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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 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...
and for open source, the price point is zero.
Not always. Especially if you factor in support contracts or the average salary of someone who actually knows how to administer the software in an effective manner. Open Source does not equal free beer. Just ask Stallman. However, if you write a good open source program I may buy you a free beer.
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
I also remember the day when Microsoft was the upstart rebel. Now they kinda suck like those before them.
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...
Typically the only "value" microsoft offers is compatibility with other ms products someone is already locked in to...
and for open source, the price point is zero.
Not always. Especially if you factor in support contracts or the average salary of someone who actually knows how to administer the software in an effective manner.
But that's also true of closed-source solutions. It isn't like a Windows server miraculously runs itself. You still need someone who knows how run the thing.
Obviously there's tons of wiggle room here... It may very well be that the average salary of a Windows admin is lower than that of a *nix admin... But *nix gives you better automation tools, security, and stability - so that one admin might be able to do more real work on a *nix box than a Windows box.
You can't just look at the sticker price when determining which piece of software is going to cost more or get you more bang for your buck... But you can't ignore the sticker price either.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
You are correct in many ways - to the extent that this post made me irrationally angry on some level.
I'd actually take a small hit in productivity if it helps me avoid using a proprietary system. If our company buys a system that "integrates" with a proprietary solution, I'll go a long way to learn an "open" workaround. Or try to get by without the service in the first place. People have survived without flashy services for ages, why would they suddenly need those? Complicated "integrated" tools are a distraction from actually getting stuff done.
I know it's sort of foolish pride, or juvenile rebellion, but that's just the way I feel. I know our company has paid a substantial amount of license fees for the software that I could use, but I think I've managed to avoid using any of that software.
I don't really care whether this will be the year of Linux on desktop - I just want this to remain the year of Linux on *my* desktop. Being able to use Linux for your daily work has a huge value for me, and trying to use windows for anything apart from gaming feels like crawling in a tarpit.
Luckily, doing Linux development pretty much gives you a permission to use Linux exclusively, and it's the company IT that has to be flexible to your direction as oppose to you having to bend to the whims of company IT. As more people start using Linux desktops, I hope IT purchasing will learn to avoid purchasing services that lock out significant portion of ther users, despite of how "handy" or "flashy" they appear on surface.
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
You are full of shit, mostly because you've never used Windows Media Center. Another lying Linux asshole.
I love you too, Steve. Or is this Bill? If it's Bill, tell Melinda her brownies were awesome. I definitely want the recipe next time I've over.
WMC did not record dead air. The broadcast flag simply tells the machine it's not permitted to record the content, you can still watch it.
Umm... WMC did not record anything. _Everything_else_ recorded, ignoring the spurious broadcast flag. And the people without WMC rejoiced.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadcast_flag#Current_status
On May 18, 2008, News.com reported that Microsoft had confirmed that current versions of Windows Media Center shipping with the Windows family of operating systems did adhere to the use of the broadcast flag, following reports of users being blocked from taping specific airings of NBC programs, mainly American Gladiators and Medium. A Microsoft spokeperson said that Windows Media Center adheres to the "rules set forth by the FCC", even though no legislation actually requires following such rules.
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
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