Microsoft 'Open Value Subscription' is None of the Above 202
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Define "Open" (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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The Prophet RMS is Suing (Score:5, Funny)
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:
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 /.
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Get a clue... the word open was around before "open source".
For some companies, a lease-like arrangement might make sense; it allows the firm to spread out the cost o
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Stallman is th
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Ladies and gentlement, I present, the case in point, who can't see the funny side of his own ass as he shows it in public. Give him a round of applause, he might not deserve it, but he needs it.
Except, of course, it's not his own ass, but ass of his dubious friend's presented as his own ass. RMS has plenty sense of humour (if you doubt, try visiting his personal webpage, I recommend reading his suggestion for taking revenge for 9/11), and I hope so do free software advocates. But when you confuse open source with free software and make fun of free software advocates as if they are open source advocates ... well, I guess that says more about who is an ass.
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Re:Define "Open" (Score:4, Funny)
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Because this is a CNet blogger, trying to jump on the Open Sauce bandwagon and get a kudo at the same time.
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I agree. This is not "open as in source", this is "open as in goatse [slashdot.org]" as are so many things microsoft does.
It's also not value as in "good monetary" but value as in "family values the likes of which compel me to fucking kill anyone who diverges from my ideal" and subscription as in "subsribe to my philosophy or feel the chair!"
This cnet hack is making a mountain out of a molehill.
Re:Define "Open" (Score:5, Insightful)
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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.
Ok, you've made your point about the word "open", but I take exception to your blatant disregard for the true meaning of "free". You seem to be describing pricing but you ignore the clear implication of the 4 freedoms of real estate:
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I don't have access to the blueprints. They are not on file anywhere. They are not available through the builder. They apparently don't exist anymore.
I can't redistribute any building permit. They are tied directly to my property and only my property.
I'm free to leave my property unlocke
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For your edification, he is referring to the four freedoms that RMS likes software to have.
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Interesting comparisons. Autos and houses are too expensive to be purchased upfront. Is Microsoft admitting as much regarding the cost of their software?
Don't forget that autos and houses get reposessed, but you get to keep the belongings you have inside them. Can the same be said for the information that is stored on an Exchange server? And the collection arm of Microsoft -- the Business Software Al
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I still think we can count on MS's choice of that word as an attempt to tap into the present-day "common" definition of "open" and (because of) open-source's good reputation.
No.
First, this is only 'common' usage within a small subset of the IT industry.
This licensing program is focused on the SMB market, and the MS Partners that service that market with IT services.
Small business owners and managers have never heard of open source, it doesnt mean to them what it does to you.
MS Partners have heard of open source, but they have this concept of words meaning different things in different contexts. See, the use of the words 'Open' and 'Value' in the Microsoft licensing prog
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The word 'open' is not copyrighted by the open source community. It has other meanings beyond your tiny limited world.
Please, tell me how this is "open"? After all, that is a marketing term MS used to describe this. You know, "open". So as an "SMB", I get "value" from this being an new "open" option?
Open is a term that has been used in Microsoft licensing programs for more than a decade.
It doesnt mean what you think it does.
What 'open' refers to here is an alternative to Select or other contractual-based pricing. Any business who needs to buy in small volume can buy on the Open program without having to sign a contract with
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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 going to bump gas mileage standards by some embarrassingly small increment at some future point in time.
It's all about the facade until you sign the receipt and call the product yours. Then you get to find that vast gulf between the sweet whispers of marke
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(I am sure that must be possible but I can't see the point)
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They work far less often than they used to and more often have a negative backlash now. For a company that is fighting it's negative image, things like this only serve to enforce that image and make them look like monopolists.
Consumers (especially in SMB) are not that dumb and they are seeing added expense in this day and age as something their wallets cannot endure. The more you tack on an expense, the more the wonder why they shouldn't get this
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That's funny, since Fortune Magazine apparently has MS rated as the 12th most admired company nationwide.
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/mostadmired/2007/top20/index.html [cnn.com]
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I'd be curious to know who they polled to come up with number 12 and how they even got that far up on the list. Probably only that far on money alone.
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polarizing (Score:2)
I'm sure that classifying Hillary Clinton as one of the most admired women in the world might also be true, in spite of the fact that she is loathed by so many. This is called "Polarizing" and has nothing to do with the merits of either viewpoint.
This is the problem with XOR logic that so prevails our culture. I'm sorry, but MS is both well admired and well loathed. Because it is one (loathed / admired
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Being an expert on marketing (I've seen some adverts and watched a Bill Hicks DVD) I'd say that marketers are the new lawyers.
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And it;'s not even an actual lease (Score:3, Insightful)
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 (Score:4, Informative)
Please, give me your definition of lease, and then explain to me if RentACenter offers some kind of tax advantage.
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Marketers... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Marketers... (Score:5, Funny)
Mmmmm...Delicious babies...
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Those cookies...they're not made from real girl scouts.
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and by ashamed.... (Score:4, Insightful)
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 (Score:4, Funny)
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?
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Marketing *should* be about trying to find out what consumers want in order for the company to meet their needs. You know, the whole "customer driven business" thing... Of course now it's more about making the customer *believe* you're
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Sadly, most companies seem to be doing that today.
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Set,
OPEN your wallets!!!!
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Beer advertisers should be ashamed (Score:5, Funny)
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From the people who brought you (Score:5, Insightful)
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Same as mafia protects your health from damage for a fee.
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The Author Makes Assumptions... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Right. One of Microsoft's volume licensing plans is called "open licensing". I think "open" theoretically is referring to the ability to add any number of licenses at any time... or something like that. Not sure, never much thought about it before.
But whatever this use of the word "open" is, it isn't new to Microsoft.
Open doesn't mean Open Source (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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Just putting Open in the title associates it with such good things as OSS, open business practices, etc.
It makes you think that they are being honest and, well, 'Open'. Or that it is Open to all.
Open is a very hot word right now. Value has always been a hot word, and in some specific situations Subscription can be a hot word. Open is the big buzzword in here, and it is there to associate their product with things like Open Source products, which are very hot right now.
I
Re:Open doesn't mean Open Source (Score:4, Insightful)
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"value" as in cheaper than a normal purchase, and much better than buying the current version and having another one come out next year that you regret not waiting for
"subscription" doesn't need explanation.
This might be broading the customers that can opt in for the program, but we've had something pretty similar for years in my industry (healthcare). I think they changed the n
Not as bad as it seems, but not for everyone. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Wouldn't a company of the size and type to need such expensive software be spending that much in a couple week's payroll? I am serious here.
People griped about the cost of Adobe's new software too, but I think the target market would call that as being paid by a long weekend's project a
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Perhaps, but a couple of weeks' payroll isn't a trivial amount!!! What seems odd, though, is that Microsoft doesn't really have much expensive software. This program seems more appropriate to a CAD vendor than to Excel and PowerPoint.
At any rate, the column is witless. I'm accustomed to teenagers who genuinely can't imagine that everyone doesn't use and pay for compute
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So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
If every lame and dishonest practice of marketing groups were to be published on
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... (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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MS marketing can be scarier than horror films. (Score:2)
That makes me laugh. I agree, of course. There are a LOT of technical companies with marketing companies that are out of touch with the reality of their business, and don't even seem to want to be in touch.
If you want to be a little scared, you can watch horror films. But if you want to be really, really deeply frightened, hang around some Microsoft marketing efforts. There are people who have turned themselves into drones.
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In related news (Score:2)
Sorry that's just the first thing that came to mind when I saw "SMB" and I *still* haven't bothered to find out what it actually stands for in the context of TFA.
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Well (Score:5, Funny)
Microsoft does use Subscription all the time (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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"open" (Score:2)
They can't (Score:3, Funny)
The two subspecies that are parasitic on businesses, marketoids and attournasaurus, are able to function in large part because they *don't* feel shame. Their conscience has been eaten away by malignant greedanoma. The same could be said of many politicians, but politics and business are symbiotic with each other. They gang up to prey on the vast herds of sheeple that, contrary to nature's way, continually run *towards* the predators, and attract their attention by throwing money at them for any reason the predators invent.
Welcome to Earth. Loonie bin to the universe.
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"on second thought, lets not go there. it is a silly place."
(apologies to 'MP & holy grail')
Move along, there's nothing to see here! (Score:5, Informative)
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.
motivation (Score:2)
Now why would somebody just quote two lines of your post and not comment on it at all?
What are the facts here? (Score:2)
zomg (Score:2)
Marketing? Dishonest?
I'm shocked, shocked.
Sigh.
"Open" is the "turbo" of the 2000s. Marketing latches onto "hot" memes like walleyes hitting jigs in spring. They can't help it. It's instinctive.
Objective (or subjective) truthfulness or applicability is irrelevant. If you can hand-wave and retrofit a coherent explanation onto the appropriation of a piece of mindshare, all the better. But that's optional.
I guess the real story here is that a /. submitter is insufficiently jaded for the real world. And the edit
Ha ha (Score:2)
SMB (Score:2, Funny)
Lame and dishonest? (Score:2)
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doesn't it depend (Score:3, Informative)
It's hard to be ashamed ... (Score:2)
Lame Summary. (Score:3, Insightful)
According to some of my own research, in which I went to the following websites:
http://blogs.msdn.com/mssmallbiz/archive/2008/01/01/6933535.aspx [msdn.com]
http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/programs/open/openvalue.mspx [microsoft.com] (note, this site is confusing.)
http://www.sellsoft.ie/microsoft_osl.html [sellsoft.ie] (much better description, but third party site)
I found out that the whole Open Value Subscription program is essentially a third option for those seeking to purchase site licenses for Microsoft Software. This option would allow you to run Microsoft software for a three year period, after which you have three options:
1) Discontinue use of the software
2) Renew the subscription for three more years
3) Purchase the license outright (a.k.a. buy the right to run the software on a permanent basis on your computers.)
At first glance, this looks all fine to me. However, the only thing I'm worried about is what conditions might come with the license... will Microsoft attempt to force organizations to upgrade in order to renew their subscriptions? (This would be a great way to force businesses to switch to Office 2007/Vista...)
Price ? (Score:2)
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When I hear the Linux kernel being referred to as "open source" software, I must admit, I don't really "believe that there is more to something than there really is" (whatever that means). When I hear Solar power as being "green", I sure as hell don't think the panels themselves will be a lovely shade of emerald. When I look at a biology textbook, I pretty much t
Re:SMB? Please define! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Considering how Microsoft treats its customers, it's obviously an acronym for "Suck My Balls."
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And if somewhere in that chain your licenses aren't legit, of course MS isn't going to hold you responsible. No BSA audits for you...oh, wait, you'd still be subject to those. But if you could prove you didn't know the licenses were bogus they might waive all the fines! Wo-ho! Lucky you!
Actually, you're missing the only good thing about the Genuine Advantage program - if you dob in the bastard that sold you the dodgy licenses, they give you free legit replacements for any pirated ones you got.
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Not on a Dvorak [wikipedia.org] keyboard layout, where L and S are vertically adjacent.
Back on topic, I must say "AOL!" to WED Fan's brilliant riposte [slashdot.org]. Microsoft (or any other sufficiently large corporation/government/religion/prairie dog town, for that matter) logs enough damnable acts without its enemies having to make up more.