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Microsoft Announces W2K Pricing
sterno writes "Microsoft has just announced the price for licensing of Windows 2000. The price tag isn't obscene by Microsoft standards, but they have now added a clause that forces licensing of every user who accesses a web server via the web (assuming that security is turned on). Check out the details at News.com. " So, are they going to price themselves out of business or make billions of dollars?
It's much easier to replace a Unix with a Unix, but to replace a Windows with a Unix can be more complicated. Another example: At the company I work for, I've built a web-based service for our customers to receive software updates. Because all of their software runs through a Win32 interpereter program (and they all run Windows anyway) our server has to run on an NT system. I would love to rewrite the software as a Unix daemon, but it's just not a possibility.
I'm willing to bet that there are a lot more sob-stories like mine out there. So yes, Linux/xBSD is making inroads, but Windows isn't necessarily losing too much of it's ground. I guess time will tell though.
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
Sorry, Mike. You summarized things a bit too well:
"If I decide to put up mikenash.com and I want to sell T-Shirts with my picture on them, for something uninteresting like me five CALs is all I need since I probably won't have more than five people buying at one time," Nash predicted.
Probably, eh? And what if I do? What if, say, Slashdot links to the T-Shirt site I'm going to open up someday and--amazingly enough--I have some T-Shirt that's surprisingly popular. Far more than its been. Are you telling me that, while Apache-SSL would be more than happy to accept as many credit card orders as the server could possibly handle, Windows 2000 would tell my customers to go away because I didn't give Microsoft enough money?
Are you kidding me?
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
Now do the same with the number of people actually buying this stuff. How many licences of w2k data center do you think that MS will sell? probably a lot less than w2k workstation. Yet w2k datacenter contains a lot more functionality. Probably there's a lot of profit for MS (otherwise they wouldn't bother with the datacenter version) but still you have to consider the number of people buying the product (probably drops exponentially).
Jilles
Beginning with Windows 2000 a CAL is necessary for each individual requiring authentication, such as would be necessary for a secure online transaction.
That sounds as if any user accessing IIS as an authenticated NT user requires a CAL. No big deal, this isn't going to affect e-commerce sites or any large website that authenticates. Almost all use their own user database, not NT's user database.
This is just CNET blowing more smoke up everyone's ass.
-witz
Hee! My _god_ that's funny. And, seemingly, true. So I have a proposed slogan for us all to use...
;)
Linux: For When You Don't Want Your E-Commerce Site Telling Your Customers To Go Away
In three years you'll be giving it away.
In five years you won't even be able to give away a closed-source OS, except for niche/grandfathered hardware like mainframes (where you'll probably still be able to actually charge for it).
The crystal ball isn't so clear with respect to Win9x (presumably because it won't be Win9x at that time). My first guess is that you'll be giving it away in two years, perhaps in 18 months, in hopes of stemming mass desertions from the All-MS market. But that would make it hard to convince people to upgrade to NT (by that or any other name), wouldn't it? So maybe you'll have to phase out the 9x line (for real this time) just to get that third year's income out of NT.
After that, it's all over for Windows. Make those acquisitions wisely -- it'll be hard to go back to sacking groceries after being the world's richest man for so long.
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It's October 6th. Where's W2K? Over the horizon again, eh?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
According to the article, it's one license per authenticated user accessing your site simulatenously - and not one license per user who has ether bothered to authenticate themselves on your site.
It's not clear to me what they mean by authenticating, but they use the example of accepting online orders as requiring authentication... Anyway, for $2000 you can buy an "Internet Connector" which allows you to have unlimited simultaneous authenticated users.
$2k is chicken feed to most organisations, and considering only suckers pay RRP, you can be sure most places will get this at a substantial discount.
Pricing sounds pretty reasonably - certainly not enough to cause any concern to the large majority of businesses (ie, I don't expect anyone to jump to something other than a Microsoft product based on this pricing).
Ho hum.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong but NT Server has an unlimited number of TCP connections available where NT Workstation only has like 10. The user licenses aren't for port connection (ftp, http, stmp, ect.) but are for actual users that logon onto the server. Running a website using IIS or some such server wouldn't max out your user limit, unless you were having server logins through http. Remember M$ doesn't really distinguish between your LAN, the net, and your computer.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
at least that's what I got from this...
"If I decide to put up mikenash.com and I want to sell T-Shirts with my picture on them, for something uninteresting like me five CALs is all I need since I probably won't have more than five people buying at one time," Nash predicted.
He is a general manager at M$ so this seems solid. I'd like to get a look at the license since the Office2K EULA is so nasty. After 50 times starting the program and you HAVE to register.
I wonder if there will be more than 2 registry differences (other than price) between the workstation and server flavors this time. Regardless NT4 is working fine for us, I don't see an upgrade here for at least 2 years (and 3 service packs), and hopefully by then Linux will be ready to take over.
+&x
This is ridiculous.
/back/ licenses when your load is lower (for whatever reason...maybe you have streamlined your site or something)? Or can't you?
First of all, even IF they were correct in charging people for using built in services over the net, e.g. authentication, how would this work? Would one just guess the maximum load and buy that many licenses? How could you buy
As somebody else mentioned, this is really insidious because it cuts off all open-source/free/non-MS integration products. I want to say that again - This move cuts off third-party integration. That is very dangerous. MS has both the client AND server...once they cut out third party integration, they have an entire monopoly.
Also, why wouldn't one just choose NOT to use the built-in services. For instance, here at Cornell U., we use Kerberos pervasively. W2K, I believe, supports PAM (Pluggable Authentication (Module?)). Now, we COULD use the build in PAM functionality, but if we have to buy 30000 extra licenses for it why should we? That's just a feature we'll have to disregard and throw away, and come up with our own kludge or keep using our infrastructure as it is (which is pretty good anyway). This is so dumb. Everything is authenticated in our environment, so there isn't a distinction between "intranet" services and "internet" services. The services are services, and inside and outside use go through pretty much the same authentication and authorization process. I'm not sure how many of the other "features" we'd be using.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Let's not forget that Win2K includes some new public key crypto pieces, such as certificate management infrastructure. I'm betting that every cert required by IIS will be found in the system database, meaning that every connection using such a cert is going to need a license.
Now this doesn't mean that all e-commerce sites will need to pay through the nose. Most don't require client authentication - when you go to Amazon, you have a username and password, not a certificate. Which means you probably won't need a license for each order being processed concurrently.
However, there are plenty of other applications which could be hit by this. Most controlled access today is done through passwords, but it won't be long before it's all done with certificates, and it seems Microsoft is ready. What's worse is that Win2K pricing will be reasonable now, but in a few years when companies start taking the next step it'll sharply increase...
/* The beatings will continue until morale improves. */
Hrunting wisely observed: Some people are saying that this only counts authenticated NT users, but this statement would contradict that. They are squarely saying that if you're going to have multiple people connecting to your system, you're going to pay for it. This is similar to news outsourcing where a company pays for a number of concurrent connections. They don't pay for all their customers, just the ones they'll expect to be connected at once. Now come the interesting questions. What if you use Apache as your web server and someone tries to connect. Do you have to pay for it? Can you charge for connections to an operating system? This doesn't sound like a feasible pricing scheme to me unless Microsoft is going to implement some sort of connection limiting scheme in its software (highly unlikely, although, like I said, they have a twisted sense of humor).
Since IIS is a kernel service (!) connection limiting would be easy. OTOH, since the issue is license enforcement there's no reason that they couldn't set up a bot to interrogate sites now and then about their peak connection load. If it's over the wire, an invoice arrives. Don't pay the invoice, and thanks to some effective lobbying MICROS~1 now has the legal right to remotely shut the server down -- anyone want to bet that they didn't add the hooks to do it? They fought HARD for that clause, after all.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Sooo... Apache can handle 20 concurrent (authenticated) users for free... and according to MS you'll need to pay for the "Internet Connector" to get the same thing, except that it'll cost you about $2,000 to do it, NOT INCLUDING the cost of the server(s)!
I have the distinct impression small businesses and web-design shops are going to take the brunt of this new pricing scheme.
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I think he's referring to the requirement for CALS for authenticated users. It gets a bit pricey.
It costs 4K to license a server to support 25 users, which is not pocket change. The real kicker is for authenticated access to web sites. If the EULA is true to form, it won't even matter if you're running Apache or some other httpd software. If you read the current EULA, if you buy a five user NT server license, install Oracle on it for ten users, you're in violation.
If the pricing is like current pricing, a license for 50 users will cost you a bit under 4500. Presumably it will top out at some point so that anyone with a large e-commerce site would just pay a flat fee.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Now just to kick back and watch the stock price go up up up!
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
Again, a personal jibe when you know nothing about me. You're just being rude.
I only know you from the things you say. I know you read too much MS bull, in this case about release dates, and believe it.
Check out this article from June of 1998. It contains this paragraph:
Let's see, a timetable used in 1996 showed NT5 being out in late 1997. You're right, it's not 2 years late, it's more than 2 years late.
That's OK. The marketing guy who doesn't understand the value proposition with Linux/Unix won't be around much longer. Or, you can set a reliable Apache server up for the marketing guy at the next company when this one goes under because they have marketing guys with their heads in the sand.
So you just go to Control Panel and increase the number of connections allowed. Or you hack the registry. The point is, is this legal?
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
I don't know if it is. IANAL, but if you change the registry keys you are modifying the software, which might not be allowed under copyright law (even if you don't copy or distribute the resulting derived work). Using a highlighter in a book is more like adding extra information to the book; if you wanted to, you could write on a separate sheet of paper 'highlight the first paragraph of page 44'. If instead of using a separate sheet you actually write on the book's paper, that's just 'mere aggregation', as the GPL would say. The same would probably apply to making changes or corrections. But changing the Registry, you totally overwrite what was there before.
Maybe there is a legal difference between adding keys to the Registry (aggregation), and changing the value of keys which are part of the copyrighted Windows software (modification).
If I were a huge multinational using Microsoft software, I would certainly ask my legal department to check whether you could get away with this, and if they said yes, I'd be fairly sure that my company could withstand a lawsuit, frivolous or otherwise. But Microsoft could probably refuse to license software at a discounted price (have to buy it retail) or stop offering support contracts, so you wouldn't want to annoy them.
I don't know. Any copyright lawyers reading Slashdot?
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
No, I meant legally enforceable.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
If the suggested price for the home user is $219, what is the OEM price going to be, maybe $100+ for good customers (Gateway, Dell, Compaq)?
And how are these companies going to make money in the sub $1000 market when over 10 % of the wholesale cost is the OS?
I think MS might be pricing themselves a little high here, they're creating a real market opportunity for a cheaper home OS, be it Linux, FreeBSD or even BeOS.
George
...and as the gun slowly drops to the floor, and triggers shakes, and a bullet is shot into the foot...
Yes, there goes M$ shooting itself again. And while this is a puny cost to large corporations, a lot of local isp's and small web hosting companies won't go for this. In fact, apache in linux and/or freebsd is already the largest used server by small hosting companies. This will just make more look at it. Believe me, even though it's a small amount of money, realize that companies are constantly looking for ways to cut back costs, if NT5..errr...W2k is going to raise costs, they will look at alternatives, whether they switch or not, they'll look. It's exposure, it's the same thing Pepsi and Coke pay for on large billboards - and it's good for us. With this, M$ just nailed another nail into it's server-os coffin.
...and as a pool of blood slowly gathers on the floor, and falling down to the knees in agony...
Couldn't have said it better my self. As the price of maintaing the status quo goes up, the up-front cost of switching to an alternative goes down. :)
I love it. I just hope we see a whole lot more switching taking place. And I, for one, will do what I can to help that along. :)
Russ
War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. - George Orwell or George Bush?
How big a hole will it take to bury Microsoft, anyway?
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Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Never underestimate the amount of time that people are willing to dedicate to pirating software. I have faith that no matter what microsoft does, there will be *somebody*, *somewhere*, who will figure out how to pirate it so that all the w4r3z d00d2 can put it up on their FTP servers.
It seems like corporations have been fighting a losing battle against piracy ever since the days of the original King's Quest games. I understand why they do it, but I don't know what makes them think they'll actually get ahead this time.
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
Just out of curiosity, is the per-seat licensing model enforceable? I keep hearing people say that because copyright law covers copying, not use, you can do whatever you like with software you have purchased. OTOH there was a law passed in the US giving legal authority to 'licence manager' programs.
So if you bought a 5-seat licence for Win2k and used it with 6 simultaneous authenticated users, could Microsoft sue you, and what for? Is the situation different inside and outside the US?
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
If I decide to put up mikenash.com and I want to sell T-Shirts with my picture on them, for something uninteresting like me five CALs is all I need since I probably won't have more than five people buying at time," Nash predicted.
:)
Some people are saying that this only counts authenticated NT users, but this statement would that.
Well, Nash's keyword here is buying. Not browsing. Microsoft is charging for each secure (authenticated) connection. LIke when people hit the "purchase" button.
Microsoft is going to scare off customers.
I agree. There will be a lot of confusion regarding the licensing terms, especially if Microsoft's PR department doesn't play their cards right. There will be a lot of people who will mistakenly say that Microsoft is charging for everyone connected via a Web browser, when this is simply not the case. Hopefully it will scare enough people to seek an alternative (Linux and FreeBSD come to mind
My journal has hot
Do you have any idea what the staggering support cost will be of being on the upgrade treadmill from Linux?
Yes, but "staggering" isn't the right word.
Can you really afford to hire staffers whose whole job will be to scan Usenet posts and mailing lists to apply the latest security patches?
No, but having one sysadmin whose job includes checking his email every so often for Red Hat security updates, that's OK. And since he can remotely apply security patches to thousands of machines at once with one command, and can do so without rebooting any of them, the costs would be vastly lower than when a new MS Hotfix or Service Pack comes out.
Can you afford the downtime to apply the weekly kernel upgrade?
No, which is why it's good that upgrading the kernel weekly isn't necessary. Every six months or so should do it. Oh, yeah, and that "downtime" will be less than five minutes. Not a problem for your workstations, and you're already doing loadbalancing/failover on your critical servers in case of hardware failure, right? I've had Linux crash due to one kernel bug in the past three years, but I've had network & SCSI cards (and a hard drive) die on me and need replacement at about a part per year.
Do you still remember when they discovered that there was a millisecond timer in Windows 9x that wrapped after 49.5 days, crashing the machine hard? Do you remember how amusing it was that it took them 4 years to discover this, because nobody expected a Windows machine to stay up for a month anyways?
Can you afford the support costs of handholding every user who needs to change something?
Needs to change *what*? Some specific details, rather than cloudy fearmongering, would be useful.
Something root-level? They shouldn't be changing it anyway. The support costs of ssh'ing in to do something as root are far outweighed by the maintenance costs of fixing the whole damn Mac or Win9x box when some luser deletes the wrong file, installs broken software overwriting system DLLs, or just does something stupid that the OS shouldn't have given him priviledges to do.
Something user-level? How much time do your employees spend playing with their window manger anyway, and why are they incapable of figuring out how to do it themselves?
When a power outage hits, can you afford the cost of recovering each desktop machine's fragile ext2fs, a decent percentage of which WILL be permanently corrupted by the sudden power outage?
Options:
1. Use a UPS. Duh.
2. Use a journaling filesystem. Journaling ext2fs is in beta now, with no killer bugs I've seen. In 6 months it'll be in the default kernel.
3. Trust ext2fs. I've seen a dozen machines survive dozens of power outages, inadvertantly hit reset buttons, pulled plugs, and similar gaffes. I lost files that hadn't been written to disk once (but even a journaling filesystem won't save buffered data), but I've only seen one partition that wasn't recovered by running fsck. Is NTFS really that much better? Nope.
4. Don't store important files on the local machine. You can seamlessly mount all your home directories over NFS or CODA, so why have anything in need of saving on your workstations at all? If a workstation dies, throw on a new disk image copy, change the hostname, and you're set.
These are meant as constructive questions for any IS organization seriously contemplating a major Linux rollout to consider.
These are questions with simple answers, obvious for anyone who has administered Linux (or any Unix, really) for more than a couple months. I should hope anyone contemplating a major Linux rollout has given it more in depth thought than you have.
Clue: they've already started thinking about this stuff.
Clue: They're not omniscient. People go with what they're comfortable with, not what makes the most sense. We've got PC kiosks in the Rice University library with a $200 NT license a piece, to *run a continuous telnet session in a window*. Why not use Win95? Because fixing it when someone maliciously or inadvertently broke it is too messy. Why not use Linux? Because "nobody gets fired for buying Microsoft". People are afraid of change, and will waste money on ludicrous decisions to avoid it.
This is important to figure out, because a dollar to a penny, Microsoft knows what they mean, and aren't just making up verbiage for the fun of it.
Another thought - maybe this is a Microsoft marketing trick. By ensuring that people NEVER run their computer up to maximum load, it'll never be possible to expose weaknesses in the design, or stress-test the system.
(Yes, this is still true for large companies with large numbers of customers. They'd have a proportionately more powerful server, which would STILL be rate-capped well below it's maximum load.)
No, it won't "affect" big business, and yes, they will have a "more stable" server, simply because they'll manipulated into setting it up that way. This won't help Linux or *BSD, unless companies insist on quality control. With QC, you can be sure that Linux and *BSD will come out better than W2K on enough platforms to seriously make a dent in Microsoft's sales. But, as I said, that depends on companies bothering with QC. No QC, no Linux.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
When Slashdot started, it was pretty much a given that everyone had no use for Microsoft's rubbish, apart from playing games (I don't even use it for that). So, there were no real flamewars. For some reason, even Linux, BSD and Solaris users were able to get along all right at that time (for the most part).
Now, astroturfers and Bill Gates fanboys routinely whine about anti-MS bias. Get over it! You wanna read pro-MS stuff? Go to ZDNet.
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NT is notorious for acquiring mysterious problems that invoke downtime and long, tedious sessions of trying to figure out what the proper chant is that will make the problem go away.
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Honestly? Charging for CAL's for web based traffic is just insane. If i read the article right that is. One company I worked for in the past hated per connection licenses on HPUX. Especially when a certain UNIDATA product would create a new tty for each process it ran. We had plenty of licenses for the users we had but the app was taking up the connections. People dont want to pay for connection fees for thier server products. Maybe I'm spoiled after running bsd/linux for so long ;)
"We hope you find fun and laughter in the new millenium" - Top half of fastfood gamepiece
"Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
Customers confused about the previous pricing plan precipitated the change, said Mike Nash, a general manager for Windows 2000. "We found many customers were buying CALs when they didn't need them and still others weren't buying them when they did need them."
I think we can all see why this statement shows that Microsoft at least has a twisted sense of humor. Now, on to more serious things.
"If I decide to put up mikenash.com and I want to sell T-Shirts with my picture on them, for something uninteresting like me five CALs is all I need since I probably won't have more than five people buying at one time," Nash predicted.
Some people are saying that this only counts authenticated NT users, but this statement would contradict that. They are squarely saying that if you're going to have multiple people connecting to your system, you're going to pay for it. This is similar to news outsourcing where a company pays for a number of concurrent connections. They don't pay for all their customers, just the ones they'll expect to be connected at once. Now come the interesting questions. What if you use Apache as your web server and someone tries to connect. Do you have to pay for it? Can you charge for connections to an operating system? This doesn't sound like a feasible pricing scheme to me unless Microsoft is going to implement some sort of connection limiting scheme in its software (highly unlikely, although, like I said, they have a twisted sense of humor).
Microsoft is going to scare off customers. Either people are going to switch away from MS altogether or they're simply not going to upgrade (more likely). If MS's pricing scheme was iffy before, this one is even more so because it's not based on any real concrete numbers. HTTP connections fluctuate and who's to say that at any given moment you're not going to exceed that limit. Customers are not, under any circumstances, going to pay for connections that, theoretically, they will probably never use. Buying NT for a number of in-house stations is one thing. Buying it for people to buy stuff from is yet another.
The operating system should be scalable, not the pricing scheme.
From ZDNet: On the server side of the house, Microsoft is claiming it will charge half of the estimated street price that Novell Inc. charges for 10-user configurations. For Windows 2000 Server, a 10-user version will cost $1,199 and a 25-user SKU will run $1,799. Upgrading from older versions of NT or from Novell NetWare will cost $599 or $899, for 10- and 25-user versions, respectively.
Makes me wonder how Novell is going to survive this. They're selling a file+print system for twice the price of a full application server. Is NDS worth twice the price of AD? Perhaps -- but if AD works and is 'good enough', it's going to be compelling for shops that haven't implemented a global directory scheme.
The other point is that Microsoft obviously sees no real threat that Linux is going to steal their bread and butter file&print market. If they did, they would be more aggressive with 'unlimited connections' pricing schemes
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
This has already been done at least once, to my knowledge: iASP.
There is also a tool to convert your ASP to PHP.
Your you can ditch your "you got your code in my HTML" model entirely, which most people figure out eventually.
In my experience, most people don't buy NT to use ASP. They use ASP becuase they have NT already installed and ASP is the easiest option on that platform.
Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
Let me clarify that a bit: Who in their right mind would use NT?
I mean, you're trying to apply rational decisions to people who are using something (NT) that they would not be using if they were thinking rationally.
So, yes, it seems quite possible that the kind of people who would use NT as a web server platform may well be using NT authentication. IIS/MS-SQL kind of steers you that way, too. The real question is whether this licensing applies anyhow, even if you're not using NT authentication (i.e., if you're using another auth scheme), which is not entirely clear. Or what if you're authenticating from another Microsoft-based source (i.e., from a table in SQL Server)?
Oh, and FYI, NT can take 24 hours or more to CHKDSK a large NTFS drive, under certain circumstances (I personally saw a 1.5 hour CHKDSK on a 4 MB partition).
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Microsoft cannot enforce this pricing model unless they move the entire web server market off of UNIX and onto Win2K. The only way they'll succeed in this strategy is to now leverage their superior IE browser market share to force a new proprietary XML based web standard down everyone's throat which would slough off HTTP/DHTTP and SSL for Office 2000/Frontpage content generation, IIS data transport, and SQL-Server for data warehousing along with the dependancy on IE for content presentation. If all these are tied into a single product line in interlocking dependencies, and this is used to present a web based front-end only available to Windows users, we will see if Microsoft can wrench Internet standards away from the standards bodies to force their monopoly from clients up to servers.
Otherwise, forget it. These prices represent a huge capital outlay for any organization, forget the whole "Total Cost of Ownership" argument, anyone in their right mind can see how expensive this will get for even a small 25 workstation office, never mind a 5000 client enterprise. At the lowest end of the "Open Level B license", for example, that represents about one quarter to one fifth the cost of an Admin... and Microsoft wants that money upfront as a capital outlay, employees take their money across the year in salery. In the face of Linux and FreeBSD competition, this just doesn't fly.
So, just how do they plan to actually make money with this pricing model, given that they're going to have to wrench the HTTP protocol out of the hands of the standards bodies, while at the same time the DOJ is breathing down their neck, and the rest of the world (see Korea and Japan) seem to be walking away from a Microsoft centric PC world?
This seems almost a desperate price raising strategy to maintain share value... yet it's ludicrus given obviously cheaper alternatives from even Sun. Let's face it, Sun charges excessive prices for hardware, not software. And they actually deliver reliability in the process... what does Microsoft have to offer in contrast?
Now we we be able to add, "50x Too Many Users / Not Enough Licenses." To the wonderful, "404 Not Found," messages. Yeah Microsoft!
At least people could still install Apache!
-AP
You're right, it doesn't add up to a lot on $2500 systems, but in the sub$500 market, it's a huge chunk of machine cost. This is a place where Linux (or a BSD) could fit ideally. Systems where the only applications that an end-user will need are Web-browsing and Word processing. Here, Linux is just as good, if not better, than windows; It's cheaper, it's more stable, and the apps are already there.
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
I seriously can't tell by your post if you're humorous, stupid or sarcastic? :)
"Maybe it says something about how competitive the OS market is?"
Drop it. There has been no real competition out there for years and years. Only now has Linux come forward as a completely free alternative. Says something about the market that the only reasonable competition Microsoft has is free. Go figure on that one.
And no matter how expensive the OS is, consumers will likely not notice. Maybe they'll think that Dell and Gateway have dropped their lowest-end configurations. Maybe the companies will use the system requirements of W2K to boost the complement of RAM, add faster CPU's etc, in order to get their average selling prices back up. Consumers will get more for their money, but they'll have to spend more of their money as well. And not one will think it's because of the brand new OS on their computer that caused the chain of events.
Regardless, this is Microsofts attempt to gauge the market. They have so much clout that OEM's wont really have a choice. They can slide Dell W2K licenses for the same cost as they paid for Win9x. Then the other OEM's will want W2K to have feature parity with Dell's systems, and Microsoft offer slight discounts if the OEM's stop installing Win9x on machines. After a while, Microsoft can raise it's price back above it's introductory price at the same moment it discontinues Win9x for once and for all.
Conspiracy? Paranoid? We'll see.
This would be a Bad Idea anyways. Anyone who designs a system to allow outside Internet users to authenticate against some sort of internal user database is asking for trouble. Even the Apache docs chastise you for even thinking about using /etc/passwd as a source for *web* authentication. My guess is that they are talking about Intranet users connecting to some sort of authenticating Intranet web system.
t h
Why is this (outside authentication) bad? Anyone anywhere in the world can just hammer on your system trying to brute force common passwords.
Ref: http://www.apache.org/docs/misc/FAQ.html#passwdau
æeee!
I guess the only thing left to charge us for is to speak the name of their products. Maybe we will require a CAL to acces the web server and a CSL (client speech license) to speak of it. Think of it, each aritcle on /. will then be generating revenue for the financially struggling M$. If we refuse to pay the dues, we are hauled off to court for violating their license agreement. I think it's time to look harder at Solaris. Let's see now, it's cheaper, faster, more reliable, more open, more scalable, and runs on at two platforms (which is no longer true of NT).