Nothing would fuel a shift towards OpenOffice faster than Microsoft charging for their software "per use." The fact of the matter is that Microsoft is already squeezing their customers as much as they can afford to. Any scheme that would raise revenues by raising prices will simply drive Microsoft's customers away.
Re:Used Equipment + OSS = Cost Savings
on
Largo Loving Linux
·
· Score: 2
I am sorry, my post really was confusing. I have found that when making thin-clients out of PCs that it can be handy to actually make use of the local hard drive.
Yes, I know this is cheating, but it does make it easier to use mix-and-match hardware as X terminals. It's a little easier on the network as well.
So that's the mystery of imaging my thin clients with software.
I am no gunslinger. I certainly don't carry a firearm, and I don't own a handgun (I do own firearms, just not any handguns). However, I do believe that the fact that the fact that some of my neighbors are armed makes the bad guys pause. Criminals don't want to be dead any more than the rest of us.
I also reserve the right to be able to protect my own family. If someone did break into my house I don't want to have to wait for the police arrive to defend my family. Pulling a gun may make me a priority target, but I would much rather that I was the target than my wife or children. If someone wants to enter my house and do harm to my family then they had better be prepared to kill me first.
Finally, I believe that citizens have the right to bear arms to protect themselves from the government. This is a bit of an unpopular view in a time when many people look to the government to solve all of their problems, but I feel that it is historically prudent. There are plenty of examples even in recent history where a government (even a democratic government) has oppressed its own citizenry (Nazi Germany being the prime example). In short, I believe that the founders knew what they were talking about when they guaranteed our right to bear arms.
Which simply means that if you plan on protecting yourself from firearm-wielding assailants then you had better plan on being armed with a firearm.
You see, you aren't going to be able to get rid of firearms. That particular Pandora's box is wide open. Not only are there millions of firearms that you would need to dispose of, but firearms are relatively easy to make. In short, criminals will always have firearms available to them. So when you start talking about banning firearms all you are really saying is that you plan on making it impossible for people to legally own firearms. Not only would that not cut down on the violence, but it would very likely make things more dangerous as then criminals would be assured that they would be the only people armed.
If you really believe that firearms are the problem I suggest putting a large sign out in front of your house saying:
This house is a gun-free zone
and seeing what kind of a response you get.
Re:Used Equipment + OSS = Cost Savings
on
Largo Loving Linux
·
· Score: 2
No, my solution was no more "cobbled together" than any other PC based solution I have ever heard of. Just like any large PC rollout you would have a very small number of "supported" platforms. In fact, you would probably only have one supported platform. In the case of Largo, FL the supported platform would almost certainly be the NCD X terminal. Worse comes to worse a new desktop would cost you $750 for a brand new terminal plus $170 for the monitor. The difference is that now you can also search for bargain basement prices. Purchasing used PCs is a recipe for disaster for most IT shops, purchasing used X terminals, on the other hand, is something else entirely.
Now, let's say that you went the PC route. This is somewhat more difficult, as you would have to either purchase from a vendor that could offer you the same make/model for an extended period of time, or you would have to purchase enough units so that you could handle replacements yourself. The important thing to note is that this is no different than what you would have to do if you were putting Windows fat clients on people's desktops. Any added costs that you incur would be costs that you would have incurred either way. The difference is that thin clients don't require a state-of-the-art machine. A $200 SunRay or even the $200 Wal-Mart Linux box would be fine.
If, after a year, you don't like your previous choice, you can always switch. The difference is that upgrading your software no longer requires client hardware upgrades. Think of the expense that was required last time your PC clients needed new software upgrades. Invariably this means throwing out tons of perfectly good hardware. In a thin client environment you simply upgrade the server and you are finished.
Once again, just because X Windows gives you a lot of choices does not mean that it is unmanageable.
Re:Used Equipment + OSS = Cost Savings
on
Largo Loving Linux
·
· Score: 2
Yes, but as long as you are dealing with open protocols like X Windows there is little to fear. Largo could replace their NCD X terminals today with Wal-Mart Linux PCs, or reconditioned PCs available on the used market, and things would "just work." Any hardware newer than a 486 with color output should make a perfectly useable X terminal.
In other words, there is basically no risk in basing your network around X Windows. There are plenty of X Terminal suppliers, and even if all of these suppliers dried up tomorrow it is still a trivial exercise to roll your own. Making X terminals from PCs is certainly much easier than rolling out full Windows installs.
Re:Used Equipment + OSS = Cost Savings
on
Largo Loving Linux
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
So you simply use a different thin client. Personally I would probably opt for something PC based anyhow. The Wal-Mart Linux PCs can be had cheaply enough that you wouldn't feel bad throwing them away, and they would be easy to image with software from the Linux Terminal Server Project. This type of a setup requires a little more work than simply buying X terminals, but the availability of PC hardware is not likely to decrease anytime soon, and you can probably reuse existing PC hardware.
The beauty of thin clients isn't the fact that you can use cheap hardware (though that certainly helps). The beauty of thin clients stems from the fact that you don't ever have to troubleshoot individual PCs. All software can be managed centrally, and failed terminals can be replaced by a monkey.
If Palladium doesn't fly (and personally I don't think it will), then Microsoft is screwed. Microsoft has 99% of a market that is done growing, it has an 85% profit margin on its most popular products, and it's stock price is still configured for a very hefty growth rate.
Quite frankly, it ain't gonna happen without Palladium.
Even if Microsoft maintains its current revenues eventually Wall Street is going to want to lower their price to earnings ratio. Microsoft stock will drop to one fourth its current price and billions of dollars of value will go up in smoke. If you think that the $40 billion Microsoft has in the bank is a big deal, you should take a look at the cash value of Bill Gate's share of Microsoft stock. Microsoft has to grow, and selling an operating system and an office suite simply isn't going to get them there. Being the middle man in every entertainment transaction just might.
And that's not even taking into consideration the fact that OpenOffice and Linux are undercutting the value of Microsoft's current cash cows. Microsoft isn't going to back down on Palladium, they can't afford to.
Apparently that's the case. WalMart is happy enough with their sales volume on these machines that it actually made the news. Heck, for all we know Linuxers are buying these things to act as X Terminals.
The fact of the matter is that people tend to try and pay as little for what they get as possible. Wal-Mart has literally made a business out of selling inexpensive goods that are just barely "good enough." What this means is that you can completely forget about the margins on PC hardware ever going up. Once Wal-Mart gets into the game margins go from thin to non-existant and stay there.
There was a/. article on the subject not too long ago (which I couldn't find), but I did find a couple of links that should prove interesting.
Here is one that pegs the white box PC market at 30% market share. Dell had the largest market share (as estimated by the same group during the same period) at 17.1%.
Well said. Here on/. we tend to think that HP competes with Dell and Gateway in the PC business, but the fact of the matter is that most PCs are white-box specials built by some guy in his garage.
HP simply is trying to cut the little guys out of the picture.
No, he said that if he only updated the kernel a pile of things would break. Which is true if you are using a distribution that forces you to keep track of the dependencies yourself.
Exactly, anyone who believes that Windows is easier to administer than Linux either A) has not used a version of Linux since Slackware 96, or B) does not really secure their Windows boxes.
Windows still makes sense on the desktop for most folks, but for commodity infrastructure tasks like web serving, file and print, DNS, database hosting, etc., Linux really is hard to beat.
RedHat 4.2 was the last version of RedHat that I ran in production, for exactly this reason. You see, once you install Debian you can upgrade everything on the fly, and it keeps track of the dependencies for you. So if you upgrade your kernel, Debian makes sure that you end up with upgrades of all of the software that depends on the newer kernel.
Debian's install is somewhat painful, but it's not so bad once you have done it a half dozen times, and once a machine has Debian installed you never have to worry about re-installs.
Yes, and the IDC report was sponsored by Microsoft. I am pretty sure that they have a vested interest in showing that Windows has a lower TCO than Linux.
Both the Free Software developer and the commercial software developer have the same basic goal. They want to create an application that end users like and use. Ask any Free Software developer and they will tell you that they would be thrilled if their application became "mainstream."
The problem has been that when most people say "mainstream" computer application what they are really talking about is a "desktop" computer application. Apache doesn't count, Zope doesn't count, and PostgreSQL definitely doesn't count. Now Free Software has come a long way towards providing desktop applications in the last year or so. Mozilla is great, Evolution rocks, and OpenOffice has finally gotten to the point where it is a credible replacement for commercial software. The gains these applications have made is especially amazing considering the fact that Free Software hackers have only had a suitable Free Software GUI toolkit for a couple of years. In fact, the desktop components available to Free Software hackers are, in many cases, still being actively developed.
The reason that Free Software has a bad rap for being difficult to use is that most of the Free Software in heavy use today is designed for developers. This problem has far more to do with bootstrapping the Free Software effort than it has to do with developers wanting hard-to-use software. In order to build desktop software the first thing you need are development tools, and development tools are more complicated than a spreadsheet. The Free Software desktop tools that are currently available aren't any harder to use than their commercial counterparts--except in those cases where the underlying infrastructure to make things easy doesn't exist in Free Software (printing, for example). Mozilla isn't harder to use than Internet Explorer, and Evolution isn't harder to use than Outlook, and OpenOffice works almost exactly like MS Office.
With time Free Software is going to have a similar impact on the desktop marketplace to the impact it is currently having on the server marketplace. Five years ago pundits laughed at Linux's prospects in the server room, but they aren't laughing now. Right now pundits are laughing at Linux's chances on the desktop, but the early adopters are already moving in that direction.
Microsoft could bury Palm and Symbian, and if they were determined enough they could even guarantee that no one would ever touch Linux again. They have the money, the technology, and the content deals that would make not choosing their software the kiss of death. They could make WinCE so desirable that manufacturers would be begging to use it.
But they aren't going to, and the reason is simple. When it comes to consumer electronics price per unit is king, and Microsoft simply isn't interested in competing in a market that doesn't have a double digit profit margin. And who would blame them. If you had the choice between investing in a business that had an 85% profit margin and years of outrageously high returns and one that had a 5% profit margin you would concentrate on the market with the higher profit margin too.
So Microsoft dabbles just enough in these ancillary markets to guarantee that they don't completely miss the boat, but they are in no hurry to develop something that might compete with the PC. Unless, of course, they can make the sort of profit margins they are accustomed to.
Microsoft is desperate for new markets. Their stock price still reflects high expectations of growth, and the PC market is simply not going to provide that growth. However, Microsoft can't afford to enter new markets where there is fierce competition. It does them no good to win a market if the profit margin for their software drops too low.
Microsoft's real problem is that they are starting to compete with software developers that are willing to accept far lower profit margins, and outside the entrenched market created by Windows Microsoft is going to have real problems overcoming this problem.
The third alternative, of course, is that people will simply give up on AOL-TW information altogether and start getting their news from someone else. Frankly I think that this is much more likely than a mass migration back to print subscriptions or towards new AOL subscriptions.
The problem with selling content over the Internet is that the barrier to entry is so low that there will always be folks that are happy to undercut your prices.
Microsoft doesn't have to do anything so sneaky. You see, Microsoft isn't really competing against OpenOffice, they are actually competing against old versions of their own software. Microsoft would love to make the XML format the default format in Office 11, but they know that if they do that their corporate users will freak out. Microsoft nearly had a revolt on their hands when they switched the Office formats in Office 97. All of a sudden people couldn't open the MS Office documents they received via email.
On the other hand, it did drive a lot of MS Office upgrades.
If I'm dead what do I care if the backups are unavailable until after probate. At that point I am pretty sure that backups fall into the "Somebody Else's Problem" category.
I sell products and services based on Free Software that compete with Microsoft's products and services. Anything that shows that my services are becoming more competitive makes me happy. When GNU/Linux is even considered as a Microsoft replacement by someone like the government of Japan it makes it easier for me to sell Free Software solutions to my customers. Basically this type of stuff is free advertising of the very best kind.
While there certainly are enough people here at/. that hate Microsoft for one reason or another, I do not fall in that category. I have never said that Microsoft was a monopoly (they certainly are the 800 lb. Gorilla of software, however), and I personally am glad that Microsoft survived their DOJ trial without setting a precedent of government involvement in the software sector. Government has no business telling software companies what software they can bundle with their product.
Microsoft has got the world to lose. If Free Software gets passed over this time, then it simply waits until the next round of upgrades. Three years from now when [insert country here] takes a look at upgrades GNU/Linux will still be there, and it will be better than ever (and still just as Free).
With all of the countries taking a serious look at Linux it is bound to make some progress. More importantly, Free Software keeps Microsoft honest. All of a sudden they aren't the only game in town. If they push their luck too hard then folks will switch. This gives people the leverage they need to actually negotiate with Microsoft.
Labor is cheap in India, especially compared to software licenses. Not to mention the fact that the government gets to tax Indian wages, where money send to Redmond is gone from India's economy.
Besides, at least here in the States, Linux admins don't make more than Windows admins. The studies I have seen show that the pay is quite comparable.
Slashdot Mirror
Nothing would fuel a shift towards OpenOffice faster than Microsoft charging for their software "per use." The fact of the matter is that Microsoft is already squeezing their customers as much as they can afford to. Any scheme that would raise revenues by raising prices will simply drive Microsoft's customers away.
I am sorry, my post really was confusing. I have found that when making thin-clients out of PCs that it can be handy to actually make use of the local hard drive.
Yes, I know this is cheating, but it does make it easier to use mix-and-match hardware as X terminals. It's a little easier on the network as well.
So that's the mystery of imaging my thin clients with software.
I am no gunslinger. I certainly don't carry a firearm, and I don't own a handgun (I do own firearms, just not any handguns). However, I do believe that the fact that the fact that some of my neighbors are armed makes the bad guys pause. Criminals don't want to be dead any more than the rest of us.
I also reserve the right to be able to protect my own family. If someone did break into my house I don't want to have to wait for the police arrive to defend my family. Pulling a gun may make me a priority target, but I would much rather that I was the target than my wife or children. If someone wants to enter my house and do harm to my family then they had better be prepared to kill me first.
Finally, I believe that citizens have the right to bear arms to protect themselves from the government. This is a bit of an unpopular view in a time when many people look to the government to solve all of their problems, but I feel that it is historically prudent. There are plenty of examples even in recent history where a government (even a democratic government) has oppressed its own citizenry (Nazi Germany being the prime example). In short, I believe that the founders knew what they were talking about when they guaranteed our right to bear arms.
Which simply means that if you plan on protecting yourself from firearm-wielding assailants then you had better plan on being armed with a firearm.
You see, you aren't going to be able to get rid of firearms. That particular Pandora's box is wide open. Not only are there millions of firearms that you would need to dispose of, but firearms are relatively easy to make. In short, criminals will always have firearms available to them. So when you start talking about banning firearms all you are really saying is that you plan on making it impossible for people to legally own firearms. Not only would that not cut down on the violence, but it would very likely make things more dangerous as then criminals would be assured that they would be the only people armed.
If you really believe that firearms are the problem I suggest putting a large sign out in front of your house saying:
This house is a gun-free zone
and seeing what kind of a response you get.
No, my solution was no more "cobbled together" than any other PC based solution I have ever heard of. Just like any large PC rollout you would have a very small number of "supported" platforms. In fact, you would probably only have one supported platform. In the case of Largo, FL the supported platform would almost certainly be the NCD X terminal. Worse comes to worse a new desktop would cost you $750 for a brand new terminal plus $170 for the monitor. The difference is that now you can also search for bargain basement prices. Purchasing used PCs is a recipe for disaster for most IT shops, purchasing used X terminals, on the other hand, is something else entirely.
Now, let's say that you went the PC route. This is somewhat more difficult, as you would have to either purchase from a vendor that could offer you the same make/model for an extended period of time, or you would have to purchase enough units so that you could handle replacements yourself. The important thing to note is that this is no different than what you would have to do if you were putting Windows fat clients on people's desktops. Any added costs that you incur would be costs that you would have incurred either way. The difference is that thin clients don't require a state-of-the-art machine. A $200 SunRay or even the $200 Wal-Mart Linux box would be fine.
If, after a year, you don't like your previous choice, you can always switch. The difference is that upgrading your software no longer requires client hardware upgrades. Think of the expense that was required last time your PC clients needed new software upgrades. Invariably this means throwing out tons of perfectly good hardware. In a thin client environment you simply upgrade the server and you are finished.
Once again, just because X Windows gives you a lot of choices does not mean that it is unmanageable.
Yes, but as long as you are dealing with open protocols like X Windows there is little to fear. Largo could replace their NCD X terminals today with Wal-Mart Linux PCs, or reconditioned PCs available on the used market, and things would "just work." Any hardware newer than a 486 with color output should make a perfectly useable X terminal.
In other words, there is basically no risk in basing your network around X Windows. There are plenty of X Terminal suppliers, and even if all of these suppliers dried up tomorrow it is still a trivial exercise to roll your own. Making X terminals from PCs is certainly much easier than rolling out full Windows installs.
So you simply use a different thin client. Personally I would probably opt for something PC based anyhow. The Wal-Mart Linux PCs can be had cheaply enough that you wouldn't feel bad throwing them away, and they would be easy to image with software from the Linux Terminal Server Project. This type of a setup requires a little more work than simply buying X terminals, but the availability of PC hardware is not likely to decrease anytime soon, and you can probably reuse existing PC hardware.
The beauty of thin clients isn't the fact that you can use cheap hardware (though that certainly helps). The beauty of thin clients stems from the fact that you don't ever have to troubleshoot individual PCs. All software can be managed centrally, and failed terminals can be replaced by a monkey.
If Palladium doesn't fly (and personally I don't think it will), then Microsoft is screwed. Microsoft has 99% of a market that is done growing, it has an 85% profit margin on its most popular products, and it's stock price is still configured for a very hefty growth rate.
Quite frankly, it ain't gonna happen without Palladium.
Even if Microsoft maintains its current revenues eventually Wall Street is going to want to lower their price to earnings ratio. Microsoft stock will drop to one fourth its current price and billions of dollars of value will go up in smoke. If you think that the $40 billion Microsoft has in the bank is a big deal, you should take a look at the cash value of Bill Gate's share of Microsoft stock. Microsoft has to grow, and selling an operating system and an office suite simply isn't going to get them there. Being the middle man in every entertainment transaction just might.
And that's not even taking into consideration the fact that OpenOffice and Linux are undercutting the value of Microsoft's current cash cows. Microsoft isn't going to back down on Palladium, they can't afford to.
Apparently that's the case. WalMart is happy enough with their sales volume on these machines that it actually made the news. Heck, for all we know Linuxers are buying these things to act as X Terminals.
The fact of the matter is that people tend to try and pay as little for what they get as possible. Wal-Mart has literally made a business out of selling inexpensive goods that are just barely "good enough." What this means is that you can completely forget about the margins on PC hardware ever going up. Once Wal-Mart gets into the game margins go from thin to non-existant and stay there.
There was a /. article on the subject not too long ago (which I couldn't find), but I did find a couple of links that should prove interesting.
Here is one that pegs the white box PC market at 30% market share. Dell had the largest market share (as estimated by the same group during the same period) at 17.1%.
Hope this is helpful.
Well said. Here on /. we tend to think that HP competes with Dell and Gateway in the PC business, but the fact of the matter is that most PCs are white-box specials built by some guy in his garage.
HP simply is trying to cut the little guys out of the picture.
Unless it is cheaper there's hardly any point.
No, he said that if he only updated the kernel a pile of things would break. Which is true if you are using a distribution that forces you to keep track of the dependencies yourself.
Exactly, anyone who believes that Windows is easier to administer than Linux either A) has not used a version of Linux since Slackware 96, or B) does not really secure their Windows boxes.
Windows still makes sense on the desktop for most folks, but for commodity infrastructure tasks like web serving, file and print, DNS, database hosting, etc., Linux really is hard to beat.
RedHat 4.2 was the last version of RedHat that I ran in production, for exactly this reason. You see, once you install Debian you can upgrade everything on the fly, and it keeps track of the dependencies for you. So if you upgrade your kernel, Debian makes sure that you end up with upgrades of all of the software that depends on the newer kernel.
Debian's install is somewhat painful, but it's not so bad once you have done it a half dozen times, and once a machine has Debian installed you never have to worry about re-installs.
Yes, and the IDC report was sponsored by Microsoft. I am pretty sure that they have a vested interest in showing that Windows has a lower TCO than Linux.
Both the Free Software developer and the commercial software developer have the same basic goal. They want to create an application that end users like and use. Ask any Free Software developer and they will tell you that they would be thrilled if their application became "mainstream."
The problem has been that when most people say "mainstream" computer application what they are really talking about is a "desktop" computer application. Apache doesn't count, Zope doesn't count, and PostgreSQL definitely doesn't count. Now Free Software has come a long way towards providing desktop applications in the last year or so. Mozilla is great, Evolution rocks, and OpenOffice has finally gotten to the point where it is a credible replacement for commercial software. The gains these applications have made is especially amazing considering the fact that Free Software hackers have only had a suitable Free Software GUI toolkit for a couple of years. In fact, the desktop components available to Free Software hackers are, in many cases, still being actively developed.
The reason that Free Software has a bad rap for being difficult to use is that most of the Free Software in heavy use today is designed for developers. This problem has far more to do with bootstrapping the Free Software effort than it has to do with developers wanting hard-to-use software. In order to build desktop software the first thing you need are development tools, and development tools are more complicated than a spreadsheet. The Free Software desktop tools that are currently available aren't any harder to use than their commercial counterparts--except in those cases where the underlying infrastructure to make things easy doesn't exist in Free Software (printing, for example). Mozilla isn't harder to use than Internet Explorer, and Evolution isn't harder to use than Outlook, and OpenOffice works almost exactly like MS Office.
With time Free Software is going to have a similar impact on the desktop marketplace to the impact it is currently having on the server marketplace. Five years ago pundits laughed at Linux's prospects in the server room, but they aren't laughing now. Right now pundits are laughing at Linux's chances on the desktop, but the early adopters are already moving in that direction.
Microsoft could bury Palm and Symbian, and if they were determined enough they could even guarantee that no one would ever touch Linux again. They have the money, the technology, and the content deals that would make not choosing their software the kiss of death. They could make WinCE so desirable that manufacturers would be begging to use it.
But they aren't going to, and the reason is simple. When it comes to consumer electronics price per unit is king, and Microsoft simply isn't interested in competing in a market that doesn't have a double digit profit margin. And who would blame them. If you had the choice between investing in a business that had an 85% profit margin and years of outrageously high returns and one that had a 5% profit margin you would concentrate on the market with the higher profit margin too.
So Microsoft dabbles just enough in these ancillary markets to guarantee that they don't completely miss the boat, but they are in no hurry to develop something that might compete with the PC. Unless, of course, they can make the sort of profit margins they are accustomed to.
Microsoft is desperate for new markets. Their stock price still reflects high expectations of growth, and the PC market is simply not going to provide that growth. However, Microsoft can't afford to enter new markets where there is fierce competition. It does them no good to win a market if the profit margin for their software drops too low.
Microsoft's real problem is that they are starting to compete with software developers that are willing to accept far lower profit margins, and outside the entrenched market created by Windows Microsoft is going to have real problems overcoming this problem.
The third alternative, of course, is that people will simply give up on AOL-TW information altogether and start getting their news from someone else. Frankly I think that this is much more likely than a mass migration back to print subscriptions or towards new AOL subscriptions.
The problem with selling content over the Internet is that the barrier to entry is so low that there will always be folks that are happy to undercut your prices.
Microsoft doesn't have to do anything so sneaky. You see, Microsoft isn't really competing against OpenOffice, they are actually competing against old versions of their own software. Microsoft would love to make the XML format the default format in Office 11, but they know that if they do that their corporate users will freak out. Microsoft nearly had a revolt on their hands when they switched the Office formats in Office 97. All of a sudden people couldn't open the MS Office documents they received via email.
On the other hand, it did drive a lot of MS Office upgrades.
If I'm dead what do I care if the backups are unavailable until after probate. At that point I am pretty sure that backups fall into the "Somebody Else's Problem" category.
I don't think that I would accept a hooker from Microsoft. My guess is that she would have a virus.
Chocolate, on the other hand...
I sell products and services based on Free Software that compete with Microsoft's products and services. Anything that shows that my services are becoming more competitive makes me happy. When GNU/Linux is even considered as a Microsoft replacement by someone like the government of Japan it makes it easier for me to sell Free Software solutions to my customers. Basically this type of stuff is free advertising of the very best kind.
While there certainly are enough people here at /. that hate Microsoft for one reason or another, I do not fall in that category. I have never said that Microsoft was a monopoly (they certainly are the 800 lb. Gorilla of software, however), and I personally am glad that Microsoft survived their DOJ trial without setting a precedent of government involvement in the software sector. Government has no business telling software companies what software they can bundle with their product.
I hope that clears things up.
Microsoft has got the world to lose. If Free Software gets passed over this time, then it simply waits until the next round of upgrades. Three years from now when [insert country here] takes a look at upgrades GNU/Linux will still be there, and it will be better than ever (and still just as Free).
With all of the countries taking a serious look at Linux it is bound to make some progress. More importantly, Free Software keeps Microsoft honest. All of a sudden they aren't the only game in town. If they push their luck too hard then folks will switch. This gives people the leverage they need to actually negotiate with Microsoft.
Labor is cheap in India, especially compared to software licenses. Not to mention the fact that the government gets to tax Indian wages, where money send to Redmond is gone from India's economy.
Besides, at least here in the States, Linux admins don't make more than Windows admins. The studies I have seen show that the pay is quite comparable.