Nice thing about OSS is that large projects like Apache are supported 24x7 worldwide by MANY companies -- so if one company provides poor support, you can use another one.
With open source software many sources of support really is many sources. With proprietary software there is one source of support. Even if there appears to be more than one all of the information comes from one source.
It's not about being easy to support. Windows can be quite hard to "support." It's about having your ass covered, so if your website or intranet goes down, you have someone to sue for all the thousands of dollars per second you lose.
With the possible exception if relocating to South Korea you can't sue anyway.
So I can't use VNC on my Linux box to adminster XP unless I also own an XP license for the Linux box. It is still stupid, since you have to buy an XP license for a machine that will never need it, but at least if you pony up the $$ you can do remote admin.
Stupid for you, but certainly not stupid for Microsoft:)
In fact, Windows Remote Desktop feature in XP is superior to VNC in functionality, response, and seamless integration,
Intergration to what? You can find a VNC client for just about any platform. Do you need some specific platform to use the XP "Windows Remote Desktop"?...
Perhaps you need to have someone with a more balanced perspective come into the organization and evaluate where Unix derivatives are the best choice and where Windows is a superior pick. Those who blindly promote *nix and open source as the solution to every computing problem are no more enlightened than those who automatically choose Microsoft products for every function.
Thing is that there are a lot more of the latter than the former.
Before you go to upper management find out how much the non-open source applications are going to cost. Factor in any consulting fees for setup. Then factor in the cost for global support on an ongoing basis over say the course of the next five years. I'd also suggest adding in any special hardware requirements.
Also include that at least one "upgrade" might be needed within those 5 years.
No, what they see is the entire company infrastructure being built by and around one person. And if that one person quits or dies or something, they're up shits creek without a paddle.
But they don't see that there is exactly the same risk involved with using proprietary software. Except that with this case it's that of an external third party company no longer supporting the software.
They remember the early days of IT where some pear shaped geek would hold the entire business hostage while he demanded a quarter million dollars a year in salary.
As opposed to a proprietary software company insisting that in order to continue with their product you not only have to get a new version of their product you also have to get a new version of the proprietary OS it runs under and the hardware to run it on. For a business of any size buying and deploying that lot will cost a lot more than a few hundred thousand USD.
Outsourced support eliminates this risk, and yes, it's much easier to hold a corporation accountable,
Really? How many individuals can employ lawyers to write complex EULA which disclaim all responsibility?
and shopping around for a new support contract is easier than hiring and training another pear shaped geek.
Unless you are dealing with proprietary software, in which case shopping around isn't really possible. The only entity which really understands how the thing works is whoever wrote it. Who may not even work for the company who owns the copyright any more.
Neither does commercial software. Heck, it typically isn't even warrantied for "fitness for any particular purpose". That movie editing app or spreadsheet you bought could just sit in a loop printing out "Hello world" and still be legal.
In many parts of the world companies can be held to claims their salesmen or advertisments make. A statement that it might not be fit for anything only available to a customer after they hand over their cash is unlikely to impress a judge.
Also, those people could have used other database products, like Oracle, or MySQL (depending on their requirements), instead of just going with the brand name they were already familiar with. They were lazy, and their laziness bit them in the ass bigtime.
Maybe they bought a third party product and that third party insists they run MSSQL... There are plenty of products which are built on top of Microsoft, some of which are monopolies in that application area.
My point exactly -- don't expect the same quality control measures on Microsoft's business software that you would of something that puts human lives on the line.
Assuming none of their business software ever ends up as part of an embedded system. e.g. controlling a warship.
And as a matter of fact, I was in a hospital last Friday. I didn't see a single Windows-run life support system, although the idea does lead to some interesting scenarios:
What system did they have keeping track of which patients required which medication? Mistakes in something like that can easily cause serious injury or death.
Here's another. Suppose you are driving down a highway and someone hits your car. Not your fault, but as a protective measure your airbags are supposed to inflate. They don't! And they don't inflate because the manufacturer realized there was a bug in their code which stopped them inflating, and issued a product recall. A recall is kind of similar to applying a service pack.
In the case of a product recall the manufacturer will typically place notices through various media, notices which are distinctive enough not to be confused with advertisments. Also where possible they will attempt to contact their customers. Either way the onus is on the manufacturer to let people know their is a problem and to do any fixing at their expense.
The sad thing is, I've seen that. Not on a person's car, but on a truck carrying some gravel and stuff. It said something to the effect of "Stay back 150 feet. Not responsible for damage from being closer".
Which would translate to "Attention police, I have an unsafe load, pull me over, put me in jail and impound my truck":)
Clearly they haven't read their software agreements. It specifically states that MS is not responsible for damage caused as a result of their products.
It dosn't matter what Microsoft put into their EULA if there is relevent statute or case law which says otherwise then that clause is null and void.
A better chance to procecute MS would have been during the Code Red incident
Except that the statute on which the suit is based is recent.
Auto company issues a recall notice through all the regular outlets and send a letter to your house saying "Hey! We found this is a problem. Bring your car in and we'll fix it for free."
But would Ford be able to get away with saying "Check our message board to see if there are any new widgets you need to fit to your car to make sure it continues to work"?
Maytag repair guys are what 100,000-to-1 with their insalled base? even doctors are about 100-200-to-1. yet PCs are supposed to be 10 or 20-to-1 for admins. It's a crock! If any other business system was this terrible, it would be bankrupt in a year! And MS only answer is that the admin should run around and babysit the system? They offer automated updates, then again blame the admin for not "testing".
A good deal of the time Microsoft expect the end user to be putting the updates on.
You all check the gas quality going in your car before you fill up right
Patching a computer system is closer to tuning an engine or overhauling the fuel system than filling up a fuel tank.
Why is it wrong to not care if the Matrix sequel and other huge media pieces get created? Mass media is far from a vital resource or necessity. I think it is a fantastic waste of resources to spend millions of dollars making a movie.
Even without a profit motive it's still quite possible that expensive movies would be made. e.g. for ego reasons of those involved. Profit has never been the only reason for people to create things...
The problem with your argument is that while information can be reproduced for a negligible cost, it cannot be originally produced for a negligible cost. Take Linus as an example, since you mentioned him. He wrote Linux when he was a student, and right now he has a day job at a chip design company. Or take RMS, the father of the Free Software movement. He lives on a MacArthur Foundation grant and presumably tenure at MIT. There are very, very few people in Open Source who do not have a "day job", and it's the day job that actually pays for Open Source to get written.
Thing is, that this is normal. Plenty of authors, musicians, etc have a "day job".
Or take a movie. A blockbuster movie (say, Matrix Reloaded) is a very expensive thing to make. Lots of physical artifacts were created during the process (for example, the section of highway they built to film on). Lots of people (mostly union members, FWIW) did lots of things, and got paid for doing them. Because that movie can be reproduced for little cost, does that mean it could be created for little cost? No, the two are not even remotely related.
Just because something cost X amount to produce does not mean that the people who produced it are entitled to make back X, let alone a profit. Even though movies can be easily copied many still make money...
One of the biggest lies the corporations ever sold us was that everything useful a person can do is an industry. Is music an industry? no, it is entertainment. Is information an industry? no, it is knowledge. Is entertainment an industry? no, it is a diversion. Is there an industry based in every one of these? yes. Should there be? not necessarily.
Conventionally "industry" is divided into 3 types. "Primary industry", where "cash crop" agriculture and mineral extraction are the most common examples; "Secondary industry", which involves the manufacture of "widgets" and "Tertiary industry", usually called "service industry". An actual business may have elements of all 3 and it is pefectly possible to consider a business which makes products to be "tertiary", where the product is bespoke.
While I'm sure that Free/Open Source software will eat into some of the profits of proprietary software companies, there will always be people willing to pay for a higher quality product.
Except that proprietary software dosn't deliver you a higher quality product. Instead you are more likely to wind up paying for a bunch of marketing and/or lawyer types who will insist that if things don't go right then it's the fault of anything except their software. If you want "quality" you'd be better off paying someone to configure and maintain open source to your standards.
If you're getting a degree in software development, there's about a 98% chance that if you write code, it will be for a custom business system that will never be used outside of the company you work for.
Indeed won't even be distributed in any way shape or form outside that company.
See, the software product industry doesn't really exist. The billions of dollars made by Microsoft are in truth a bizarre anomoly that most companies have not been able to recreate.
Not that most companies would even want to attempt to since their business is not about software in the first place.
That is not to say that other companies don't sell software profitably too, but in those cases the software is sold as simply a service offering vessel.
Are these companies selling software, any more than a builder is selling you building materials?
Microsoft is one of the few that can sell a shrinkwrap product to millions of people and walk away from them until it's time to sell them the next release.
It's also only those few which have any reason to be fearful of the likes of "open source".
Heck, most believe Saddam and Bin Laden are/were the Laurel & Hardy of the Middle East, even though these two were sworn ennemies (OBL stated Saddam was an 'infidel', oppressor of the Chiites).
UBL would like nothing better than to see the back of SH. especially were the result to be Iraq to wind up under the rule of something like his brand of Islam.
When you see a US soldier screaming to a wounded Iraqi woman to "fuck off with the rest of them who attacked his country"
On the other hand you have Iraqi doctors and nurses giving a wounded American soldier the best medical treatment they can.
or when Rumsfeld claims he's at the head of the "greatest coalition in the history of mankind" (and comparing the effort with those of the crusades, ahem)
To the average Arab "Crusade" means something along the lines of "bunch of European thugs come to kill people and loot".
There are those of us who have never smoked it in our lives and would absolutely vote to legalize it. It isn't just a matter of believing the government has no right to intrude on our rights to do things that only harm our bodies, but also the reality that the war on drugs has destroyed inner cities and increased poverty in many areas.
In theory it should be a "no-brainer" that a policy of prohibition at best just dosn't work at worst creates more problems than it solves. Given the historical example in the US.
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Nice thing about OSS is that large projects like Apache are supported 24x7 worldwide by MANY companies -- so if one company provides poor support, you can use another one.
With open source software many sources of support really is many sources. With proprietary software there is one source of support. Even if there appears to be more than one all of the information comes from one source.
It's not about being easy to support. Windows can be quite hard to "support." It's about having your ass covered, so if your website or intranet goes down, you have someone to sue for all the thousands of dollars per second you lose.
With the possible exception if relocating to South Korea you can't sue anyway.
So I can't use VNC on my Linux box to adminster XP unless I also own an XP license for the Linux box. It is still stupid, since you have to buy an XP license for a machine that will never need it, but at least if you pony up the $$ you can do remote admin.
:)
Stupid for you, but certainly not stupid for Microsoft
In fact, Windows Remote Desktop feature in XP is superior to VNC in functionality, response, and seamless integration,
Intergration to what? You can find a VNC client for just about any platform. Do you need some specific platform to use the XP "Windows Remote Desktop"?...
Perhaps you need to have someone with a more balanced perspective come into the organization and evaluate where Unix derivatives are the best choice and where Windows is a superior pick. Those who blindly promote *nix and open source as the solution to every computing problem are no more enlightened than those who automatically choose Microsoft products for every function.
Thing is that there are a lot more of the latter than the former.
Before you go to upper management find out how much the non-open source applications are going to cost. Factor in any consulting fees for setup. Then factor in the cost for global support on an ongoing basis over say the course of the next five years. I'd also suggest adding in any special hardware requirements.
Also include that at least one "upgrade" might be needed within those 5 years.
No, what they see is the entire company infrastructure being built by and around one person. And if that one person quits or dies or something, they're up shits creek without a paddle.
But they don't see that there is exactly the same risk involved with using proprietary software. Except that with this case it's that of an external third party company no longer supporting the software.
They remember the early days of IT where some pear shaped geek would hold the entire business hostage while he demanded a quarter million dollars a year in salary.
As opposed to a proprietary software company insisting that in order to continue with their product you not only have to get a new version of their product you also have to get a new version of the proprietary OS it runs under and the hardware to run it on. For a business of any size buying and deploying that lot will cost a lot more than a few hundred thousand USD.
Outsourced support eliminates this risk, and yes, it's much easier to hold a corporation accountable,
Really? How many individuals can employ lawyers to write complex EULA which disclaim all responsibility?
and shopping around for a new support contract is easier than hiring and training another pear shaped geek.
Unless you are dealing with proprietary software, in which case shopping around isn't really possible. The only entity which really understands how the thing works is whoever wrote it. Who may not even work for the company who owns the copyright any more.
Neither does commercial software. Heck, it typically isn't even warrantied for "fitness for any particular purpose". That movie editing app or spreadsheet you bought could just sit in a loop printing out "Hello world" and still be legal.
In many parts of the world companies can be held to claims their salesmen or advertisments make. A statement that it might not be fit for anything only available to a customer after they hand over their cash is unlikely to impress a judge.
Also, those people could have used other database products, like Oracle, or MySQL (depending on their requirements), instead of just going with the brand name they were already familiar with. They were lazy, and their laziness bit them in the ass bigtime.
Maybe they bought a third party product and that third party insists they run MSSQL...
There are plenty of products which are built on top of Microsoft, some of which are monopolies in that application area.
My point exactly -- don't expect the same quality control measures on Microsoft's business software that you would of something that puts human lives on the line.
Assuming none of their business software ever ends up as part of an embedded system. e.g. controlling a warship.
And as a matter of fact, I was in a hospital last Friday. I didn't see a single Windows-run life support system, although the idea does lead to some interesting scenarios:
What system did they have keeping track of which patients required which medication? Mistakes in something like that can easily cause serious injury or death.
Here's another. Suppose you are driving down a highway and someone hits your car. Not your fault, but as a protective measure your airbags are supposed to inflate. They don't! And they don't inflate because the manufacturer realized there was a bug in their code which stopped them inflating, and issued a product recall. A recall is kind of similar to applying a service pack.
In the case of a product recall the manufacturer will typically place notices through various media, notices which are distinctive enough not to be confused with advertisments. Also where possible they will attempt to contact their customers. Either way the onus is on the manufacturer to let people know their is a problem and to do any fixing at their expense.
The sad thing is, I've seen that. Not on a person's car, but on a truck carrying some gravel and stuff. It said something to the effect of "Stay back 150 feet. Not responsible for damage from being closer".
:)
Which would translate to "Attention police, I have an unsafe load, pull me over, put me in jail and impound my truck"
Clearly they haven't read their software agreements. It specifically states that MS is not responsible for damage caused as a result of their products.
It dosn't matter what Microsoft put into their EULA if there is relevent statute or case law which says otherwise then that clause is null and void.
A better chance to procecute MS would have been during the Code Red incident
Except that the statute on which the suit is based is recent.
Auto company issues a recall notice through all the regular outlets and send a letter to your house saying "Hey! We found this is a problem. Bring your car in and we'll fix it for free."
But would Ford be able to get away with saying "Check our message board to see if there are any new widgets you need to fit to your car to make sure it continues to work"?
Maytag repair guys are what 100,000-to-1 with their insalled base? even doctors are about 100-200-to-1. yet PCs are supposed to be 10 or 20-to-1 for admins. It's a crock! If any other business system was this terrible, it would be bankrupt in a year! And MS only answer is that the admin should run around and babysit the system? They offer automated updates, then again blame the admin for not "testing".
A good deal of the time Microsoft expect the end user to be putting the updates on.
You all check the gas quality going in your car before you fill up right
Patching a computer system is closer to tuning an engine or overhauling the fuel system than filling up a fuel tank.
The interesting thing is this: let's say that the U.S. and EU do both ban spam, and all the spam is coming from outside the U.S. and EU.
In which case possibly the US and EU could heal their diplomatic differences by declaring a "war on spam".
Why is it wrong to not care if the Matrix sequel and other huge media pieces get created? Mass media is far from a vital resource or necessity. I think it is a fantastic waste of resources to spend millions of dollars making a movie.
Even without a profit motive it's still quite possible that expensive movies would be made. e.g. for ego reasons of those involved. Profit has never been the only reason for people to create things...
The problem with your argument is that while information can be reproduced for a negligible cost, it cannot be originally produced for a negligible cost. Take Linus as an example, since you mentioned him. He wrote Linux when he was a student, and right now he has a day job at a chip design company. Or take RMS, the father of the Free Software movement. He lives on a MacArthur Foundation grant and presumably tenure at MIT. There are very, very few people in Open Source who do not have a "day job", and it's the day job that actually pays for Open Source to get written.
Thing is, that this is normal. Plenty of authors, musicians, etc have a "day job".
Or take a movie. A blockbuster movie (say, Matrix Reloaded) is a very expensive thing to make. Lots of physical artifacts were created during the process (for example, the section of highway they built to film on). Lots of people (mostly union members, FWIW) did lots of things, and got paid for doing them. Because that movie can be reproduced for little cost, does that mean it could be created for little cost? No, the two are not even remotely related.
Just because something cost X amount to produce does not mean that the people who produced it are entitled to make back X, let alone a profit. Even though movies can be easily copied many still make money...
One of the biggest lies the corporations ever sold us was that everything useful a person can do is an industry. Is music an industry? no, it is entertainment. Is information an industry? no, it is knowledge. Is entertainment an industry? no, it is a diversion. Is there an industry based in every one of these? yes. Should there be? not necessarily.
Conventionally "industry" is divided into 3 types. "Primary industry", where "cash crop" agriculture and mineral extraction are the most common examples; "Secondary industry", which involves the manufacture of "widgets" and "Tertiary industry", usually called "service industry". An actual business may have elements of all 3 and it is pefectly possible to consider a business which makes products to be "tertiary", where the product is bespoke.
Well, because ma and pa and grandma have a harder time using most Distro's and having no probs with Windows and/or Mac,
Thing is that in practice they can have just as many problems with these platforms.
Linux intimdates the heckers out of grandma... software names like Gnome and Gimp and Mozilla, companies called Trolltech and so on.
They'd never thing "Powerpoint? I've already plugged it in...", "Access what?" or "Excel how?".
While I'm sure that Free/Open Source software will eat into some of the profits of proprietary software companies, there will always be people willing to pay for a higher quality product.
Except that proprietary software dosn't deliver you a higher quality product. Instead you are more likely to wind up paying for a bunch of marketing and/or lawyer types who will insist that if things don't go right then it's the fault of anything except their software.
If you want "quality" you'd be better off paying someone to configure and maintain open source to your standards.
If you're getting a degree in software development, there's about a 98% chance that if you write code, it will be for a custom business system that will never be used outside of the company you work for.
Indeed won't even be distributed in any way shape or form outside that company.
See, the software product industry doesn't really exist. The billions of dollars made by Microsoft are in truth a bizarre anomoly that most companies have not been able to recreate.
Not that most companies would even want to attempt to since their business is not about software in the first place.
That is not to say that other companies don't sell software profitably too, but in those cases the software is sold as simply a service offering vessel.
Are these companies selling software, any more than a builder is selling you building materials?
Microsoft is one of the few that can sell a shrinkwrap product to millions of people and walk away from them until it's time to sell them the next release.
It's also only those few which have any reason to be fearful of the likes of "open source".
So, in the car industry you're going to have a need for new cars simply because cars can't be used forever.
In practice they didn't fall apart fast enough. So the motor industry invented the idea of the annual model change...
Heck, most believe Saddam and Bin Laden are/were the Laurel & Hardy of the Middle East, even though these two were sworn ennemies (OBL stated Saddam was an 'infidel', oppressor of the Chiites).
UBL would like nothing better than to see the back of SH. especially were the result to be Iraq to wind up under the rule of something like his brand of Islam.
When you see a US soldier screaming to a wounded Iraqi woman to "fuck off with the rest of them who attacked his country"
On the other hand you have Iraqi doctors and nurses giving a wounded American soldier the best medical treatment they can.
or when Rumsfeld claims he's at the head of the "greatest coalition in the history of mankind" (and comparing the effort with those of the crusades, ahem)
To the average Arab "Crusade" means something along the lines of "bunch of European thugs come to kill people and loot".
There are those of us who have never smoked it in our lives and would absolutely vote to legalize it. It isn't just a matter of believing the government has no right to intrude on our rights to do things that only harm our bodies, but also the reality that the war on drugs has destroyed inner cities and increased poverty in many areas.
In theory it should be a "no-brainer" that a policy of prohibition at best just dosn't work at worst creates more problems than it solves. Given the historical example in the US.
To try to get rid of the Islamic radicals who took over the government in Iran. Y'see, Islamic-radical types are bad news.
And dictators backed by foreign powers are "good news"?