Microsoft 'Open Value Subscription' is None of the Above

daveofdoom writes "This week Microsoft launched an SMB program that contains the words 'open', 'value' and 'subscription', none of which are common to Microsoft products, culture, or marketing. Digging in a bit I found myself confused not only by what the program portends to be but why it would be called 'Open Value Subscription' unless they were hoping to leverage buzzwords and concepts related to open source and SaaS (software as a service). It's such lame and dishonest branding the marketing group should be ashamed."

Sure

It's such lame and dishonest branding the marketing group should be ashamed.

I'm sure they will be ashamed all the way to the bank. Let's face it, Microsoft marketing does these things because they work, as proven by Microsoft's success.

Define "Open"

So, if it's not used like "Open Source", then it's a hijacking of the term? Come on. That's a pretty big stretch.

My understanding is that this program allows SMB's to become license-compliant while limiting their initial capital outlay, i.e., more pay as you go than all up front.

I really fail to understand why this CNet blogger has a bug up his butt over this.

The Prophet RMS is Suing

So, if it's not used like "Open Source", then it's a hijacking of the term?

Microsoft's use of the word 'Open' for something that is not 'open source', even though they weren't refering to 'open source' is against the intent of the word 'open' and the Prophet Richard M. Stallman, hallowed by His name, peace be unto his greasey smelly armpits, has declared any use of the word 'open' must refer to 'open source' (making the word 'source' redundant) and therefor must also come under GPL 3, a.k.a. the Holy Words of the Prophet, may God smite the toes of the unbelievers.

RMS, the Lord is with the mites that inhabit his beard, is pursuing:

• Any retailer who puts the sign 'Open' in their front window.
• Any product that includes instructions about how 'open' said product.
• Hunters and licensing agencies for 'Open' season.
• Corporations who have benefit 'open' enrollement.

Remember, if Microsoft uses the word 'Open', we must automatically, and by the word of the Prophet, a thousand blessings on his klingons, assume they are refering to 'open source' and their own twisted interpretation.

We must also make a point to find some way to daily point out how everything Microsoft and Bill Gates does is evil, and post it to /.

Re:Define "Open"

Open... as in goatse.

Re:Define "Open"

My God, you act as if Microsoft invented this. Auto dealers talk about "open pricing options." Real estate agents hold "open houses" all the time -- but guess what, you can't just stay there for free! Seriously, some days it's like a frickin' nursery around here. Adjust your diapers and move on.

Re:

Agreed...

It's not much different from the litany of automakers proclaiming long and loud about how they're suddenly committed to the Environment, yet behind the scenes will whine and complain (and lobby their asses off) when the the US gov't says it's go

And it;'s not even an actual lease

That's so lame. If they actually leased the software, there'd be a potential tax advantage for the buyer. But no...

Re:And it;'s not even an actual lease

Use of property for a fixed amount of time is not a lease? The program described just that. At the end of the lease you can 1) sign up for a new term 2) buy out the lease to own the software or 3) end it all.

Please, give me your definition of lease, and then explain to me if RentACenter offers some kind of tax advantage.

Marketers...

...wouldn't be ashamed labeling sulfuric acid "delicious baby formula." You're barking up the wrong tree with that one.

Re:Marketers...

...wouldn't be ashamed labeling sulfuric acid "delicious baby formula." You're barking up the wrong tree with that one.

Mmmmm...Delicious babies...

and by ashamed....

I mean, proud.

Seriously, what is a marketing department for, if not to bamboozle people into buying your product who otherwise would not do so?

Obligatory Bill Hicks diatribe on Marketing

By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself.

No, no, no it's just a little thought. I'm just trying to plant seeds. Maybe one day, they'll take root - I don't know. You try, you do what you can. Kill yourself.

Seriously though, if you are, do.

Aaah, no really, there's no rationalisation for what you do and you are Satan's little helpers. Okay - kill yourself - seriously. You are the ruiner of all things good, seriously. No this is not a joke, you're going, "there's going to be a joke coming," there's no fucking joke coming. You are Satan's spawn filling the world with bile and garbage. You are fucked and you are fucking us. Kill yourself. It's the only way to save your fucking soul, kill yourself.

Planting seeds. I know all the marketing people are going, "he's doing a joke..." there's no joke here whatsoever. Suck a tail-pipe, fucking hang yourself, borrow a gun from a Yank friend - I don't care how you do it. Rid the world of your evil fucking makinations. Machi... Whatever, you know what I mean.

I know what all the marketing people are thinking right now too, "Oh, you know what Bill's doing, he's going for that anti-marketing dollar. That's a good market, he's very smart."

Oh man, I am not doing that. You fucking evil scumbags!

"Ooh, you know what Bill's doing now, he's going for the righteous indignation dollar. That's a big dollar. A lot of people are feeling that indignation. We've done research - huge market. He's doing a good thing."

Godammit, I'm not doing that, you scum-bags! Quit putting a godamm dollar sign on every fucking thing on this planet!

"Ooh, the anger dollar. Huge. Huge in times of recession. Giant market, Bill's very bright to do that."

God, I'm just caught in a fucking web.

"Ooh the trapped dollar, big dollar, huge dollar. Good market - look at our research. We see that many people feel trapped. If we play to that and then separate them into the trapped dollar..."

How do you live like that? And I bet you sleep like fucking babies at night, don't you?

"What didya do today honey?"

"Oh, we made ah, we made ah arsenic a childhood food now, goodnight." [snores] "Yeah we just said you know is your baby really too loud? You know?" [snores] "Yeah, you know the mums will love it." [snores]

Sleep like fucking children, don't ya, this is your world isn't it?

Beer advertisers should be ashamed

I saw a commercial for beer on TV that featured a hunk in a hot tub surrounded by beautiful women. I tried drinking their product and I found myself fat, alone, and depressed at home watching reruns. The marketing department should be ashamed! Their product doesn't actually cause the things the marketing department suggests it does!

Re:

You're doing it wrong. YOU are supposed to provide large amounts of beer to the beautiful women; so that THEY think your fat, lonely and depressed self looks like the hunk on TV.

From the people who brought you

Windows Genuine Advantage! Because the advantage it brings is genuine and is most definitely not anything like false advertising.

The Author Makes Assumptions...

that this was to be tied somehow to F/OSS-like models.

From what I read on the MSDN site, there is no reference to any type of development, but more of a partner services sale structure.
It appears Dave Rosenberg is forcing a nefarious connection to support a column he wrote back in the summer of 2006.

Open doesn't mean Open Source

Honestly, learn to read. Just because they use the word Open in the title doesn't mean it's OSS.

It doesn't pretend to be open source, it doesn't mention open source anywhere in the press release. It's a licensing model for resellers.

Re:Open doesn't mean Open Source

Open isn't exactly new as a buzzword in the computing world. In 1991, DIGITAL implemented the (open) POSIX specification on VMS and branded it as OpenVMS. Back then, 'open source' wasn't a term that anyone had heard of. The GNU people had been doing Free Software for a good years, but the term 'open source' did not become popular until around 1998, and gained acceptance in part because open standards were already a buzzword.

Not as bad as it seems, but not for everyone.

Consider this case. Say you're a company that needs to invest in 200 copies of a high-end piece of software that costs $5000 a seat. You're now looking down the mouth of a $1,000,000 bill that needs to be paid off in 30 days. This can be upsetting to your accounting folks. Now consider the lease option. Microsoft basically lets you finance your software licenses at a cost of something on the order of $10,000 a month, which is much more palatable for your accountants to manage throughout the year. Best part is, if you hire an additional 50 workers, you can just bump up the lease instead of paying out another increment of $250k.

Also, sometimes leasing things works out more favorably than owning in accounting.

This type of licensing makes no sense for personal use or small quantities of licenses, but on a large scale, there are potential benefits for customers over paying the full price up front.

So what?

It's such lame and dishonest branding the marketing group should be ashamed.

If every lame and dishonest practice of marketing groups were to be published on /. we'd be under an avalanche.

This isn't news for nerds. This isn't stuff that matters. Total nitwits are paid to come up with this crap, imho it doesn't deserve any additional coverage.

That's not going to do it...

It's such lame and dishonest branding the marketing group should be ashamed.

As someone who writes advertisements for a living, let me assure that it will take far more than being accused of lameness and dishonesty to shame a marketing group.

Actually, lameness and dishonesty are generally marks of distinction in the advertising world. In fact, just the other day my creative director was telling me, "What is this crap?! It's neither lame nor dishonest!"

Seriously though, you can't expect anything beyond the most vague truthiness from marketing. Even the FTC's guidelines [ftc.gov] for truth in advertising are brilliantly open for interpretation.

While I'm all for a good Microsoft Bashing Session, just about every marketing department everywhere could be pinned for this type of "deceptive" practice.

Well

The first suggestion was "Anal-rape ball-and-chain vendor-lockin" but that just didn't have the same ring. The focus groups suggested only about a quarter of the current customer base would buy into the project with that name.

Microsoft does use Subscription all the time

Microsoft has referred to their MSDN stuff as a subscription, or at least used to. I dunno, I weened myself off the redmond teat a long time ago and no longer have to deal with their crappy products.

And now that I think about it, Value is a pretty normal thing to put in the name of something. So that leaves us with Open, and if you read what the thing actually is, a slightly flexible account without exact license numbers on it, that actually makes some sense.

In other words, this is a pretty normal product name, a guy going off in a post for no reason to abuse Microsoft when there are plenty of GOOD reasons to abuse Microsoft, and an editor who really, really can't tell what is news.

Move along, there's nothing to see here!

I'm guessing that the submitter is a Linux guy looking to make some anti-Microsoft noise on a slow news day. Why?

Digging in a bit I found myself confused not only by what the program portends to be but why it would be called it 'Open Value Subscription' unless they were hoping to leverage buzzwords and concepts related to open source and SaaS (software as a service).

It's not an attempt to trade on buzzwords and concepts related to Open Source and SaaS. Microsoft has used the term "Open" for years in their licensing programs (at least a decade that I'm aware of).

For years there have been three main categories of volume licenses. They are "Open" (for small businesses who only buy a handful of licenses at a time), "Select" (for large businesses with higher purchasing requirements) and "Enterprise" (for the largest organizations). As you move up the tiers the per-license cost gets lower and the associated benefits increase. For example, if you have an Open license you are expected to buy a license before deploying software. With the higher level agreements you are required to perform a regular "true-up" where you audit the number of licenses in use, compare that count to the number of licenses you own, and then buy enough to cover the gap. At the highest level you are only required to true-up annually. As you can imagine, this makes it a lot more difficult for the BSA to come in and claim that you're using unlicensed software.

The "Value" part of the name refers to features that are included with the volume license plans, and the actual "Value" increases as you move up the tiers. "Value" benefits can include a set number of Microsoft Consulting hours per year, a number of "free" support incidents, and a number of units of training on Microsoft products. Some even include vouchers for Microsoft certification exams.

The "Subscription" part of the name refers to the fact that you are paying an annual licensing fee. This used to be simply called Software Assurance, but nobody was buying it. Instead they started bundling more benefits and called it what it is, an annual subscription.

So there's no mystery there, and certainly nobody trying to trade on the good names of "Open Source" and "SaaS."

I just love how people who know nothing about Microsoft other than "I'm supposed to hate them" are always jumping to the most nefarious conclusions based on the most flimsy and innocuous of evidence.

Re:SMB? Please define!

The summary uses the acronym "SMB", which is used in TFA...At no point does anyone define this term or give enough contextual clues for it to be obvious...it must mean "small and medium business"...

I agree with your points and the lack of defining what SMB means had me perplexed as well. I usually associate SMB with the Samba project (server message block). The problem is that the submitter and the author of the original article are both techno-dweebs. They therefore assume that everyone is clairvoyant, knows everything that they know and are capable of reading their minds. In a perfect world, Slashdot would've rejected the submission for failing to clarify what "SMB" means.