Re: [ossig] how true is this?

[cdemarco@xxxxxxxxxxx]

On Tue, Nov 23, 2004 at 09:55:44PM -0800, Poh Yang Ming wrote:

> how true is this?

Perhaps  it's   100% true, perhaps  100% lies.    Certainly this  is a
Microsoft advertisement which it paid  some marketing person to write,
and is from the point-of-view of a dissatisfied  Linux user who is not
likely to  give glowing accolades to Linux.   So while Thong  paints a
sad  picture  of    his    experience,      we must    ignore      the
Linux-bad-Windows-good message (what  else   do you expect from   a MS
marketing piece?) and focus on the few objective facts we're given:


  "The  company engaged a freelance  Linux service  provider to set up
  the system."

Since we don't know who this "freelance ...  provider" is, we can only
speculate as to his   competency and/or honesty.    But as a rule   of
thumb, a business   will not generally  hire a  freelance  lawyer or a
freelance plumber,  the job will  go  to somebody with an  established
business, somebody  who's staked his income on  his ability to provide
quality work.   I can imagine  many other scenarios where somebody has
hired a freelance consultant and gotten bitten by the quality of work.


  "At a rate of RM250 per visit, that works out to RM6,000 a year. And
  that figure  would have  been  higher if we had  engaged established
  Linux services companies rather than freelancers," he adds.

Switching control variables in our experiment, are  we?  You can fault
your "freelancers" for bad work, or  your "service companies" for high
prices,  but you can't  mix-n-match.  While it's technically true that
"250/visit  = 6000/year; therefore   increasing $/visit would increase
$/year",  it's  possible  that visits/year  will   *decrease*.  Hire a
better  consultant next  time;  don't blame Sony  if  your teenage son
can't fix the Playstation.


  "Like most SMEs, Peng Hong Hardware is not big enough  to hire an IT
  specialist. "...it is important  to have a user-friendly IT platform
  which does not require extensive technical support," says Thong."

1.  So  Thong is himself a "freelance"  IT specialist.  Let's  ask our
small-business  owner  friends (Tze Meng?     Raja Iskandar?)  whether
they'd try to, say, re-wire their office for extra  power outlets.  If
you DIY some critical aspect of your business, about which you have no
special or professional training, you're  asking for trouble.  Like it
or not, if you  want quality work  (and if you're riding your business
on something, you should care enough to  get quality), you have to pay
for it.

2.    RH9 is    *not* a   "user-friendly   IT  platform",   it   is  a
general-purpose OS.  MS  WSMB is *not*  a general-purpose OS, it is an
appliance  designed to provide very   specific functionality to a very
specific market.  Comparing apples and durian.


  "significant  Linux deployment or total switch  from Windows to Linux
  would be three to four times more expensive and  take three times as
  long to deploy  as an upgrade from  one version of  Windows to newer
  Windows releases."

Now we see who  this advertisement is targetting  -  the lazy and  the
stupid.  Why do  I bother dissecting the  ad any further?  Of *COURSE*
migration  costs to    Linux  are higher,  that's  why   it's called a
"migration" and not an "upgrade".  <SIGH>


  "[Linux vendors] have  begun charging  hefty premiums for  must-have
  items such as technical service  and support, product warranties and
  licensing indemnification."

This  is just getting silly.   When was the last  time MS  (or Sun, or
IBM, or fscking Proton Edar) gave you free tech support?


  "Thong was also unaware that Red Hat 9  was an "end of life" product
  which was no longer supported  in terms of security alerts, patches,
  bug-fixes or enhancements.  "The  reseller did not  tell us  that we
  were running a Linux OS which is not supported anymore.""

Then sue the incompetent fool, or next time don't run your business on
shit you buy   from some guy  standing  on a  street  corner holding a
cardboard sign reading "Kompyoouter Speshalist".


-- 
% You are in a maze of twisty passages, all alike.
Christopher DeMarco <cdemarco@fastmail.fm>          
PGP public key ID 0x2E76CF5C @ pgp.mit.edu
+6012 232 2106

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