[H-GEN] [Fwd: MS fights Open Source with freebies - an eyewitness writes]

[Arjen Lentz]

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http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/28386.html

MS fights Open Source with freebies - an eyewitness writes

By John Lettice

Posted: 02/12/2002 at 14:24 GMT

One of Microsoft's special strengths is the speed and intensity with 
which the sales team (right the way up to Bill, for government and 
really big accounts) goes in whenever a defection is threatened. As 
we noted last weekOpen Source is currently in the counter-insurgency 
SWAT team's crosshairs, with who knows what discounts and pressures 
being deployed to nip rebellion in the bud. 

Who knows? Well, the would-be defectors, of course. What? How does 
free server licences grab you? One defector who declined to hock his 
soul to Microstopheles in exchange for absolute temporal power in the 
IS department, writes: 

I am currently doing some new media projects in an emerging market 
country. As one of the reasons I was sent there was that I care about 
cost, I decided to develop the projects based on Open Source. 

The main reason for choosing Open Source software was: 
- Licensing Cost for Server Software 
- Openness, i.e. the ability to change software to fit our purpose 
- Security & Reliability and (last not least) 
- Low hardware requirements. 

The fourth reason was very important as I didn't want to buy any new 
hardware for the servers and instead reuse existing old hardware and 
extend its lifetime by using Open Source Server software. We decided 
to Use FreeBSD, Apache, mySQL+PostgreSQL, Perl+PHP 

The company I am working with is a pure-Microsoft company, i.e. they 
only used to use Microsoft software, and they even didn't know 
anything about Open Source. 

It was a painful but successful transition. But this is not the 
reason I am writing. 

The reason is Microsoft itself. When the local Microsoft rep "heard" 
(someone inside the company tipped them off), they asked to meet my 
team(!) and discuss the reasons for our Open Source use. 
In fact, it was a meeting of 2 1/2 hours with 3 Microsoft 
sales/consulting reps trying to persuade us not to use Open Source 
(mainy they talked about "Linux" until we told them that we don't use 
Linux and that we don't understand what they are talking about :-) 
because "it is inherently insecure, unreliable" and, what was their 
biggest argument, "there is nobody in this country who could give you 
any support for Open Source", etc. 

Also, they wanted(!) (actually they "required") us to tell them the 
reasons why we are using Open Source instead of the already 
introduced and long-time proven Microsoft Software in this company. 
Then I started explaining the four reasons above, and when we came to 
the point of "Licensing Costs", they offered us TO give the Windows 
server licences for free.

I am notkidding. When I told them that I'd need at least ten licenses 
and at $400/each, this would be too much for me for the beginning, 
they offered to give us the license for free - and not only for now, 
but also for the future when we kept working on Microsoft. 

Of course, they knew that if we implement succesful projects based on 
Open Source in the New Media Group, this might extend to other areas, 
too, e.g. data servers (we are in fact planning to create a print 
archive fully based on Open Source now that the technicians in the 
company see that Open Source can be successfully implemented). 
I just wanted to let you know about this fact. The meeting was very 
funny as they were trying to explain us that Microsoft software is 
more reliable, secure and cheaper than Linux and I was trying to 
explain to them that a) we are not using Linux, and b) that they have 
wrong numbers about TCO and c) that Icould prove that Open Source is 
cheaper and lastly d) that any survey trying to figure out the TCO is 
definitely wrong as they try to please the company who ordered the 
survey, etc. etc. 
anon

Any better offers been made out there in the trenches? Do we hear a 
bid of ten server licences, a handshake from Bill and an iPaq? We 
surely do... ®



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