier to find and pay for. Windows systems are designed based on the assumption that the user is stupid and needs to have everything done for them, and thus results in a "one size fits all" product. Open source is usually designed with the assumption that the user will want to tweak everything imaginable in to software, even though to process for doing so is poorly documented. Windows has better support for brand new devices; Linux has better support for older devices. Windows has much more antivirus software available because it NEEDS it!
In conclusion, Open Source _should_ compete on value; for embedded devices and servers, I believe it has a better value proposition. For desktops, assuming all your users are already familiar with Windows, it isn't as competitive. If I was going to start a bunch of people who know nothing about computers out, I'd train them on Linux. But the Windows legacy is a fact of the industry, so the correct approach is to use the correct tool for the job and to strive for interoperability on all sides. Microsoft is at least giving lip service to interoperability lately; and that is something that actually does provide value to customers. Lock-in does not.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Is not cost a significant factor in 'value'?
"Ignore the con^Wman behind the curtain!"
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
he kept /home on a separate partition and the upgrade is a moot process. Provided your /home drive isn't reformatted, you should feasibly be able to completely overhaul your whole system and have it look exactly as it was just before you reinstalled it. Then it's just a matter of having your local linux geek over to your house once every six months. I know a fair number of people that would do this service for friends for payment of beer.
Karma: Non-Heinous
Apache or MySQL will never enter a "vault" like The Lion King or Sleeping Beauty
Since when is The REAL Lion King or Sleeping Beauty in a vault? A sales moratorium on Disney's fork of a story doesn't affect other forks.
Many well-written Windows apps will work under Wine on Linux.
Sadly, many Windows apps are not well-written, and many well-written ones may break under Wine the next time a not-so-well-written patch is introduced. Try telling your manager you can't upgrade your line-of-business application because it's not compatible with your Wine-on-Linux computers.
A few - too few for now - vendors do specifically support Wine on specific Linux distributions.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I did say OFTEN the better solution, not ALWAYS.
Sales dollars, marketing dollars, kickbacks to ISV's for using the product (all major software vendors do this, MS offers up to 12% for initial sale and 6% on renewals). Market share isn't overwhelming on servers where customers are asking for open source. In retail, education and call centers deploying Linux on the desktop is often more cost effective because of the limited software mix and lockdown. On a general purpose desktop, the proprietary solution is currently the (often subsidized) most cost effective. People want to play games or use locked down codecs, or what they are familiar with.
I prefer free software rather than Microsoft's expensive products!
We'll do this as soon as THEY start doing it.
Usually, that is....
The thing is, it isn't about cost at all. The issue is that you are trying to position one package against another, and this is the wrong approach. The manager will compare it and see if, out of the box, the extra features are worth that extra cost, whether it fits into what they currently have, etc.
Instead, you need to take the time to understand what the management NEEDS and see if you can offer a more complete set using FOSS plus some optional customization or extension. Maybe you can, maybe you can't. But that is the question.
Usually, if you come up with something that is more complete in supporting their business tasks, managers will take it even if it costs a bit more. The reason is that this is VALUE. Repeat after me: "Value is defined by how a piece of software supports operations in your business." Unless you understand that and make it the key point of your proposals, you will not get many managers to take your approach seriously.
Now...... I have seen managers choose software for reasons that had nothing to do with value. "The CEO's wife works for Microsoft, so we won't use FOSS" is a case where you just should walk away and not even try....
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Really:
Value is a function of the extent to which a software and hardware platform support your internal business processes.
Let's start there. Let's not talk about support costs. Let's not talk about how much admins make. At least not until after we do a comparison there. Then let's talk about how to minimize these costs too.
In general, if you can maximize the benefit you get from the software, that value will totally dwarf all of the associated support costs. For big companies, many things will not be doable with FOSS within a reasonable budget. Furthermore, usually if this is well managed, long-term costs will be much lower.
So this is all about management of the project, ensuring you have people doing so who understand these ideas, etc. And yes, there is a premium I have seen in FOSS projects so they usually cost more than proprietary ones. Why? Because there are additional easy changes which can improve the value (as defined above) to the business which cost money. So it is rational to spend MORE on FOSS projects than for proprietary ones.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
... you can get unbelievable support with open-source. Recently I was trying to make a certain style of chart for an abstract due in a couple of days. Gnumeric was the only software that could make the chart as I wanted it, but it was reproducibly seg faulting. I was worried.
But after talking with some of the devs on irc, they had it patched the next day. They even helped me build the program from source. Within 24 hours I had my chart.
Cost is still lower than Microsoft. Therefore, the value per dollar spent (if at all) is greater.
If the software is free, and does the same things, then it DEFINITELY has a higher value.
All M$ really did was give OpenSource more ammo to use against them. Now, OS can use both cost AND value in comparisons to Microsoft bugpacks.
Sigh..... Another shot to the foot.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
More accurate news at his website
God: An invisible friend for grown-ups.
I think your biggest competitor (and hater) is always the most safe place to look for tips on how to succeed.
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
It's times like this, we should take a step back and honestly evaluate FOSS solutions and how they compare with commercial offerings.
I do a LOT of network admin, in a mixed Windows, Linux and BSD environment. I can't really say that one is better than the other, because they all have their strengths and weaknesses. Windows can be a pain with its disjointed admin apps (hate AD), but it's pretty easy for our developers to VNC in and twiddle checkboxes in IIS. Linux is my favorite, because I know it well, but many things are needlessly obscure (like openssl command lines).
Windows costs money up front, but for non-CLI people the TCO could be lower due to the often self-explanatory interfaces. Linux is free, but I've invested quite a bit of time writing touchy-feely scripts to bridge the usability gap, and that time is money. Hell, half of my billable hours involve supporting clients' Linux servers. I haven't billed Windows support time in over 6 months.
Regarding Microsoft's marketing attacks on FOSS, we should see it as a challenge. We have the advantage of zero up-front cost, now we need to focus on reducing maintenance costs. Don't leave it up to individual distros to write the touchy-feely front-ends, we don't need 15 different network config apps, just one but a good one. I shouldn't have to learn contorted, error-prone MD/LVM commands just to set up and monitor disks, how about a little wizard to do it for me ? Thinks like that have a far greater impact on TCO than any sticker value. Enterprise deployments have a lifetime measured in years, it doesn't take a huge difference in maintenance costs to catch up with the difference in sticker price.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Not unlike a magician who wants your attention in one area while he prepares the punchline. Sam wants us not for focus on cost as Microsoft can't compete there, perhaps he;d prefer we focus on security instead? Dammit I want conflicker running on Linux so we can have a fair comparison.
Seriously, we're not focusing too much on price, it's more the patent threats, FUD and corruption emanating from Microsoft via their "partners" both disclosed and undisclosed that we're focusing on. There are plenty of vectors Microsoft can't compete in, price is only one of them. They use all sorts of imaginary stuff to attack us, why shouldn't we use real stuff to fight our corner?
Many people use open source even though they already have a paid license for a Microsoft product. So, obviously, open source users are already focusing on value.
M$ owns and controls and can enforce copyright on M$ Office, its source,
...
.doc files, they __CAN__ be read and re-formatted
even if only to kill (abandon) it
OoO is free, current source is in thousands of places, and, at the very least
it secures legacy
Screw you. I had to ignore your markup on all the machines I've bought that I never wanted to use your software on.
MS, meet a planet-killer asteroid, please. Bye.
I hope.
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
Combine good parts from both. Why so polar?
Freedom + Economic Incentive
If I got your attention, you can read more here.
I'm aiming to release software within 6 months with a license that meets these criteria, but I don't know of one. If you have any interest in a license that meets these goals, I'd like to hear from you.
*Some* users of MS Office 'really' use them. In the multitude of organisations (including universities) over the past 10 - 15 years I've had personal experience with, I can think of ~10 people (note! People)who don't just use MS Office as a reviewing device or 'table' creator. Most of those truly needing MS Office is only because they have written their macros in Excel. Now had they been shown how to script in a cross-platform language, they would not be reliant on Excel. I have yet to meet anyone who needed the features that only MS Word has.
I agree I haven't had a great deal of experience with computer use outside of mining, education, manufacture, and service industries, but I'm sure that most people in the above industries could get away with more cost effective programs designed for more specialised tasks than Office. Instead, we have a status quo of shoe-horning Office to do more task less efficiently.
Semi-automatic amateur armchair Australian philosopher; conjecture ready at any moment...
Open source software != Free software
I'd like to buy homeland for our 10 million people. http://twitter.com/mahadiga
"While I'm sure Ramji meant well,
Uh, why? He's a guy paid by a commercial company to further their interests. Unless that is what you mean by "well", there's no reason to assume that.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Try a rolling release distro like PCLinuxOS. Have had it since last 3-4 years w/o reinstalling. Always remains updated with apps. Alternatively, check 'backports' in the package manager for example in Mandriva etc. and you can retain the same system with updated apps. There's is no complicated 'stuff' to do. Just check backports and you'll get updated versions of the app for your older distro. Actually, this problem is just your imagination. There's no need to keep re-installing new version of the distro every few months. Its just more fun for some people like you. Me, I have a partition with PCLinux for office use with Lotus, domain login etc. all crap setup and another partition for trying out new distros every few months if i feel like (currently, Mandriva 2009.1 RC2 with KDE 4.2.x - beautiful) Disclosure: I also use Windows 7 which i think is a very good job from MS after a long time.
'I asked Ramji if he could explain Microsoft's open-source strategy to me in a nutshell (or at least in a single PowerPoint slide). Here's what he showed me:'
"I'll bet you forgot to tell them that a few months down the road he will have no way to install an up-to-date application unless he updates the whole system. And that he will have to update (aka reinstall) the whole system every few months, since thats the usual duration his applications officially are up to date"
What are you on - or what are you even on about. If the app works then he'll have no reason to install the 'up-to-date' version. Like, if it works, don't fix it. Contrast that to Windows where you have a fifty-fifty chance of the system coming back up after the automatic update or service pack installation. If he does need to update, then he can contact the software developer directly. Contrast that to Windows, where you talk to a call center in Mumbai or whereever or be told to wait for the next service pack/bug fix.
What do these Linux servers do that require constant maintenence. In my experience, once it's set up and properly configured, it just goes and goes. Can we see a sample of these scripts. Have you contributed them to a forum?
I feel sorry for the "average student" who paid $60 for Office. I paid $15 for Office Enterprise 2007 through my school...
I wasn't even counting 3rd party deals or agreements for apps, I was talking about Microsofts own deal through theultimatesteal website.
Of course, I find it completely ironic that Microsoft chose the word "steal" in their attempt to market to students. Of course, they're "stealing" right back in the form of obscene corporate pricing.
In the real world, the majority of companies do not care if they have to spend thousands or hundreds of thousands on a support contract or licensed piece of software. Why? Because the majority of the time they just work. You don't need a developer to plough through source code to fix a bug, you don't have to rush through forums looking for a solution when dealing with a Sev 1, nor dealing with overly buggy software. I'm not a Microsoft fanboy, but I feel as if each operating system has its own strengths and weaknesses. I would deploy a LAMP webserver anyday before IIS/Windows/ASP, but on the other hand there is nothing in the Linux world that compares to what Microsoft did with Active Directory. I would not trust my banking information being stored in a MySQL database (nor MS SQL), but Oracle or DB2 I'd have no problems with.
Linux is not ready for the desktop. I have a machine that runs Ubuntu, an OpenBSD machine, an iMac and a Vista laptop. Each has their own strong points and weak points. I never suggest my mother run Ubuntu...Why? Because I doubt she wants to edit a text file to have an application function correctly, nor compile drivers from C source code just to get wireless working. Why do you think Linux is being removed from a lot of Netbooks these days? Because a lot of things JUST DO NOT work. At least with an XP install out of the box everything will work and you don't have to recompile drivers or execute 3 line commands every few days to reinitialize your wireless.
If you take a look at why businesses use licensed software it is because it just works. Linux does too, but in a lot of cases after tinkering for hours on end. Open source software may be free, but in a lot of cases the TCO adds up to be significantly more in the long run. That being said I have worked in IT for over 10 years, managed Windows, IBM AIX, Linux and VMS.
Ok... I value open standards over closed, so I choose GNU/Linux.
So M$ wants less competition from F/OSS? How is this considered news?! Nothing to see here. MOVE ALONG!
We beat them on *BOTH*. If only PHBs would understand that. *sigh*
Good, Fast, Cheap.... pick all three.
I'd like to buy homeland for our 10 million people. http://twitter.com/mahadiga