[Am-info] Bill Gates has just learnt the best things in life are free

[Erick Andrews]

Interesting...coming from a major fishwrapper:

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http://www.observer.co.uk/business/story/0,6903,841431,00.html

John Naughton   Sunday November 17, 2002     The Observer 

My modest proposal that people should boycott Microsoft products
brought in some despairing emails on the lines of 'yes, but how
can we?'

'Get real', wrote one exasperated reader.  'My company is locked
into Windows.  We circulate draft documents in
Microsoft-proprietary formats.  Expenses claims are done via Excel
sheets, etc.  There just isn't an alternative.'

Wrong.  Of course there are people who need the more arcane
features built into Microsoft Word and Excel, but the vast
majority of users employ less than 5 per cent of those facilities.
For them, the open source (ie, free) OpenOffice package would be
more than adequate.  And those readers who felt that open source
software is too technical for them might be surprised to learn
that Evesham - a High Street computer retailer - now sells a PC
with Linux and OpenOffice pre-installed for œ250, including VAT.

But do not take my word for the superiority of open source
software.  After all, I am notoriously biased.  Instead pay
attention to its most persuasive advocate - Microsoft.

Eh?  Well, Bill Gates and his boys are increasingly hysterical
about open source software.  And the more agitated they become,
the more corporations and governments pay attention to the
pestilential stuff.  After all, if Gates is worked up about it
then there must be something in it.

This process started in November 1998 when an internal Microsoft
report - dubbed 'the Halloween Memo' because of its publication
date - was leaked on the internet.  It showed that Microsoft was
concerned about the threat posed by Linux to both the company's
server software and to its business model.  Up to then, most
corporate executives had probably never heard of Linux.  But the
realisation that Gates & Co took it seriously made everybody sit
up.  IT managers began to ask their techies about this free stuff,
and then to sanction cautious experiments with it.

As the bandwagon started to roll, the boys at Redmond became
seriously alarmed.  They embarked on an elaborate campaign of
propaganda and disinformation about open source software -
attacking its underlying philosophy as communistic and even
anti-American, and its licensing system as a pernicious, 'viral'
destroyer of intellectual property rights.

They also went on a counter-offensive of their own with the
Microsoft 'shared source' initiative.  This is a scheme under
which favoured organisations would be allowed to inspect Microsoft
source code (but not, of course, to alter it in the way open
source software licenses permit).

Now it turns out the whole strategy has backfired.  How do we
know?  Because there's been a leak of another internal Microsoft
report (see Footnotes link for details).  Here are the key points:

ú Familiarity with, and acceptability of, open source software
(OSS) and Linux is 'high across geographies and audiences'.

ú The two main reasons for preferring open source are its low
'total cost of ownership' (TCO) and the fact that it provides an
alternative to Microsoft.

ú Nobody's heard of Microsoft's shared source initiative.

ú Black propaganda doesn't work.  Or, in MS-speak:  'Messages that
criticise OSS, Linux, and the Gnu Public License (GPL) are NOT
effective.'

The report concludes that 'those who are familiar with OSS and
Linux are favorably predisposed towards them...  We can assume
[sic] that in the majority of cases this reported "favorability"
is more emotional than it is rational.  Given this context, we
should not expect rational arguments focused on undermining
support for OSS, Linux and the GPL to perform well.

'In the short term, then, Microsoft should avoid criticising OSS
and Linux directly, continue to develop and aim to eventually win
the TCO argument, and focus on delivering positive Shared Source
messages that contain transparent, audience specific proof
points.'

Well, you have to give them full marks for effort.

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-- 
Erick Andrews