[juneau-lug] Re: Microsoft... What you are buying...

  • From: James Zuelow <e5z8652@xxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: juneau-lug@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Tue, 07 Oct 2003 21:06:21 -0800

Jeremy, you make some good points.  However I wonder what some of your
assumptions are.

I hear a lot these days about what "Linux" needs to do to gain market
share, take control of the desktop market, or lead in this or that
market.  I ignore almost all of it.  You're probably familiar with the
phrase "information wants to be free."  My response to that statement
is "no it doesn't, it just is."  To me, Linux and Open Source software
is the same - there is no master plan, there is no requirement that it
become a "good desktop", and nobodys grandmother needs to know how to
use it.  It just is.  Linux doesn't care about it's market share
because Linux is just a tool that some of us use.  Now IBM might have
marketing plans for using Linux but those are IBM's plans, not mine.

Now that's not to say that I don't think people should use Linux.  On
the contrary, I think Linux is perfect for many applications.  Linux
is well entrenched on the server/back-office side of things mainly
because it is easy to customize and license, rather than being "free."
 Many people pay as much for a RedHat installation as they would for a
Windows Server installation.  They're not going with Linux because of
the price point, but because they'll actually own their software and
be allowed to tweak it if they want to (or pay RedHat or MySQL ab to
do the tweaking for them.)

Can you go with a 100% Microsoft solution to that "just works" - yes,
certainly.  Is that solution sometimes the perfect answer to a
problem?  Yes, certainly.  I'll stake my MCP card on it.  However,
you'll need to consider what you're letting yourself into by going
that route.  Many small businesses and not so small government
agencies have no idea how much the BSA could take them for after doing
a software audit where the BSA knows exactly what licenses are needed
for a terminal server running Office, but the local sysadmins don't. 
Many home users are just know finding out about things like open
administrative shares, DCOM and other things that Microsoft thought
would be cool to implement (maybe DCOM makes mail merges easier), but
that they had absolutely no requirement for. Fairly recently, the
default Linux install was just as wide open - think RedHat 6.2. 
However the Linux community learned very quickly that a network
connected device needed to be locked down, and changed the assumptions
for a default install.  And you have to wonder about every component
of a 100% Microsoft system when one of the many anti-Microsoft hackers
finds a hole in Internet Explorer or SQL Server.  Can you name all of
the Microsoft tools that use Internet Explorer to render HTML?  You
should as long as patches remain broken.  The source code for
Half-Life 2 was reportedly stolen using an MS03-032 vulnerability. 
However when I see another message from Debian Security about an
application I use, I can reasonably assume that the problem is with
that application.  (Things like PAM are obvious exceptions, since so
many things tie into PAM.  However a Mozilla bug is very unlikely to
affect Sylpheed or pine.)

Anyway.  Use Microsoft when you need to, or even when Linux is just
awkward for you.  As long as you are happy and your customers are
happy, that's all that counts.

Cheers,

James

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