Microsoft has found another way to leave customers with a foul taste in their mouth and an empty feeling in their pocket: Windows Licensing 6.0.
Making Customers Miserable the Microsoft Way
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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How is Microsoft able to stay in business when they continually fail to make good on promises or produce results in a timely fashion? Also knowing that other distros such as RedHat and SuSE Linux are swaying consumers with lower costs, Microsoft still continues to mark up license and product fees. What kind of logic is that? Gates and the rest of the board definately aren’t taking into account the long term damage this will do to Microsoft.
When I was at DevDays, a large number of developers were complaining about these. Specifically Yukon. At the time, the MS employees didn’t have an answer to how it will be handled.
What was interesting was that instead of people talking about looking at alternatives or not renewing, they just complained and hoped something will come out sooner.
What may make this even more interesting is the pressure it puts on MS to show results of subscription paying. Remember a while ago when a MS release announced that they were cutting certain features out of Longhorn, even though the features that are in Longhorn haven’t really been sufficiently covered? It could be that with this kind of subscription-type model, MS will have to get product out the door or risk alienating customers who are paying for upgrades that haven’t been delivered (see article). MS may not have the luxury of even being able to invest as much time and effort into releases to keep their dominance tenable. This crunch will mean even lower quality software, which could really put off already exasperated customers.
It’s interesting, because no one can realistically claim that MS isn’t the OS king. But the problem with being the king is that there is only one direction to go, and you have to constantly defend rather than grow. It may be a clumsy analogy, but one can look at empires that have come before, such as the Romans and British. Once they grew as far as possible, they were constantly under attack not from a single opposing force, but from multiple independent hordes. Look at the US now that the USSR is gone; a single deadlocked foe has been replaced with cells of independent antagonists. For MS, the battle may not be with the nebulous “Linux” entity or Macintosh, but with the sheer withering affect of the plurality of desktop and server solutions (such as Red Hat, SuSE, etc.) based on Linux, BSD, and others.
What was interesting was that instead of people talking about looking at alternatives or not renewing, they just complained and hoped something will come out sooner.
Maybe because MS SQL is a Relational DB while MySQL doesn’t offer crap? PG is slow!
MS SQL is in the middle of Oracle and PG…
Also knowing that other distros such as RedHat and SuSE Linux are swaying consumers with lower costs
To BUY not to USE! People simply keep forgetting that Photoshop don’t run flawlessly under Linux and that the support needed with an un user friendly platform costs way more than licensing fees.
If you would be serious with what you wrote, you’d write OSX, not RedHat or SuSE…
Everyone agrees that MS plays it ugly, point is, despite of that no one has been motivated to push something out which can compete (Mac being the exception)….
If only Be Inc would have survived…
There are copies of Windows basically everywhere with hacks that can fix pretty much antyhing Microsoft can invent. Call these versions ‘pirated’ or else, but regardless of their evil schemes there are always people willing to reverse engineer and remove these portions of software. If there’s a demand, there’s a solution. If Windows was uncrackable and everyone in the world would have to settle for Microsoft’s licensing schemes, Windows could’ve been much less widespread worldwide now.
Unless you use the full development wack of Windows, client and server MTS programming, you cannot possibly justify the expense of a Windows server ever.
Considering that Microsoft hyped Windows 2000 to the ends of the Earth as the technology for the next ten years and people are mostly happy with what it does, I doubt we will see any real move by anyone from Windows 2000. Most have just got their Windows 2000 projects finished and have just started to be comfortable!
Maybe because MS SQL is a Relational DB while MySQL doesn’t offer crap? PG is slow!
MS SQL is in the middle of Oracle and PG…
I meant in general. Not MySQL spefically. There are a ton of DB’s out there. Look at Oracle. They have a new low end DB to compete with MS. Pervasive is out there. There are quite a few.
They just didn’t even think about leaving. I will clarify: they were hoping that Yukon would be out before the License ran out. They were complaining about renewing before getting it, instead of demanding that MS get it to them anyway.
“Considering that Microsoft hyped Windows 2000 to the ends of the Earth as the technology for the next ten years and people are mostly happy with what it does, I doubt we will see any real move by anyone from Windows 2000. Most have just got their Windows 2000 projects finished and have just started to be comfortable!”
I have to agree with this, I see so many clients that have finally got their Windows 2000 desktops locked-down, rock-solid and predictable that they aren’t thinking much about any kind of upgrade other than service packs. This also applies to Office 2000 – I am seeing a lot of companies that seem to be quite happy with that version of Office and are in no rush to move up to 2002 or 2003 anytime soon. I guess the only thing that will move many of these people to upgrade will be eventual cut-off of support for these products by MSFT and/or cases where “software assurance” in License 6.0 allows them to upgrade without paying anything “extra” (you know what I mean). I can easily see a lot of companies skipping a couple of generations of Office/Windows before they finally decide to upgrade.
Maybe because MS SQL is a Relational DB while MySQL doesn’t offer crap? PG is slow!
Is that from personal experience or something you heard?
I’m just curious because I was running an application using PostgreSQL on a BSD box at work, and tried the same application using MS SQL Server on a Windows box. Performance wise, they ran about the same, but as far as ease of use and stability went, PostgreSQL won hands down; especially in the area of remote administration. At least that’s my experience.
I never used PostgreSQL until 7.3 or something like that. I had always heard that it was slow, which is why I waited so long to use it, but they must have made a lot of performance enhancements in the versions I’ve used because I haven’t found it slow at all.
I mean, the US was MS’s birthplace and will be its grave. In the US, MS reigns absolutely!
Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson remedies were overruled! The “split” remedies were not good for MS, then the DOJ chose another Judge that ordered lighter remedies.
Whatever.
Japan, Korea and China are considering a Linux standard. Governments everywhere are considering alternatives.
The consumer is a tax payer by heart. Just pay the MS taxes, which aren’t fixed/controlled by the governments.
This reminds me of a news that a government somewhere was thinking in taxing Linux/Open Source. Lol.
[/rant]
To BUY not to USE! People simply keep forgetting that Photoshop don’t run flawlessly under Linux and that the support needed with an un user friendly platform costs way more than licensing fees.
If you would be serious with what you wrote, you’d write OSX, not RedHat or SuSE…
Everyone agrees that MS plays it ugly, point is, despite of that no one has been motivated to push something out which can compete (Mac being the exception)….
If only Be Inc would have survived…
That is news to me since I can sun photshop perfectly in SuSE and Red Hat and yes its cheaper than windows!
Maybe because MS SQL is a Relational DB while MySQL doesn’t offer crap? PG is slow!
There’s Firebird (http://www.firebirdsql.org/) a FREE (more free than mysql), ACID compliant Relational DB. It would compete well with PG.
There support through mailing list is awesome.
It needs a lot of work in documentation and documentation organisation. PG has good documentation.
Have been bitten so many times so trying to stay away from MS Sql.
I know this a little OT but I thought all databases wher SQL, whats with this relational and whatnot?
People simply keep forgetting that Photoshop don’t run flawlessly under Linux and that the support needed with an un user friendly platform costs way more than licensing fees.
No, people simply keep forgetting that you don’t run Photoshop on the company’s mail server.
That being said, I think Microsoft will get along on sheer momentum for a long time to come. Lots of companies are already MS-only shops because they bought into what an MS rep told them long ago, the yearly costs of licensing have been agreed on and are a “fact of life” (as are the frequent downtimes of the servers). Most companies rather live with an expensive, not-very-reliable system that “works” now, than switch over to a cheap and reliable system which “might” work. It’s just too much of a risk.
Most companies rather live with an expensive, not-very-reliable system that “works” now, than switch over to a cheap and reliable system which “might” work. It’s just too much of a risk.
Couldn’t have said it better myself.
Buck – Some individuals might choose the alternatives you suggest, but the article was discussing business licensing. No legitimate business of any significant size is going to risk the kinds of legal and monetary penalties that could come from using ‘pirated’ versions of software.
Sander – And beyond that, even if your IT people *know* an alternative solution will work, “same as last year” is a whole lot easier to justify to executive management than “even though you’ve never heard of it, believe me it’s really great.”
Buck and Sander, you represent the status quo, immobilism.
Basically, you are saying, “It sucks, but we do not dare do a pilot and test whether there are better and cheaper alternatives around”.
Anybody on my team with that kind of thinking would be fired instantly. The day that you stop thinking creatively, you stagnate and you allow your competitors to develop a competitive advantage over your slow moving business.
IT, if used properly, is an stratetic asset. If you are telling management that virus and downtime are junt unavoidable, you are lying.
//Unless you use the full development wack of Windows, client and server MTS programming, you cannot possibly justify the expense of a Windows server ever. //
I can: if you work for a non-profit organization, it’s Windows all the way.
The non-prof I work for gets Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition for $140.00 a copy thru MS’s non-profit pricing plan.
Top that.
I can: if you work for a non-profit organization, it’s Windows all the way.
The non-prof I work for gets Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition for $140.00 a copy thru MS’s non-profit pricing plan.
Top that
Easy! Any non profit organization can run Linux, which is more secure, more reliable and best of all FREE. No $140 crap here!