Dear friend, You would have done us a great favour had you brought out the linkage between the Gartner analyst Michael Silver and Microsoft Inc. Loooking at the entire arguments, one can only see the conclusions of Silver, based on 'assumptions' rather than doing any concrete study.
On issues like 'cost', the information in our domain was that Microsoft's spokesmen used to initially argue that 'with peanuts, you get monkeys'. When this argument got few takers, they changed the argument to 'a free puppy would need a dog's food later'. Studying the failure of this argument, it appears that Microsoft has finally decided to argue that 'this OS is more costly'. How does one draw a bottom line then ?
Surveys at http://www.netcraft.com/survey show a different curve for Free Software or other open source products, when compared to the proprietary ones. Why does Silver avoid such results ?
I had done a research on the usage of GNU Linux and other non-Microsoft OSes by Microsoft Inc, itself and found that at least 44 portals of Microsoft Inc, of various languages, were using them. This was in August 2001. A portion of this picture, that was available then at the Netcraft's site was captured and published in a handbook that was later widely circulated amongst the local bodies of Kerala.
Silver might be forced to 'dream' after being paid to bring out a convincing article, but sadly it misses the target.
I have studied at least one such case in history, where Thomas Edison had brought out similar arguments about the ill effects of 'alternating current', in a bid to promote his 'direct current' (through his corporate venture), when the usages of electricity for domestic purposes was setting off course in US. What happened eventually is before all of us to see. Perhaps Bill Gates and his men, could become more wiser learning from the fate of Thomas Edison, than going in for such cheap tricks. These tricks would get exploded as time flies by, as with each 'flawed attempts at exposure', the entire exercise of 'duping' would be unearthed and less and less people would give an ear to it.
CK Raju
On Tuesday 06 May 2003 09:11 am, searchlight@sancharnet.in wrote:
STUDY: Linux Desktop Myths Exploded
By James Maguire NewsFactor Network May 05, 2003 http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/21431.html
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