[Edu-sig] OT maybe re: Linux Servers

[Arthur]

This is a link to an Open Magazine article on the recent Yankee Group study
purporting to establish that:

"""
In large enterprises, a significant Linux deployment or shift from Windows
to Linux would be three to four times more expensive and take three times as
long to deploy as an upgrade [of Windows].
"""

http://www.open-mag.com/9483483279.shtml

The Yankee Group's study is publicized by Microsoft as "independent". 

In some sense I am sure it is, and in other senses...

So much of this stuff boils down to issues of semantics, study parameters,
etc.

And the Open Source community is goaded into making the wrong
counter-argument.  It is not non-sensical that converting operating systems
would be significantly more involved and expensive than upgrading an
existing operating system.  But if we assume that these businesses intend be
in business for the next 10 years, say, what is the TCO picture over that
kind of timeframe? The study doesn't purport to address that kind of issue.
It is a study doing nothing more than reiterating common sense, and
therefore a study with a foregone conclusion.  And Microsoft uses it out of
context as ammunition, implying things from it that are substantially beyond
its scope.

I frankly don't care much what operating systems run on the servers of the
Fortune 500.

And frankly think that Windows can be a sensible choice for many businesses.
But it is the methodologies and tactics here that frighten me.

I am convinced these are the kinds of tactics -  which boil down to bad and
abused science -  that are to be faced in questions in respect to technology
and education.  Except that I don't see anything on the horizon as powerful
as IBM offering a countervailing force.  Bleak picture.

Art