Vendor Lock-in is far from weasel (your words) and more about expensive, costly, prohibitive, limiting, restricted, etc...
Yes, I called it a weasel word, because it *IS* a weasel word. Please explain to me how buying a Microsoft product is more "prohibitive, limiting, restricted, etc." without using the "Well if Microsoft goes out of business tomorrow, and suddenly every copy of Windows and Office and SQL server stops working, you'll be totally screwed" fairies-and-moondust argument.
What part of M$ TCO being infinite, unending, forever don't you understand.
Oh, I see - you must have missed the part where I explained that the argument is a fucking ridiculous pedantic claim because:
1) Linux requires ongoing support and maintenance of hardware & systems, just like Windows.
2) MSFT licensing is a very small component of the TCO of any computer system;
So by that, if you want to claim Microsoft TCO is "infinite," well then, so is Linux's. TCO is not just "what you spend to get a copy of the software," and you're an idiot if you don't understand that, or a liar if you do.
Allowing your business and IT budget to get hi-jacked by another business unit is poor management on your part. Will probably cost you your best people over time, thus you end up with staffing problems as well...that was real smart, not. Yet you will allow an outside company to vendor lock your IT budget in. Why am I wasting my time, you are not making any sense. Good financial management means you minimize your variable costs and mitigate your business risk as much as possible. Microsoft's business model prevents any and all attempts at this, whether you acknowledge it or not.
1) Linux requires ongoing support and maintenance of hardware & systems, just like Windows.
I did see how in your words, the argument is a fucking ridiculous pedantic claim, your argument was, so I ignored that and stayed with the facts.
Your #1 above is almost a wash for all operating system, LAN, WAN, network environments. No matter what you install you will need Systems Administrators who can keep everything running. Of course it is widely acknowledged, though I doubt you will be honest enough to own up to it, that Microsoft costs more (we disagree on how much more) to maintain then does Linux. Linux servers handle more per given instance then Windows. (we disagree on how much more) Linux can serve more customers in a shorter period of time. At least according to the customers that have left Windows servers for Linux servers. They do not migrate to Linux because its "free as in beer", but because it does the job. When a company (or government) migrates to Windows, its because of money, FEAR (the F in FUD), or some other marketing BS. And those that used it, plenty of reports in the news over the years, have acknowledged problems, slow downs and more...they said Microsoft simply would not handle their business load and needs.
Ironic that the only reason some companies stay with Microsoft is because of Outlook, Office or Excel. If you take the time to search through this one slashdot post, you will find replacements for all of those. The most absurd one was the FUD about Active Directory. Linux and Unix do NOT need active directory and we share files, data, software, databases, images, movies, etc...basically all content just fine when a user logs in to their account. I know you did not mention AD, others in this ./ post did, so I added it here. Linux does not NEED to mimic AD, thus no replacement for AD is needed. Though there are a couple, again they are here for those that just must have AD, of Linux replacements if you insist on using that stuff.
And those of us who have been system administrators in all environments know this to be a simple fact. The reality is even more skewed to Microsoft's disadvantage as a typical Linux/Unix Administrator handles more servers than the typical Windows System Administrator. Thus the company is getting way more bang for their buck running a Linux environment vs a Windows environment. That is simple fact. Again I do not expect you to acknowledge that fact...perhaps you do not know.
To add insult to injury you can run Linux on less iron then Windows as well...so in reality your hardware costs for Linux are way cheaper than Microsoft Server. Not only can you run Linux and save money, since Linux can handle more transactions, it works out cheaper (or possibly as an income generator, depending on what you company is serving, thus Linux makes all companies more money than Windows CAN!).
2) MSFT licensing is a very small component of the TCO of any computer system
As for #2, If you are paying for MSFT Licensing you are paying more than many are. Granted some Linux users are paying for support from Novell, IBM or other third party. A mistake in my opinion, but that too is based on actual experience. Many are NOT paying any licensing fees at all. I also acknowledge that the really good companies are giving back to the open source community, sending open source projects cash and allowing their developers to spend company time on improving the open source projects. Many are hosting the open source projects, thus the project gets free bandwidth and storage. The companies receive something for that time and money, they receive software that is improving over time. So I will not say there are NO licensing costs because Linux is free as in beer, but there is LESS LICENSING COSTs. There are always less licensing costs and the beauty of it, you can choose to pay for support, but you do not HAVE TO!
I disagree with you that the costs of the licensing is not significant. It most certainly is significant, and it is increasing over time, indefinitely, forever. At least you acknowledge the fact that you do NOT own the software. What do you think would happen if you did not pay Microsoft for that software? Why don't you try that with the next forced upgrade by Microsoft of your software, tell Microsoft that you do not want to pay them this time, you will catch them later and see how that works for you. Duh moment there.
In my IT environment, no company can put me out of business, either by stupidity, mistake or for lack of payment. And that is NOT an insignificant amount of business risk. A professional would acknowledge this simple fact.
As for being infinite, as long as you buy into the Microsoft business model, which many of us think is crazy in this day and age, your costs are ONLY GOING TO GO UP FOREVER. When they go down, let me know...better yet, let me know when they go down for a decade, as they have only increased for the last two decades. That is where the "infinity comment" comes from.
No one ever said Microsoft is going to go out of business. At least I did not. It will not, because there will be someone protecting their useless butt by paying them for nothing. Paying them for proprietary, vendor locked-in software. That too is a fact...there I acknowledged it.
The fact is you DO NOT HAVE to!
I talked to a friend of mine today, he was the System Administrator at one of the other five baby bells at the same time that I was a System Admin at another baby bell. I asked him if he ever and I mean ever successfully got help from the Microsoft support line. All the major telcos pay for support to Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, Sun, whoever...just a fact of life for that industry. They need someone to blame in my opinion and experience. Its what you would expect from a "Mature" industry where they spend more time playing cover my A$$, than innovating and improving anything Not only did he acknowledge that he NEVER received an answer (that was my experience as well) he too often solved the problem himself (while still on the phone waiting on them to answer) by searching for answers in his internal database or searching the web. He did acknowledge that one time RedHat provided an answer for a problem on one of their CentOS servers. He used his RedHat Support number when the help desk learned the server in question was CentOS.
Even with IBM, and I have worked for IBM, so I have been on both ends there, though I was a developer for IBM, not a system administrator, most of the time we searched their help database for answers. The support contract to IBM was worth it because we had access to a functioning database that actually had solutions. In my experience, Microsoft was so busy covering their own butts, that more often than not their support database would NOT have the actual solution as that would be admitting they caused the problem to begin with.... I sincerely hope that mentality has changed, I would not know as I would not waste my time OR MONEY.
I was in the Industry when it was commonly believed that no one lost their job for recommending IBM.
I have heard that comment used for Oracle, Sun and Microsoft. I would suggest to you that today, that is no longer true. But perpetuate the myth if it makes you feel better.
So many myths are perpetuated by Microsoft, just makes them look less than what they use to be. No intelligent IT professional buys into the FUD any more. And Microsoft certainly spends money, updating Wikipedia with a pro-Microsoft slant. Paying (shills) contributors to multiple news websites to make sure the pro Microsoft message drowns out the negative news. All in all they are doing a great job at it as well. Some of us have enough experience to see through it. Its easy to ignore.
We have been immersed in FUD, and their Embrace, Extend, Extinguish strategy since they started as a company. We do not expect them to change any more than we are going to be stupid enough to be sucked into it. We have simply heard it all before, pathetic.
And Yes I wish I would have bought stock back in the day, but I would not buy it today, any short term gain is only going to be offset in a negative direction over time, but they will not go out of business. There I said it again.
I did have stock in AT&T when the baby bells were broken up. At least I picked a winner there.
Every business I worked for, managed and owned expected some return on their investment, even in IT...so owning something gives you a return, perhaps a small one, but still a return on your investment.
If you are buying computer systems, and expecting the ROI to come from "we own the software on these things," your company is doomed to failure. The ROI from IT comes from increased efficiency, scalability, and automation of your business processes. Not from capital expenditures on hardware that is depreciated over 3 years. There is no expectation of "return" on the purchase of the hardware, there is an expectation that the expense of purchasing the systems will be offset in decreased spending in other areas, or increased revenues as a result of purchasing the servers. NO company buys a new server and goes, "Man, we're gonna wait 3 years, and once the value of these things goes up, BAM! We'll have cornered the market."
Since when is it NOT financially sound to attempt to get a return on every investment?
Maybe you should expect a return on the hardware? Why not? Though I would not expect it to be too much. Here you can do yourself a favor as well. Purchase your hardware from Linux vendors ONLY, that way when Microsoft's new software will NOT run on that hardware (how did going to Windows Vista improve your IT budget by the way?) you know Linux will. Two of the best are ZaReason and System 76. Buy your hardware from them, run Windows if you want to, then when you can not any longer, you will be able to run Linux. No fake BIOS and hardware issues crippling your hardware and preventing it from running anything but Windows software. We know for fact that Foxconn, Intel, Nvidia and almost every BIOS software company has catered to Microsoft at the expense of all other operating systems including Linux. This too is fact. Fun when it is exposed along with internal Microsoft company memos and correspondence in court as Intels were.
Only you said that hardware was going to up, I too believe that is not going to happen. Nice, you made a funny.
