[Linux-aus] Microsft a Reality? Get Over It?? - A followup

[Con Zymaris]

On Thu, Mar 06, 2003 at 06:28:50PM +1100, Brent Wallis wrote:
> Hi ,
> 
> 	On Thu, Mar 06, 2003 at 10:25:18AM +1030, David Ruwoldt wrote:
> 	> Dear All,
> 	>
> 	> My two cents.
> 	>
> 	> Microsoft have a marketing machine that is second to none. Novell, Sun,
> 	
> 	>Con Zymaris:
> 
> 	>In order to better deliver the message on Linux and FOSS to the same core
> 	>audience that Microsoft is targeting, we must understand what the audience
> 	>wants, and how to outcompete Microsoft in some of its marketing tactics. 
> 	>If these tactics include spreading obviously false information about
> 	>Linux, we need to speak out. 
> 
> 	I have to disagree Con. "Speaking out" is what they want! Reacting to their FUD delivers them something they can attack. Would not a better option be to just keep writing and disseminating the successes? Writing about a Samba install in a large environment, in the target audiences "language of understanding" would be far better than a treatise on why Samba is as good as a Win file and print sharing setup. An example of what I mean is the recent "Australian Made is better campaign run by Dick Smith et al.....Although he may have been right in a lot of ways, he made the fatal error of trying to naysay companies like Kraft. Using the bogey of money draing out of the country and lost jobs. The reality is that this simply is not the case. If he had succeeded in destroying Kraft, many jobs and a lot of local money would have dissappeared. The general public are not dumb, all there needs to be is success. this is what Open Source is all about don't you think? Survival of the fitte!
> st, the best code gets included. the best functions are judged by many.
> 

Brent,

by speaking out, I do mean writing analysis and critiques, not wailing and
name-calling.

I have an exercise for you. 

I want you to go to your favourite search engine and type in "Linux
Windows TCO" and look through the first 100 returns. You will more than
likely find that a majority of these are re-hashes of the press-release
from the IDC TCO report that Microsoft funded late-last year. This report
shows that Linux is _more_ expensive to run than Windows 2000 in most
circumstances. Now, if you are an IT journalist, doing research via your
favourite search engine, this is what you too would see. I know this
result is hokum, I hope you too would see this result as hokum, but left
unchecked and un-answered, this result will become the 'truth', and widely
so, due to Microsodt's immense marketing reach.

By not speaking out on this manufactured 'reality' we are helping reduce
our audience and our market. We are also allowing shonky and
un-substantiatable report-writing run loose on the world, helping form 
opinion against our aims. If others are happy to sit and idly watch this 
and do nothing, I have no problems with this. I am not.

Now, here's what I mean about un-substantiatable report-writing and 
manufactured 'reality'. (I posted this to another list recently)

##

Just to re-iterate, yes, the IDC report is a crock. To give you but one
example, the OS software _licence_ costs shown for deploying a "networking
server' (i.e DNS, DHCP etc) are (according to IDC) as follows:
 
Windows 2000:   US$ 211
Linux:          US$ 940


Yes, you read that right. Linux OS software costs over 4 times more than
the Microsoft OS server licence. 

To my knowledge, there is _no_ Microsoft 2000 server OS licence that costs
under US$500, and with 5 years' TCO duration for this analysis, that
should also include US$600 of Software Assurance on top. So according to
IDC, US$500 + US$600 = US$211.

Much of the remainder of the report reads along similar lines. 


##

Also, as previously reported, the author of the report also claims it's
shonky and biased:

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/03_09/b3822610_tc102.htm
 
 ...
 
 To prove the point, Microsoft commissioned a study by market researcher
 IDC that was released in December. The study concluded that because
 Microsoft had created more software tools for managing and updating
 Windows, the operating system would be 11% to 22% cheaper to run than
 Linux over a five-year period in four out of five different common
 computing tasks, such as sending files to printers and running security
 applications.  Windows was more expensive when it came to serving up Web
 pages.

 Yet even this tactic seems to be backfiring. One of the study's authors
 accuses Microsoft of stacking the deck. IDC analyst Dan Kusnetzky says
 the company selected scenarios that would inevitably be more costly using
 Linux. Also, he believes Windows should be cheaper to operate, since it
 has been around longer, giving Microsoft more time to develop software to
 manage the operating system. "Microsoft has had a lot more time to work
 on this. I wonder why the win wasn't bigger," Kusnetzky says.


Cheers,

Con Zymaris
CEO
Cybersource   


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