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Microsoft Asks Open Source Not to Focus On Price

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the please-don't-hurt-us dept.

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."

23 of 461 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Cost will fall flat... by jedidiah · · Score: 5, Interesting

    You can tell that most Microsoft apologists haven't had any sort of role in supporting or managing IT in business.

    Been there. Done that. Have the faded t-shirts to prove it.

    Although this isn't just about the fabled "business case".

    This is also about the bargain conscious consumer that might
    see various bits of commercial software and get a sudden case
    of sticker shock or try something that claims to be free but
    is really just an open door to malware and spam.

    This is about taking Microsoft's own marketing approach and turning it on them.

    --
    A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
  2. Funny but true.... by xzvf · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Funny but true.... by commodore64_love · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Why?

      I can see how using OpenOffice is beneficial for me, since I rarely do any work on my home PC and a $free word processor is better than $200 for MS Office, but how would OpenOffice be a better solution for a business customer if it doesn't come with any support for the employees?

      --
      "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
    2. Re:Funny but true.... by Nakor+BlueRider · · Score: 3, Interesting

      In my exprience though, a significant number of problems that occur in my Windows box end up unfixable short of a format, regardless of how documented they are. (Not most, mind, but enough to be frustrating.) In many cases error codes are generic and meaningless.

      With open-source software at least, error messages and info are more intuitive, and while fixes are sometimes more complex (one personal example was having to recompile mplayer from source to work around a bug in Ubuntu 8.10), fixes have also existed much more often on my Linux box than Windows.

    3. Re:Funny but true.... by myz24 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Just here to toot my own horn I guess but I usually find the opposite to be true. I have rarely found support to be overly helpful in solving issues. I trust the Internet before I trust a support contract.

    4. Re:Funny but true.... by kenp2002 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      There are plenty of companies out there that provide contracted service for open source projects. I personally for 12 years have provided paid, per-incident support for Apache, Nagios, Cacti, Amanda, Sendmail, Postfix, Spam Assasin, and Snort\IPTABLES (IDS) firewalls. I have since retired from geek work (I work at a bank now) but I had no problem meeting ITIL severity SLAs including 15 min response, 2 hour fix windows for most production issues.

      On top of that in 12 years I've only had 3 sev 1 calls come in on linux\bsd systems I built and all 3 were hardware failures ultimately. There are plenty out there, just, well ... Google them :)

      Here I help:

      http://www.nagios.org/support/servicepartners/

      Start there for Nagios. ISP and VM hosts can often provide Nagios pager\cell\SMS support for servers you host with them also. Just ask.

      --
      -=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
    5. Re:Funny but true.... by Godji · · Score: 1, Interesting

      I recently deployed an open-source solution (Solaris) to an organization (my home) and the cost/benefit analysis goes like this:
      1) cost of software = $0 (free to download and mostly open-source)
      2) cost of support = $0 (all the support I have required was online documentation)
      3) cost of time required to deploy = $400 (calculated using my current employment rate)
      4) cost of know-how required to deploy = -$2200
      Total cost: -$1800
      Wait a minute, I hear you saying, why is the training cost negative? Because I learnt the system myself, saving myself the $2200 it would have cost me to get Sun training (web course, which is the cheapest option). I could also use this $2200-worth of knowledge to deploy Solaris for others and get paid for it. (This would not be possible if the only possible support vendor were the software vendor.) So deploying this particular free solution to this particular organization cost me $-1800, which reflects the kowledge value I got out of it.

      Overall pretty cheap, eh?

    6. Re:Funny but true.... by Will.Woodhull · · Score: 2, Interesting

      It's essentially impossible to have a situation in which something has utility but has 0 cost

      That's bogus.

      When I throw a small log across a washout in the trail to use it as a bridge and keep my boots dry, that has great utility. But it has no appreciable cost and I'm quite happy with leaving it in place for whoever comes after me to use. Maybe they'll even add some stepping stones on the approaches so the next time I come by, my boots will not only stay out of the water, but they won't even get muddy.

      In FOSS, there is a lot of that going on. The original investment in work is seen as minimal for whatever reason, and when spread across all users the cost effectively becomes zero for each user. When enough of all the users contribute back to the common good (others make different improvements to the trail), everyone sees a great increase in utility but the cost to anyone remains zero. FOSS can even support an untold number of freeloaders who don't contribute back.

      This is based on a kind of economics that is thousands of years older than capitalism, sometimes called "gift exchange economics". It turns out that capitalism didn't get all of its premises correct (which isn't surprising: it grew up as a belief system, not as a science).

      --
      Will
    7. Re:Funny but true.... by AnalPerfume · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I wasn't aware you could purchase MS Office at all, they sell you a license to use it under certain restrictions and conditions but you never own it, even if you do have a fancy box, manual and DVD. Have Microsoft changed their policies and sold their very first copy of MS Office while I wasn't looking?

  3. Compare Microsoft to Microsoft first. by geekmux · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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...

  4. Re:Cost will fall flat... by MightyMartian · · Score: 4, Interesting

    That may be true on the workstation, though rather than pay even $150 a pop for 23 licenses for Office Home/Educational or whatever its called, I threw in OpenOffice. My manager was a little nervous about this, and even tentatively put money in the budget for the licenses, but allowed me to "experiment". There have been a few problems, to be sure, but nothing so earth-shattering that, after a month, when we discussed it, it was agreed that OpenOffice was the obvious solution for these workstations. For what they're used for, if there wasn't XP licenses to be had, I'd probably just have installed Ubuntu.

    But on the server end of things, it's quite different. I see no reason to pay thousands of dollars for the operating system and CALs for a fileserver, when Samba does the job quite well. In these harsher economic times, the value of a GUI drops pretty substantially when you're talking about licensing costs. What's more, because of Microsoft's insane licensing system, it's not just costs, but making sure you've got the right kind of license. Oops, that was an OEM license, so sorry, you can't put that copy of Server 2003 on a new server, you naught boy. Buy a new one! BWAHAHAHA.

    We just went through a software-licensing-review-that-wasn't-labeled-as-a-review with Microsoft (likely because, once I was on board, I stopped paying their crappy, useless and expensive Software Assurance), and it was the first time my organization had gone line by line through our licenses.

    Microsoft is absurdly expensive and restrictive, and believe me, so far as I'm concerned, OpenOffice is thin edge of the wedge. Next up is Exchange. Everything is going web-based anyways, and the only real "Exchange-y" feature we use is shared calendars. I can either use one of the open source groupware packages, or as some have suggested, just look at Google's calendaring.

    I'm telling my rep flat out once the review is through that with the next round of purchases, the only thing likely Microsoft on the computers will be the operating system.

    --
    The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
  5. Re:Focus on quality? by an.echte.trilingue · · Score: 2, Interesting

    No, he is asking people to do what they have not done in the history of capitalism: ignore what something costs.

    Value in this context is just synonym for cost-benefit analysis, which is a concept people are already quite familiar with even if they do not always apply it. The reason Microsoft wants OSS vendors to change their vocabulary is that they are aware that they have lost the cost-benefit fight under the old vocabulary and they want OSS marketeers to help them re-open the same debate under new terms.

    The longer you can keep people redefining their premises, the longer you can hinder actual comparison and continue to market software with the good will that Jerry Seinfeld can sell you.

    --
    weirdest thing I ever saw: scientology advertising on slashdot.
  6. Sure, let's examine the value: by kimvette · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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
  7. Certainly by mccalli · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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

  8. Re:Cost will fall flat... by Ephemeriis · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Linux might be "free" but if you include the support contract

    Are you telling me that none of your Windows software has a support contract of any kind?

    We support a number of clients... Just what they call 'critical' varies from one place to the next... Some of them are very concerned about their accounting software, some of them are more worried about their inventory software, some of them have electronic medical records... But all of them have support contracts of some kind on the software that they consider critical. And most of them are running on Windows.

    [re-]training

    Training is going to be necessary on pretty much any new piece of software - Windows or otherwise. And if an update to an existing piece of software is significant enough you might need to re-train people.

    Training has less to do with the OS things are running on top of than the software itself. Look at all the complaining over Office 2007... These were folks running a new version of Office on the same OS.

    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.

    Again, generally that's more a function of the software than the platform it is running on. Most people don't spend a whole ton of time at work playing around with their operating system. Most people spend the day working with various pieces of software - web browsers, email clients, development environments, accounting packages, office suites.

    I personally find getting almost anything done on Linux much more time consuming than either OS X or Windows...

    That will largely depend on what you're trying to accomplish and your familiarity with not only the operating system but that specific machine.

    If I'm sat down at a random machine and asked to locate a file or burn a disc or something it will take me a few moments just to familiarize myself with the system. See what software they've got installed, how the files are organized, etc. If you're more familiar with a Windows environment it'll obviously take you longer to find your way around a Linux machine.

    Windows and OS X both generally offer a nice GUI experience, which can be great for some users. Linux offers tons of command-line tools, which can be great for some users. OS X and Linux both offer tons of automation tools, which can be great from an administration standpoint. But, again, most people don't spend a whole lot of time in the day dealing with the OS itself. Most people spend their time dealing with the software that sits on top of the OS.

    --
    "Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
  9. Re:Cost will fall flat... by J+Story · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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...

    1. We have anecdotal remarks, at the very least, that have found retraining costs can be surprisingly low. In any event, those costs are non-recurring, as opposed to keeping up with Microsoft's upgrade treadmill.

    2. On support costs between Linux and Windows, I think there is sufficient evidence available to show that the cost difference is either a wash or favourable towards Linux. Microsoft-sponsored studies claiming otherwise have been largely discredited.

    3. Efficiency. True. No tool drives in a nail as efficiently as a hammer. In some cases, proprietary applications either outclass or have no Open Source competitor. However, the less specialized the task, the more likely that a Free/Open Source solution is "good enough", or even the better choice. Cases in point: OpenOffice.org, Firefox, Apache, Asterisk, the Linux kernel, various GNU utilities. And one more thing, just because you *can* have lots of eye candy doesn't mean that you should.

    4. Another consideration that affects how products work and attitudes of business is that many proprietary products are built assuming that the user is a thief and should not use the product. As a result, you pay Microsoft for software that can decide to downgrade your multimedia playback, for example.

    Further on this point, the culture of user as probable thief spawns the BSA. As long as you use software by BSA members you risk a costly license "audit", whether your licenses are 100% compliant or not. Productivity loss during these audits has a real bottom-line cost to a business.

  10. Re:Cost will fall flat... by myz24 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I think you're mostly right but it's clear you're not using AD beyond an authentication system for your workstations. Start putting group policies to use and you'll quickly see that Linux/Samba can't compete.

  11. Re:Cost, quality and... by Unoriginal_Nickname · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I don't know about you, but when someone asks for a change to one of my apps and I tell them "It's open source, make the change yourself," what I'm really saying is "**** off."

    If you're business this is only possible:

    - Assuming you have the budget for a development team.
    - And the time to become familiar with the code base before the feature is needed.
    - And a repository maintainer who is willing to accept your changes, or an even bigger team and budget to track security and bug fixes from the original developer and incorporate them into your modified code base.
    - And a silver tongue, so you can convince your investors that it's totally worthwhile to spend their money improving a product that anybody can use for free with absolutely no way to profit directly from the improvements you made to the software.

    Or if you're a home user, in which case you probably don't know C, and if you do you're probably too tired from writing C all day to fix someone's code for them.

    The ability to make contributions is far from the main benefit of open source software. The main benefit is the fact that someone can't shut it down for selfish reasons. The code is essentially in the public domain. Apache or MySQL will never enter a "vault" like The Lion King or Sleeping Beauty; the Linux kernel will never have its "support period" expire. The real benefit is social, rather than technological.

  12. Re:Focus on quality? by revjtanton · · Score: 2, Interesting

    What I said was in jest...but now that you bring it up...

    I've used copies of XP, Vista, Windows 7, Ubuntu, Fedora, etc. and my experiences were what anyone would expect them to be. I'm not a fanboy simply touting the praises of any one OS over another for the sake of individuality or to be a part of a group, but I will share my experiences for the sake of function and progress. You say that Linux has some shortcomings and is some sort of joke...have you used Vista? Have you used XP on a netbook? Have you used Windows Server?

    I'll be the first to admit that I have XP on my home PC, Ubuntu (UNR) on my netbook, Vista on my wife's laptop, and I admin a Red Hat server and a personal Ubuntu server (oh, and I've got WM5 on my Treo and a Blackberry...and an Xbox 360 running Leopard...j/k). I can give you a list of comparisons a mile long giving you "troll" reasons why Ubuntu sucks and XP rox; I can give you a list explaining to you how Vista fails in every department (though it would seem W7 is the XP to Vista's ME); I can give you proof that from a server side almost nothing compares to the flexibility and awesomeness that is Linux...but why should I bother? As much as many Linux fanatics have made up their mind on their freedom of choice, you've made up yours on the state of your proprietary empire.

    You can't call something that is EVER CHANGING like Linux stagnant...especially when each distro is constantly evolving in different directions. Your comment invalidates itself by making erroneous claims like that! I'm with you that Windows isn't some evil thing that should never be used but if you're trying to convert people from a fanatical left it just isn't going to happen by making generalized and slanderous comments.

    So I close by recognizing that I've said nothing specific in this post but I do want to ask you: what specifically are you referring to in each of your arguments? Give me examples of how Linux has done nothing and Microsoft has continued to push innovation. Explain to me why an OS that is present in the vast majority of cell phones and web servers is irrelevant? Does your argument even extend to such products, or are you simply arguing the desktop? And finally: have you seriously tried Ubuntu vs. Vista? Go 64-bit with it, take some time with it, and then honestly reflect on what you've played with. I prefer XP (mainly for gaming reasons) on the home desktop, but there is no comparison between Ubuntu and Vista...really, Vista just wasn't very good.

    And I'm sure there were plenty of posts in this thread that made serious arguments, but my post wasn't one of them. It was a joke. Lighten up.

  13. There are many types of cost by Locke2005 · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Nothing is completely free of cost. Even if a licensed executable is available for free, there is still your time to download and install it. Also, for a business things like support costs, costs of re-writing inhouse apps for a new OS, and costs of retraining every user for a new OS usually apply. These costs apply to switching to Linux, but also apply to upgrading from XP to Vista.

    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.
  14. Re:The purchase price is NOT the "cost"... by dave562 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    You're spreading FUD about not being able to get bug fixes out of Microsoft. If you actually pay the God awful support price (It was $395 per call last I checked), and they find a bug in the system while diagnosing your problem, they will write a patch. Every once in a while you can come across a knowledgebase article on Microsoft's site with a link to a hotfix. There will be a big disclaimer that says something to the effect of, "This hotfix is not regression tested. Only apply this hotfix if you are experiencing the exact issue described in the article." In some cases you actually have to call support (for free) to get an unlock code to open the hotfix archive. Microsoft wants to make sure that people aren't just arbitrarily grabbing hotfixes off the site and throwing them at problems in production environments. Those hotfix are released as a result of customers calling in with problems. I know because I called in with a problem with the Exchange 2000 MTA that required a hotfix. I could be having delusional memories here, but I think that Microsoft even refunded the cost of the call because it turned out to be a problem with their software.

  15. Re:Focus on quality? by shanen · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Sure what it sounded like to me. Ubuntu seems to do all of that at the specified price.

    However, what pisses me off most about Microsoft is the in-your-face WGA assumption that everyone is a thief. No, just because we are forced to use your trashy software, that does NOT mean we want to steal it. This week they installed a new and more intrusive in-your-face version of WGA. Pile it higher and deeper? Sorry, Microsoft, no kudos to you.

    Actually, there are lots of reasons to hate Microsoft. I think my deepest reason for hating Microsoft is that Microsoft is anti-freedom, and I like my freedom. The meaning of freedom is that you get to make meaningful choices, but Microsoft interprets that to mean "We don't have to show you any source code, so you don't really know anything about what we are offering, but the only choices we feel like offering are minor variations of the same garbage. Now send us more money. NOW. And we Microsoftians still assume you're a bunch of thieves. So what are you twits going to do about it?"

    P.S. What I did is switch to Ubuntu and Redhat as much as possible. Unfortunately, my work still requires me to use Windows much of the time.

    --
    Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
  16. Re:it is pretty funny by LifesABeach · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Lets talk about raising a family. I have told my children, "do not do business with a company that thinks going to court is a form of casual entertainment."