A couple of things I would like to point out about this study, on behalf of Microsoft.
a) Yes - Microsoft helped fund this study - along with a number of other companies. The goal of the study was to get an accurate picture of how all OSes are used across a wide selection of customer types. We fund a lot of market research in order to better understand how customers use software and services. We are interested in real market data - there is no other agenda here.
b) This study is based on surveys with end users in which they are asked which OS they are using on a new server that is being put into production. Where the customer acquired their OS is not a factor, so the customer could have bought a commercial OS, downloaded the OS for free, bought one copy and deployed it on a number of machines etc.
There is a huge difference between these numbers and numbers reported from IDC on server software sales. I would assume, that since Linux can cost very little, there are a lot of folks who "buy" Linux but don't necessarily install or use it. Counting OS "sales" when you have an OS like Linux that can be downloaded anonymously for free or installed many times from a single copy seems a little irrelevant. The interesting data is who is really using Linux. That is the data that the Gartner survey went after.
Doug Miller
Microsoft Corp.
You miss the point. Standards are a great thing and everyone should build products around standards or risk being isolated by the market. However, if you have implemented a solution and created compelling product that gives customers a reason to select your implementation of the standard, you should have the choice to either retain the intellectual property you used to build the product or give it away if you choose. Forcing people to always give away all their innovation means they ultimately have no way to earn revenue through unique differentiation - which leads to commercial failure.
Slashdot Mirror
A couple of things I would like to point out about this study, on behalf of Microsoft. a) Yes - Microsoft helped fund this study - along with a number of other companies. The goal of the study was to get an accurate picture of how all OSes are used across a wide selection of customer types. We fund a lot of market research in order to better understand how customers use software and services. We are interested in real market data - there is no other agenda here. b) This study is based on surveys with end users in which they are asked which OS they are using on a new server that is being put into production. Where the customer acquired their OS is not a factor, so the customer could have bought a commercial OS, downloaded the OS for free, bought one copy and deployed it on a number of machines etc. There is a huge difference between these numbers and numbers reported from IDC on server software sales. I would assume, that since Linux can cost very little, there are a lot of folks who "buy" Linux but don't necessarily install or use it. Counting OS "sales" when you have an OS like Linux that can be downloaded anonymously for free or installed many times from a single copy seems a little irrelevant. The interesting data is who is really using Linux. That is the data that the Gartner survey went after. Doug Miller Microsoft Corp.
You miss the point. Standards are a great thing and everyone should build products around standards or risk being isolated by the market. However, if you have implemented a solution and created compelling product that gives customers a reason to select your implementation of the standard, you should have the choice to either retain the intellectual property you used to build the product or give it away if you choose. Forcing people to always give away all their innovation means they ultimately have no way to earn revenue through unique differentiation - which leads to commercial failure.