How Many SUSE Subscriptions Can You Get For $240M?

itwbennett writes "According to an SD Times article, Microsoft is almost through passing out the infamous subscription certificates for SUSE Enterprise Linux that it purchased for $240 million as part of its investment in Novell. According to the article, Microsoft says that 'a total of 475 customers have used an unspecified number of coupons.' Blogger Brian Proffitt calculates that 'if indeed just 475 customers have received these coupons, then Microsoft has essentially subsidized SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) deployments to an average tune of US$505,263.16 per customer.'"

Comments

Microsoft hounds

[Yvanhoe]

Microsoft has a special hounds training program. They train them to smell a very subtle scent that exist only when wealth and stupidity is mixed. They call this program "marketing". Open source sellers have moral qualms about it and prefer to solve stupidity which they see as a core problem. Guess who is making money ?

Now the important question : am I trollish, insighful, funny or CowboyNeal ?

Re:Microsoft hounds

[Monkeedude1212]

You know, It's funny how often those 4 coincide...

Re:Microsoft hounds

[mcgrew]

The Microsoft shills will mod you "flamebait" for your funny comment, Mr. Neal!

Re:Microsoft hounds

[jedidiah]

> People have "moral qualms" against marketing?

Yes. Little things like lying and fraud bother some people.

Re:Microsoft hounds

[notque]

Marketing was created as a systematic way of lying to people. Marketing not only shows a contempt for Democracy (Marketing for candidates), but contempt for Markets (which are supposed to work with "perfect information", the very thing marketing avoids.)

Re:Microsoft hounds

[Anonymous Coward]

Calm down, dude! Your spelling and shit is getting all fucked up in ways that make no sense...

Re:Microsoft hounds

[Red Flayer]

So only on Slashdot does all marketing become "lying and fraud". Really? Did you just run out and buy the biggest broadest paint brush you can find? What do you do for a living? How do people know about it? Do you work with Marking people? Are they lyers and fradusters? Would you have the guts to say that to their face?\

You're being very antagonistic (fine, some of what the other poster(s) have written are BS).

But let me help explain why there is a huge anti-marketing sentiment amongst a large subset of the readers of slashdot.

1. Slashdot readers tend to be very analytical. We like to get all the facts and make a decision based on those facts. Marketing often obscures the facts by which we could make informed decisions.

2. A lot of us work in product development (typically software, but not always). We see marketing staff pulling in 2-3 times what we make (or more) while not actually producing anything of value (according to how we ascribe value). We see marketing staff get promoted while seeing them goof off most of the day. Some of it may be sour grapes, some of it may be jealousy, some of it may just be a lack of respect for people who don't seem to work hard -- but in any case, it's hard for the typical slashdotter to accord respect to someone who produces nothing.

3. Some of us have been burnt, professionally, by marketing people. Deliverables are marketed that have no hope of being implemented, etc.

4. Most slashdotters feel that their work stands for itself. Most people in marketing self-promote; this runs contrary to the values of most nerds. It's frustrating to see a marketing person take the credit (and the accolades) when a lot of hard work was done by the development teams.

Maybe you just need to accept the fact that some people hate the idea of marketing. Getting bent out of shape about it isn't going to do you any good.

Re:Microsoft hounds

[Kjella]

Mostly people will defraud themselves, there's no reason why "rich, famous and sexy person uses product X" should imply "product X will make me rich, famous and sexy". Customers are much happier to buy an overpriced item at reduced price than a full price item because they feel smart, they're as much looking to beat the "fair" price as the marketers are. And you shouid always recognize that a marketer will talk about the ideal customer, that "Teach Photoshop in 21 days" will not make you an artist, that exercise machine won't help you when you break down 5 minutes in because everything hurts and go on a MacDonald's gorge and so on. Failed reality checks vs you as a person is also not fraud.

I know there are marketers that really defraud people, but having worked as a consultant I've come to recognize a lot of gray. For example, in our estimates we generally assume the customer is prompt, competent, coherent, authorized and in general a very good customer. Almost all of them fail on some level of dysfunctionality, but it's hopeless for us to estimate it in. Either they take forever to evaluate the pros and cons, they don't understand them, they disagree internally, no one feels authorized to decide, circumvented some internal process and have to backtrack, come into conflict with purchasing or with legal or indeed any one of a million things. Once we're out the door, they're free to blame us for every failure and cost overrun but I digress. The point is I go into many projects believing little of the estimates. Does that make me a fraudster?

Re:Microsoft hounds

[ClosedSource]

"1. Slashdot readers tend to be very analytical. We like to get all the facts and make a decision based on those facts. Marketing often obscures the facts by which we could make informed decisions."

If one considered Slashdot readers to be a separate group from Slashdot posters, what you say may be true. Oops, you said "we".

Re:Microsoft hounds

[CrimsonAvenger]

1. Slashdot readers tend to be very analytical. We like to get all the facts and make a decision based on those facts. Marketing often obscures the facts by which we could make informed decisions.

Well, as long as the facts agree with their preconceptions, anyway.

From all I've seen over the years, /. readers are as likely to ignore inconvenient facts as any other demographic out there.

Re:Microsoft hounds

[Anonymusing]

As someone who has worked in marketing, technology, and product development... I'd say you summed up the situation pretty well. On a forum for marketing pros, you could reverse most of your points and get a decent picture of how marketing folks view programmers and product devs.

I think the key problem is noted in your #2: "We see marketing staff pulling in 2-3 times what we make (or more) while not actually producing anything of value (according to how we ascribe value)." Everybody has different opinions of value. But it's a chicken-and-egg problem. Which came first, the product, or the demand for the product? A marketer is supposed to deliver demand for a product; a good marketer will do it on a phenomenal level, and possibly even without resorting to deceptive tactics. But, without the product, there is nothing for the marketer to do. They need each other.

Should marketers make 2x or 3x the pay? Depends. A senior, proven marketer should make 3x more than a middling developer. But a senior, proven engineer should have some kind of parity. Also, marketing is inherently riskier: if you fail to produce demand and therefore sales, you're likely to lose the account, if not your job. But engineers, in my experience, tend to be more insulated from sales ebbs. (emphasis on "tend")

Re:Microsoft hounds

[Red Flayer]

Marketing not only shows a contempt for Democracy (Marketing for candidates), but contempt for Markets (which are supposed to work with "perfect information", the very thing marketing avoids.)

I don't think that's always the case. What if you have a good product that no one knows about? There's a lack of information in the market, which marketing can help fix.

The problem is dishonesty in marketing, not marketing itself.

Re:Microsoft hounds

[Daniel_Staal]

'Good' marketing (in the sense of good for the economy and population at large, which isn't always the same as good for the company paying for it) helps that market assumption of 'perfect information': It informs you of a product you didn't know existed, and gives you the reasons why it might be a product you would wish to buy.

Of course, most of the people/companies paying for the marketing would rather it informed you of a product you didn't know existed, and created a need to buy that product. Regardless of whether you would wish to buy it or not, or if it would benefit you in any way.

Re:Microsoft hounds

[Crawling King Snake]

Without marketing, I could buy a pair of Nike sneakers for $9.

Re:Microsoft hounds

[Anonymous Coward]

How do I mod this (-1, Wish to Ignore)?

Re:Microsoft hounds

[dyingtolive]

Were you a loan officer in a previous life?

Re:Microsoft hounds

[microbox]

Mostly people will defraud themselves, there's no reason why "rich, famous and sexy person uses product X" should imply "product X will make me rich, famous and sexy".

You my friend, are labouring under the presumption that human-beings are rational. Taking advantage of the human condition is why we have a laws in the first place -- because we could scape every law in the rulebook if people could be trusted to behave themselves.

Re:Microsoft hounds

[microbox]

The problem is dishonesty in marketing, not marketing itself.

You can remove the marketing from dishonesty, but you cannot remove the dishonesty from marketing. Buyer beware.

Re:Microsoft hounds

[TimHunter]

From all I've seen over the years, /. readers are as likely to ignore inconvenient facts as any other demographic out there.

Slashdot's chief weapon is ignorance! Ignorance and cynicism. Cynicism and ignorance. Our two weapons are cynicism and ignorance. And arrogance. Our three weapons are cynicism, ignorance, and arrogance. And an overweening sense of entitlement. Our four...no. Amongst our weaponry are such elements as cynicism, ignorance...I'll come in again.

Re:Microsoft hounds

[nacturation]

Are they lyers and fradusters?

Hey, did you see that Jim Carrey movie "Lyer, Lyer"? I think it's about some guy who makes soap.

Re:Microsoft hounds

[cmacb]

True to a point. But if a product is really good, word of mouth takes over, the product becomes well known and eventually starts to "sell itself". What then is the need for a marketing effort in a company such as Coke, or Microsoft? It certainly doesn't consist of educating people about the product. More often it consists of giving the public a warm and fuzzy feeling about the company itself. Paving over mishaps as quickly as possible, pushing product out a retail channel faster than might be needed, developing intermediate unpaid marketing channels (MCSEs), sponsring charitable events, etc. I mentioned two companies. Windows has never been great. The one change Coke made to their formula was a marketing disaster, although the public soon forgot its outrage. If there was simply nothing close to the products from these two companies, they would need to do little marketing. Fact is, viable alternatives are there, waiting for a stumble significant enough to trip up the giant. Such stumbles rarely happen. Especially if the company keeps a groups of people around to cover them up and draw the public's attention to something else.

You will note that when some new big virus or malware comes out the mainstream publications rarely if ever mention that only those running Windows are vulnerable, even if this is the case. I don't think this is happenstance. You have to dig deep to find that the lates Flash or Acrobat vulnerability only affects those running Windows. Microsoft marketing has done a great job of convincing people that since they are the number one OS, they can't be blamed because almost all the attacks target their system.

Re:Microsoft hounds

[jvkjvk]

You must be very ignorant of what actually goes into marketing to make blanket statements like this.

There is a reason major marketing firms hire psychologists and wire people with electrodes to correlate stimulus techniques with brainwave response.

Regards.

Re:Microsoft hounds

[Yvanhoe]

When you point out to a fact that contradicts their sayings, Slashdotters won't bow and flog themselves recognizing you were right and asking for your blessing. Most of them will instead retire and meditate about this new fact before continuing to discuss. Some may even thank you. The silent crowd mods 'informative' the fact-based contradiction and mods down the occasional "Nay ! YOU are dumb" answer.

Yeah, people here have preconceptions and opinions, but compared to a lot of other places, real or virtual, they are far more inclined to change them.

Re:Microsoft hounds

[Yvanhoe]

Lying and fraud is soooooo 90. Nowadays marketing departments also use extortion.

Re:Value of Software

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

They are selling SUPPORT. The idea is to essentially kick out a RedHat subscription, at a customer ready to change the way they manage support. The MS subsidy makes this an attractive change.

SuSE runs on HyperV with native hooks - Like Server 2008 does. This is a way to ensure MS doesn't get lost in the data center - but continues to emerge as a player.

Re:Free?

[RobertLTux]

What is not "free" is support above web forums and such and "Enterprise" level distros tend to include programs that run on but are by no means Open Source. In fact even individual level distros have things like DVD players and other commercial programs that run on Linux.

In related news...

[Maniacal]

Microsoft Corporation announced today that customers who deploy their server solutions can save over $400,000 when compared to deploying a solution based on SUSE Linux.

Keep in mind the extras

[filesiteguy]

I wouldn't be suprised if - included with the dollar figure - they are adding in Windows 2008, SQL 2008 and other back office products they sell. Keep in mind, that Microsoft even has Novell at their launch and TechNet events showing off SLES on a server with Win2008 instances (each of which require a license) running in XEN virtual machines.

Customer != users

[gmuslera]

Each company could be count as one customer, but theirs hundreds of users could count in the price of the license.

Re:Customer != users

[afidel]

Or even 100k+ users since MS is in all the biggest companies in the world.

Re:Free?

[Maniacal]

And I think we should all write the name SUSE as "$U$E" to make up for the way we've been unfairly referring to "M$" all these years.

Xcalc?

[mystikkman]

This struck me as a very interesting figure, because after firing up XCalc, I figured out that if indeed...

Was that before or after jumping into his Ferrari and flashing his iPhone? Why do people need to display their smug superiority from the unwashed masses when any decent calculator would give the same result?

Re:Xcalc?

[nedlohs]

How is that smug superiority. It's what he did and likely he didn't think anything of saying that.

People do say "firing up calculator", "firing up google", "firing up IE". when they do those things.

And running a calulator program on a computer is hardly "elite" or smug.

Re:Xcalc?

[Hurricane78]

I thought XCalc was a calculator for the X windowing system.
Oh, and if somebody brags with his material stuff, we all know that that’s all he has, and *needs* to brag, in order to be able to accept himself. Just like acting all “Oh, what time do we have? Wait, I’ll just look at my *$30000 ROLEX*” will not get you any real girls. (Except for those that you don’t want anyway.)
No need for you to mention it. We’re on your side already. :)

By the way: Qalculate! is the best calculator of all time! OF ALL TIME! ;)

Re:Xcalc?

[Hurricane78]

Yes, but... let’s say... Apple users are especially well-known for using Apple products as e-penises.
Of course far from all. But unfortunately the loudest ones are usually the worst, and are seen best.
So it’s likely that GP’s experience made it most efficient, to just assume it’s a fanboi.
You can judge that as prejudice. But pay attention that you’re not falling into prejudice with that, yourself. ;)
I just see it as “most likely possibility, based on own experience”, as around here, you even get modded down, for mentioning anything Apple in the same comment with anything bad. Completely irrational. But that’s what fanbois by definition are.
No matter if Apple or something else. (If you read this, you are no Apple fanboi. ;)

Re:Xcalc?

[ClosedSource]

Your funny comment got modded as Offtopic. I guess we have to meta-meta-mod down the Slashdot community again (-1 Whoosh).

Re:Xcalc?

[Red Flayer]

Wait, I'll just look at my *$30000 ROLEX*" will not get you any real girls. (Except for those that you don't want anyway.)

Speak for yourself. Money may not be able to buy love, but it sure can buy a few nights of steamy passion -- and sometimes, that's all that is wanted.

Re:Xcalc?

[nedlohs]

Except that Xcalc is shorter than calculator. So it's both more accurate and less verbose. Both your examples are simply adding extra words which serve no purpose other than advertising themselves. There's no addition in the xcalc example, it's a simple way of saying "I didn't add this up in my head".

I would say "fired up calc" over "fired up a calculator", and showing that I use the window calc program isn't the goal of the statement. It's just how I see the action. If I used excel instead I'd say "fired up excel" not "fired up a spreadsheet" too. Not to add detail but because that's how I think of it.

Of course I'm not the original author who very well may have been trying to show off that he uses a shitty OS.

Bad math alert!

[tomhudson]

The total number of clients is not what they seem to think - a client might have 1,000 - 5,000 machines, thus taking hundreds or thousands of certs.

Re:Bad math alert!

[tomhudson]

When it comes to Novell+Microsoft,, there hasn't been much clear thinking making the rounds.

For example, the whole Mono fiasco. de Icaza is a Microsoft fanboy, but that doesn't mean that openSuse is somehow "contaminated" by Mono. Just remove mono-base with teh package manager and it all goes bye-bye. Your machine will continue to work just fine (actually, better than fine since doing so also removes Kerry Beagle, resulting in a much more responsive machine).

Then there's the whole "patents deal" hysteria. What do I care about what Microsoft claims the deal was about? Ultimately, Ballmer is a snake-oil salesman, after all. The deal was more likely made as a back-door way to compensate Novell for the expenses Microsoft indirectly caused by financing the SCO attack against linux, which Novell has been doing a lot of the heavy lifting in the courts - remember, there was talk about piercing the corporate veil wrt the $50 million PIPE deal.

SLED is not opensuse. There may be stuff in SLED (which has proprietary extensions and applications), that needs Microsoft's okay for virtualization to work with Microsoft products. So what? Doesn't affect me, since I can't see any scenario where I would want to run linux instances hosted on a Microsoft server, or Windows instances hosted on a linux server.

Re:Free?

[Xugumad]

OpenSUSE is free: http://www.opensuse.org/en/ - we run it here.

SUSE is not free. However, when your Oracle server has decided to keel over on the development server, and you've spent a couple of hours now trying to find out why, you really begin to wonder if it wouldn't have been cheaper to pay for the version with support and be able to call someone (OpenSUSE isn't an officially supported Oracle platform, so we couldn't even call them) and have them fix it.

Re:Value of Software

[Locutus]

so the coupons are only for putting SUSE inside a Microsoft hosted virtual machine? If that is the case, it's quite obvious that they spent the money to keep Windows installed. IMO.

LoB

Re:Value of Software

[Anonymous Coward]

Choosing to get rid of Vista isn't really a choice...its a necessity The consumer just chose to throw more money at the problem and swear next time they'll buy a Mac. Win7 is better than Vista! Great job! That must have been tough...

The numbers are there

[jpobst]

If you click the links in the slashdot summary, you'll end up at the original announcement, which told you roughly how many subscriptions the deal was for: 70,000.

http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB116249026689311557-helTbrheLKgbaJ5iO5z40ZFCiOs_20061109.html?mod=blogs

I guess that's not as much fun as wild speculation though.

Re:The numbers are there

[Anonymous Coward]

So actually numbers are $240,000,000/70,000=$3428.57 per coupon. Seems to me the term "subsidized SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) deployments" is a pretty accurate statement, don't you agree?

Re:Value of Software

[shutdown -p now]

SuSE runs on HyperV with native hooks - Like Server 2008 does.

Is it just SUSE that does that? I was under impression that the necessary code was admitted to mainline kernel...

Re:Value of Software

[Lunix Nutcase]

Yeah, because it's not like they couldn't have easily chosen a Mac if they didn't want Windows, right?

Now I get it.

[Joe Snipe]

When you put it that way, Windows 7 ultimate is a bargain!

Re:Now I get it.

[wiredlogic]

It finally proves that Linux has a higher TCO.

Re:Value of Software

[koiransuklaa]

Your posts are usually insightful and this one is on the whole no exception. However, I have to comment on the "The[y] could just have just as easily chosen Linux": that statement totally forgets the monopolies Microsoft has been able to build in the last fifteen years (legally or otherwise) and the "traps" that were built on top of those monopolies. Most operating system customers _cannot_ choose non-MS products, and that is not just because the competing products themselves aren't good.

The OS and document format monopoly, the IE-trap that many companies unknowingly stepped into ten years ago and the well documented anti-interoperability stance that seemed to be the M.O. at Microsoft for some time... These things may not be illegal (although I expect they may be in combination) but I have no problem calling them immoral.

In any case saying that customers have a choice is bollocks. They had a choice ten years ago, and hopefully will again after five or ten years... Let's hope so.

Re:Free?

[JonJ]

I thought we were hating @ppl£ this week?

Re:Free?

[Gerzel]

This one case of linux and it is being subsidized ie it is costing the customer LESS than free.

Re:Free?

[TangoMargarine]

Seems like it would be an apt label, as Novell apparently has some patent agreement with Microsoft. And SCO, which did that whole "Linux is infringing patents" thing, bought DR-DOS from Novell and is working with SUSE (Novell) on some standardization of Linux, which sounds like a terrific proprietary-profit-bastard idea.

GPLv3 tries to take advantage of this

[yuhong]

GPLv3 tried to take advantage of the coupons to extend MS's patent protection to all users. I wonder how successful that has been.

Re:Free?

[Sebilrazen]

Wait, £ is 'e,' 'g,' and 'G?' and 'e' is both '£' and '€?' I thought English was confusing.

3.5 years later

[neurovish]

Novell stock has lost 30%

Microsoft stock has lost 1%

Redhat stock has gained 78%

Good going Novell, yet another stellar business decision. The $240mil had to have been the value of the entire deal, which was mostly beneficial to Microsoft in that they weren't going to be sued by Novell since Novell owns a lot of the UNIX patents. The licenses were being resold by Microsoft at prices substantially less than ($240/77)x1000

Re:3.5 years later

[Neil Watson]

What if those UNIX patents were to fall into other hands through the acquisition of Novell?

Re:3.5 years later

[McBeer]

Novell stock has lost 30%

Microsoft stock has lost 1%

Redhat stock has gained 78%

Stock price probably isn't the best way to demonstrate that a firm is doing well or poorly as it is based largely on speculation. I like to look at profit per employee. If you take that metric:

Microsoft: $156, 656
Novell: - $59,083,
Red Hat: $28,107

or if you're looking to actually invest in one of these companies, price earnings ratio (smaller is better) is a useful metric:

Microsoft: 15.63
Novell: N/A
Red Hat:69.37

So you can see while Red Hat stock price is doing pretty well, Ret Hat itself isn't making a ton of money. Though it is beating the pants off Novell for what thats worth...

Good going Novell, yet another stellar business decision.

agreed

Re:3.5 years later

[drinkypoo]

It's not inconceivable that Novell would be a smoking hole in the ground today if they didn't deal. No, I don't believe it either. Also, from where I'm sitting, Novell already looks like a smoking hole in the ground. Or, at least, some kind of hole.

I'm not talking about the parent necessarily

[ClosedSource]

I don't understand how people can simultaneously claim that OpenOffice can read and write MS Office files and then turn around and say MS customers are "trapped".

In addition, anybody who designed an application around IE certainly went in to it with their eyes wide open to the fact that it was a Windows-specific solution. There are thousands of non-MS applications that won't run on Linux.

Re:I'm not talking about the parent necessarily

[Dragonslicer]

I don't understand how people can simultaneously claim that OpenOffice can read and write MS Office files and then turn around and say MS customers are "trapped".

The word you're missing is "mostly". OpenOffice's compatibility with MS Office files is probably in the 95-98% range. For most home users and probably a lot of businesses, that's good enough. There are some times, though, when a customer has done something that MS Office saves in a way that OpenOffice can't handle, so your only choices are to just use MS Office or lose business. Until formats that are truly and completely open become standard, this problem will continue.

Re:I'm not talking about the parent necessarily

[ClosedSource]

Funny I don't see any marketing that says it can only handle 98% of MS office files. In any case, if your numbers are right, it's a rather minor barrier for switching from Windows to Linux.

Re:I'm not talking about the parent necessarily

[Dragonslicer]

Well of course you won't see any marketing that says "We do most of what you need." And for the people that don't care about that 5% of obscure features that OpenOffice doesn't support, it isn't a barrier for switching to Linux. There may be other barriers though, such as the few annoying web sites that still don't work in anything other than Internet Explorer.

Re:I'm not talking about the parent necessarily

[ClosedSource]

Again, a minor issue.

It's just that some people can't admit that there are MS customers who are actually pretty satisfied. There always has to be some alternate explanation.

Re:I'm not talking about the parent necessarily

[koiransuklaa]

I don't see why you brought this up. I think my comments on this subject have been fairly rational and in line with each other. Why did you even start talking about people who won't see reality for what it is, unless you were implying I'm one of them?

Ill bet

[SnarfQuest]

I'll bet that one of those customers is that "slashdot" site I've heard about. I've heard they'll do anything for a freebie. What a bunch of MicroSoft fanboy's!

Re:Value of Software

[jabbathewocket]

Ehh thats whats wrong with this entire debate.. OMG is spreading FUD and trying to keep the good team down... When in actual point of fact, the linux side of this has ALWAYS used FUD, and played the classic role of "victim" in all of these arguments..

There is just one major problem with this view of the world of OS monopolies, its simply and utterly false.. If a shop had chosen linux 10 years ago, they would be JUST as locked in and forced to continue to use Linux as they are "forced" to continue to use MS products..

In short the lock in is because of scale, difficulty of switching from A to B for what is most likely negligible gain (or a net cost.. free software is most definitely NOT free in the real world of help desks, installs, and support) and other factors that are completely unrelated to WHICH platform your company is currently using.

IE linux community members tend to cry foul in the same way that opera software does.. which results in the sane folks of the world dismissing them as lunatic fringe, rather than trying to compete on merits, they try to play victim.. If the linux community would actually come together and stop trying to make a vanity distro every 60 secs, standardize a desktop, and actually pay some attention to the fact that regardless of which choice is the dominant one at the time, its the role of the "alternate' choice to work with the dominate choice.. not the other way around (in any and all business not just operating systems) then perhaps we wouldn't be sitting her crying about MS, and instead would be choosing the right tool for the job. Not trying to treat everything as a political game..

Re:Free?

[Anonymous Coward]

$on¥

Just see it for what it is...

[Anonymous Coward]

... which is a competitive curve ball against Red Hat. Period. Red Hat's profitable income is heavily concentrated in relatively few major volume accounts, served direct (not by resellers). So, all Microsoft are doing is cross funding Novell to try to take the average unit prices down significantly in those accounts, as part of a strategy to undermine Red Hat's business model in some way. If you follow the reporting line of the folks doing the joint selling, it maps back through MS Legal and Corporate Affairs. That said, it seems to generate more PR than pain to Red Hats business results. To date at least. Fascinating to watch.

Re:Free?

[StuartHankins]

Wait, you have the money to run Oracle and choose to use an unsupported OS? RHEL and Oracle's version of RHEL are both supported and don't cost much at all.

Re:Free?

[zepo1a]

less than free?

is that like, "None more black."

:)

Immoral

[microbox]

> What the heck is wrong with marketing? Doing scientific research into how to make children more effective naggers is plain immoral.

Re:Immoral

[Foredecker]

So Microbox - what do you do for a living? Do you work for a company? Are the marekting people there imoral?

My question is this : why the broad brush? Is it all marketing that you have qualms about?

opensuse.org = free beta

[Brigadier]

Isn't that what opensuse really is ? free beta testers. I've been running suse now since their 6.0 version (switched from redhat because they were the only ones that supported my g200 gfx card). I've always noticed that Dell Hardware (which we run) ran the 9.0 version while the 10.0 version of opensuse was available. One day I got smart figuring I would download the fully patched 9.0 version of suse being the cheap bastard that I am. Turns out it didn't exist on any mirrors anywhere.

Re:Try to keep up

[hmar]

"Nobody said marketing=lying"

Right. Nobody typed the exact equation "marketing=lying". But that's exactly what was implied.

Not really, by the original poster at least. What was "implied" by the quotation marks around "marketing" is that the practice described is not marketing. Later posters straight out said that marketing is lying and fraud. so no, no one really implied that marketing is the equivalent of lying.

What is going to happen in 2011?

[fritsd]

I wonder what's going to happen in 2011, when the Novell-Microsoft "agreement not to sue on the valuable Microsoft intellectual property" patent agreement runs out.
To be honest, I haven't the faintest idea what will happen to Novell's customers. If I screw my tin-foil hat on tighter, I'd guess that Microsoft would start to rumble about customers with Mono to have to pay royalties. After all, the agreement's duration was long enough for Mono to have caught on in mission-critical software, surely there's profit to be made there by next year.

Re:Free?

[Xugumad]

Fun with departmental vs team budgets. For 2 years my team had no hardware/software budget (or, more accurately, we did but we didn't have any way of accessing it), but we have a site license for Oracle so could run it at no cost to the team.

Once we did get a budget, it wasn't until Oracle keeled over that we went "Wait, we have a budget, why are we running unsupported OSes?"

Re:Value of Software

[drsmithy]

In any case saying that customers have a choice is bollocks. They had a choice ten years ago, and hopefully will again after five or ten years... Let's hope so.

10 years ago was nearly the height of Microsoft's "monopoly power", to say nothing of the relatively dismal quality of the alternatives. Probably the point of least "choice" in the last two decades.

documenting those deals on http://en.swpat.org

[H4x0r Jim Duggan]

    I've just started a wiki page to document the Novell-MS deals :

• Novell-Microsoft patent deals
• Novell
• Microsoft

    swpat.org is a publicly editable wiki, so if you'd like to contribute to building the case against software patents, dig in!

Re:Value of Software

[Gr8Apes]

In any case saying that customers have a choice is bollocks. They had a choice ten years ago, and hopefully will again after five or ten years... Let's hope so.

Customers do have choices. The integration/cross-system compatibility has been significantly enhanced for both Linux/BSD and Macs with Windows office formats recently (so they don't speak fluent docx, neither does several 100 million earlier copies of Office).

As for the IE trap - when you take a shortcut you can get burned. Rather than develop to webstandards, they drank the MS coolaid, took the shortcut, and are now hosed.

As for MS's "sparkling" Q4, the initial reports I've seen indicate that W7 sales are coming at the expense of XP and earlier installations. In other words, they're replacements, not growth, in a growing market.

Re:Try to keep up

[ClosedSource]

"Not really, by the original poster at least."

I never said the original poster said it. You said "nobody".

Re:Try to keep up

[ClosedSource]

Make that "He said".

Marketing? Kill Yourself!

[hicksw]

Bill Hicks was more concise.
--
It's a ride.

Re:Value of Software

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Yes. But not supported - as the word has meaning to CIO's.

You can call SuSE tech support, and have a seamless case hand-off to Microsoft on this support.

Useful comment?

[Futurepower(R)]

Foredecker,

This is a reply to several of your comments, not just this one. It seems that I have something to say that may or may not be useful in your thinking.

As you have seen, people are often very negative about Microsoft. They are also usually not very eloquent or organized in their thinking when they express their negativity.

There is, however, a strong foundation for their negativity. Microsoft top managers have in the past been extremely destructive toward Microsoft customers. For example, Microsoft top managers released Microsoft Vista even though they were told by middle managers that it was not ready.

It's not the coders that give Microsoft a bad reputation. It is the top managers.

Re:Useful comment?

[Foredecker]

Hi FuturePower,

I think that is a salient comment. One of the reasons Ive chosen to participate here on Slashdot is to be an apologist for Microsoft people specifically, and for the company to an extent.

Two things bug me the most

• When people just make stuff up about Microsoft. As a company, we certainly deserve criticism, but wow, some people sure make up some goofy stuff. I ask people to criticize all they like, just dont make stuff up.
• A certain class of people say really nasty personal things about people that work at Microsoft. This is really uncalled for and needs to be stood up to. These people are simply bullies. Its worse when they are anonymous. To those folks I say this.

IIm still learning about the best way to post here on Slashdot. But I hope Im having some positive effect. I think your comment above is a good result.

I cannot disagree that our senior execs have made some bad decisions. It happens. I also agree that we collectively stumbled in shipping Vista. It wasnt our best work. While you may not see it, there were many significant repercussions in the Windows organization due to this. Windows-7 was the result.

One thing I find interesting is they visceral dislike that many in the FOSS community have for Microsoft people and products. I can tell you this - it is not reciprocal at all, not even with our senior execs. Yes, Ballmer has made some famous quotes about the GPL, but notice hes talking about even this from a business perspective. I can honestly say that among Microsoft people there is very widespread respect for Linux, Apache, Perl, MySQL, and many other open source projects. Many softies also consider the idea of free and open software a noble purpose. I do.

Ill tell you another thing: We learn a lot from FOSS projects and the open source approach. While being open isnt the right thing for many of our products and businesses, it is for some and I think youll see more of this over time (I say this with no insider knowledge except for my projects). For example, Im a proponent of making the source of my next major project open. There is broad agreement and support to do so. It really is a no brainer.

What I find almost fascinating , is that the FOSS community doesnt seem to learn from Microsoft. [ pre-emptive snarky comment "We learn what not to do..." ]. We do a lot of things very, very well. Despite some obvious exceptions, our senior execs are very good. Ive worked at several big companies that were (and remain) very poorly run.

I suggest that if some people in the FOSS community spent as much energy focusing on delivering great products instead of focusing on beating Microsoft then they might be more successful. Microsoft is not in the list tiny little bit afraid of competition. We have lots of it. Personally, I think it makes us better. We compete by focusing on delivering great products that our customers like. While we pay attention to our competition, we dont spend a lot of time talking about how to beat it. Our strategy is to focus on what customers need first. Sometimes we screw up (like with Vista), but more often than not, we succeed.

In closing, I appreciate your comment and find much truth in it. I read your companys white paper /a>aand found it quite insightful.

Best Regardsbr /> --Foredecker