From: Geoffrey S. Mendelson (gsm_at_nonexisting.hamakor.org.il)
Date: Fri 20 Jan 2006 - 14:31:39 IST
On Fri, Jan 20, 2006 at 02:00:34PM +0200, Efraim Yawitz wrote:
> http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/facts/default.mspx
Not any more biased than Red Hat's "White Papers" which showed the total
cost of ownership for Linux was far less than Windows because the
sysadmins were pimply faced kids who would work for next to nothing if
you did not mind giving them the morning off to attend high school.
The reality of life is that a good sysadmin, makes a decent salary, and
UNIX (which in some markets includes Linux) sysadmins make a lot of
money, no matter what operating system they support.
TCO projections are useful for writing business plans and budgets, but
technical descisions based upon cost are meaningless.
If you spend $200 on a computer and $15 an hour for a sysadmin, the cost
of the operating system is an important factor. If you pay $80k-$100k
per sysadmin annual salary, which is what they make outside of Silicon
Valley, have several sysadmins and buy decent server hardware, the cost
of support is far more important.
Microsoft spends a lot more money on support and fixing security holes
than all of the Linux "vendors" and support companies combined. It's a
powerfull argument.
Just because something is open source, does not make it good.
The Linux kernel is a great example. Linux was around since 1991 and it
wasn't until 4 or 5 years later that it became reliable enough to run a
server on it for real use. Even then, Red Hat's policy, which everyone
copied, of a major distribution every six months to keep the name in the
press and after the IPO, the stock prices up, did more harm than good.
Another which I won't name here because I'm occasionaly trying to raise
money for a company to produce a well designed, well tested and well
supported proprietary alternative, requires a massive investment in
hardware for a system the needs to be rebooted several times a week, if
not daily.
IMHO the system was written as an exercize in "fancy" coding, and to
sell hardware, not to be a product that your company relies upon. A complete
resdesign is necessary and there is no way that I can see to raise the
$1m-$2m to develop and support the software until the company becomes
profitable, with an open source product.
These are the real battles one has to fight convincing people to use
open source software. The product not only has to work, but it has to work
well and continue to work.
I would not try to fight examples like this, IMHO it makes more sense
to show what you are offering is well supported, reliable and works well,
not that it's cheaper.
Geoff.
-- Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel gsm_at_mendelson.com N3OWJ/4X1GM IL Voice: (07)-7424-1667 IL Fax: 972-2-648-1443 U.S. Voice: 1-215-821-1838 The trouble with being a futurist is that when people get around to believing you, it's too late. We lost. Google 2,000,000:Hams 0. ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to linux-il-request_at_linux.org.il with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail linux-il-request_at_linux.org.il
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