Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 00:11:08 -0700 From: "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm@toybox.placo.com> To: "Mikel King" <mikel@ocsinternet.com>, <freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: RE: BSD, .Net comments - any reponse to this reasoning? Message-ID: <000001c10458$7f6149c0$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com> In-Reply-To: <NFBBJICOAOJNJHMCFMLMKEAACAAA.mikel@ocsinternet.com>
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>-----Original Message----- >From: owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG >[mailto:owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG]On Behalf Of Mikel King >Sent: Tuesday, July 03, 2001 7:22 PM >To: freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG >Subject: RE: BSD, .Net comments - any reponse to this reasoning? > > >I've been reading this perticlar thread for a while now, and have acurious >observations. > > I've been doing this for quite sometime now, and the >majority of clients >that I deal with could give a rat's ass about licensing, or operating >systems for that mater. All they care about is if they are able to work on >their data, in some sort of familiar application. > :-) Quite true - this is why the Software Publishers Association was formed, and when SPA publically disagreed with Microsoft, they broke from it and formed the BSA which does the same thing. It's an eternal battle for the software publishers to convince end users _to_ give a ratt's ass about licensing. I suspect that the fingerprinting/serialization/activation scheme that Windows XtraProfit will carry is going to convince quite a lot of clients to give quite a lot of shits about software licensing in quite a bit of hurry. What your seeing is the last sunset of the Age of Aquarius in PeeCee software. Up until now the market was subtly instructed to Pay No Attention To That Software License Behind The Curtain. We have 20 years of this and an entire generation has grown up believing that PC software is freely copyable and licensing is this academic discussion to be ignored. I see this doublespeak all the time when people start yapping about the "true cost of Windows" and comparing a site of Winblows systems to a site of something else, and always coming up with Windows the cheapest thing. Of course it's the cheapest thing, dammit, if 3/4 of the installs are pirated copies and your desktop support people can nuke and repave with impunity. > It's not to say that the typical enduser is stupid, I've >just observed that >they unlike most of us, do not care. If Microsoft continues with their subscription/serialization plans like they are threatening, then this is going to change quicker than you think. I've been foruntae enough to have a >variety of machines available and have recently conduct a little experiment >with some of my clients where I let them use my fBSD laptop to access their >windows apps via citrix...after a few minor bumps whalha they were rather >proficient (well from an enduser stand point anyway). > > So where am I going with this tangent? Truthfully I am not exactly >sure...but I know that StarOffice is very good albeit a bit slow, and of >course WP is pretty good as well. The problem is I haven't had much luck >convincing the average windows user to switch over (I am still >working on it >though...) Is it possible that this .NET thing could give BSD a chance to >have that one thing that even linux does not? > No, there's no question that .NET is just another "Embrace and Extend" attempt by Microsoft to lock an enterprise site into Windows. I think that you have to give it a few years more. Eventually the day will come where the large enterprise is going to have to make a choice: either run Windows and every year pay a $100-per-desktop fee to Microsoft, or run Linux/FreeBSD and give up the ability of the end user to randomly-loaded, unapproved Windows software on their desktop. For many of the largest corporations, they are already actively seeking ways to force a "standard" desktop configuration out to all employees, that the employees cannot tamper with. But, there is a lot of resistance from the userbase because they have had 10 years of being able to RF their systems however they please. This is a political problem and once the ability to load illegal copies of Windows software with impunity is taken away, the big corporations are going to be a lot more interested in forcing their users out of the "general purpose desktop computer" mode because it will literally save them millions and millions of dollars in software licensing fees. > I am also left wondering if it is possible that through >their assymilation >of Hotmail they learned an ounce of respect for fBSD? > They already had that respect - the Windows Socket specification is just a copy of the BSD IP sockets spec. What I think they learned with Hotmail is that there's some jobs that the law of diminishing returns dictates Windows will never be used. It's been mentioned that they kept the FreeBSD systems because of BIND. Well, NT and 2K can do nameserving too - but it would take a prodigious amount of effort from Microsoft to optimize the 2K nameserver to get the performance they needed. Why spend all that money on 2K to do that when it's already done for you on FreeBSD? It's not like there's a shitpile of Windows customers that are buying 2K just to field nameservers, after all. It was different for optimizing the Windows webserver - there's tons of people buying Winblows systems to run webservers, so they concentrated on what their customers wanted to be doing. > > Ok I must go and fsck my brain for a bit, it's been a >rather long day... > You really need to .sig that line. ;-) Ted Mittelstaedt tedm@toybox.placo.com Author of: The FreeBSD Corporate Networker's Guide Book website: http://www.freebsd-corp-net-guide.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
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