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I think that would bring some clarity to the licensing provided they don't go about it the phone company way; "Your monthly plan will be 20$". And, when you get teh bill; "Oh, plus 6$ connection fee, 5$ phone rental fee...."

But a selection shouldn't be just done on the basis of costs - one should also ask oneself what open standards Microsoft support in full (not partial or bastardised implementations). The question one should also ask is whether one is willing to give up an ounce of freedom for convenience - for the sake of not having to read a book and learn a skill, is it worth the price in the long run? How many companies have gone Microsoft everything and are now regretting that decision because their whole business is absolutely so reliant on Microsoft that any move would be prohibitively expensive and time consuming?

It is unfortunate that IT employees in large companies are chosen by 'recruitment agencies' whose way of selection is jamming a CV through a parser looking for key words, and manager choosing from that list of 'stellar' performers by how 'professional' they look in their cheap polyester suite - ignoring the fact that the IT workers skill set will put their company on a path of higher IT costs. The clusterf--k of a system has less to do with Microsoft and the lack of 'transparency' and everything to do with poorly run companies who abdicate their responsibility through the use of recruitment companies and HR departments filled to the gills with clueless wonks with 'HR Degree's' who couldn't tell the difference between a micro-chip and a potato chip.

Edited 2009-10-05 19:22 UTC

That depends on a lot of things. For example, if it's just me involved, and there's a $30 proprietary app that's a ton easier to use than a free (as in speech one), I'll probably go for the former. But if the $30 app is $3,000, then I'd have to reconsider. Either way, the functionality of each app vs how much functionality I need will also factor into my decision. If paying $3,000 will help me get my job done in half the time as the alternative (even when I'm fully trained on the alternative), I might just decide that the cost is worth it.

Similarly, if I run a company that employes 500 people, how long is it going to take to get everybody up to speed with the new program(s)? Etc, etc.



I think that's kind of a strawman, because if you invest heavily in any technology, whether open or closed, it's probably going to be prohibitively expensive and time consuming to migrate away from. Just because you implement open standards/open solutions doesn't mean it's not going to cost you a sh*tload of time/money if you need to migrate to something else in the future. For example, I read somewhere on this site that the Konquerer developers wanted to migrate away from KHTML as the renderer and switch to Webkit, but the app is so dependent on KHTML, it wouldn't really be practical to try and switch to WebKit. Hence, even though the solution they're using is open, they're still sort of stuck, unless they decide that the migration is worth the cost in time/money.

Sure, going with one vendor for your infrastructure has it's drawbacks, but it also has its advantages. For example, if you have Linux servers with a LAMP stack (or perhaps, in the case of the company I work for, Oracle instead of MySQL), it's easy for different vendors to point fingers at each other when something breaks, as I have witnessed happening on numerous occasions. However, if you're using multiple solutions from the same vendor, you know who's responsible.

I'm not saying that's the way everybody should go, just that the discussion is not as cut and dry as you make it seem.

Edited 2009-10-05 23:51 UTC

Exactly, Licensing is fairly simple for home users and students... buy a PC with Windows and buy Student Office. They offer upgrades at a set cost per PC. Buy enough and you're legal.

For companies that have more computers and more money the cost is "what the market will bear". The game is that "full retail price" that's god-awful expensive is the stick to the various complex "carrots" Microsoft offers such as multi-year schemes, upgrade insurance, and bulk licensing. Nobody pays the "shelf price" of MS software, but by keeping the "shelf price" of the products high it allows Microsoft to offer you an "offer you can't refuse" or pay vastly more for software than your competition.

That is what makes investors happy, big profits.... of course explaining how they have 80%+ margins on Windows and Office divisions but take BILLIONS in losses on things like Xbox, Zune, Bing, etc. has got to make investors wonder why that money isn't in THEIR pockets during a recession.