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Re: Mark Shuttleworth Spills Money to Increase Linux Adoption

On Dec 27, 10:36 pm, "DFS" <nospam@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
> AHappyCamper wrote:
> > Some large parts of the 'charity' donations are more like bribes such
> > as the 'donation' to India's Ministies of Health and Education, when
> > they had adapted GNU/Linux for all government programs.
>
> How come none of your wild-ass 'facts' - not one, ever - are backed up by
> supporting links?  In case you're emulating RexBallard, you should
> understand he's no role model.

No, you wouldn't want to become to good at providing well-reasoned
arguments in favor of Linux, and good plausable explanations of
Microsoft's tactics to prevent the adoption of Linux.  After all, that
would make you a primary target, you might even displace me as
"Undesirable Number One" in Microsoft's "hit list".

There isn't a great deal of evidence to prove inconclusively that
Microsoft attempted to use financial donations or incentives to
influence political leaders, especially since Microsoft demands  non-
disclosure agreements for even such trivial matters as employment
applications.

On the other hand, there do seem to be a LOT of "Coincidences".  There
seem to be a LOT of episodes where a government official recommends a
formal policy of choosing Open Source and/or Linux based technologies,
such as Open Document Format, Linux PCs, or even Linux compatibility
as a procurement requirement or preference.  This is usually followed
by visits from Microsoft's TOP executives, in a private meeting under
terms of strict nondisclosure, followed by a reversal in policy, and
possibly the resignation of the official recommending the Open Source
and/or Linux policy.

> > Then, there is the Bill and Melinda Gates 'foundation' donations.
>
> What about them?  And why is foundation in quotes, moron?  That Foundation
> does more in one year to help the world's developing countries than
> 1,000,000 cheap freeloaders distributing free crapware will ever do.

The Gates Foundation does do some really great things, I am especially
impressed with their willingness to help innoculate hundreds of
millions of children against the diseases that kill almost that many
children every year.   Inoculations that are REQUIRED in this country.

On the other hand, Bill Gates, and the Gates Foundation were among
those implicated during the Abramhov influence peddling
investigation.  It seems that Gates has been making a number of
"Charitable Donations" to charities which were little more than money
laundering operations for the Republican Party, and key Republican
Candidates.  To be fair, however, many of those who were making these
donations had no idea that the "Children's Foundation" spent less than
1% of it's funds providing a camp for kids, and almost all of it's
funds on "Family Values" related "Freedom of Speech" public service
announcements, often including the names of specific Democrats who
were to be targeted in the next election.  Since the ads were
"general" in nature, they weren't regulated by "Political Action
Committeee" rules and accountability.

I'm sure that when Tom DeLey reccomended this charity in his
conversations with Bill Gates, and their discussions of the Antitrust
activities and the Bush Administration handling of the case, that it
never occurred to Bill Gates that this marvelous "Charity" might be a
form of bribery.  I'm sure that Bill Gates thought he was providing a
home for millions of children living in orphanages and homeless
shelters.

> > What we would like to hear is that he gave several billion to a
> > charity, such as the Red Cross, Red Crescent, or even the Salvation
> > Army, which he sued this millennium for $4.6million for restoring old
> > systems with the M$ OS they originally shipped with, and keeping
> > millions of systems out of the land fill.
>
> Let's see some proof of this 'lawsuit'.  I don't believe you.

I'm not sure that he "sued" them.  I believe he just offered them a
deal they couldn't refuse.  Keep in mind that with Windows 98, Windows
2000, and Windows XP, the OEM purchases bulk quantities of licenses
which allow them to put Windows on all of the machines they sell.
Typically they buy about 20% more than they need,
(see http://antitrust.slated.org/www.iowaconsumercase.org/011607/0000/PX00402.pdf
)

When a corporation purchases these computers, they can either use the
OEM licenses, and use the correct registration key each time the
computer needs to be re-imaged, or they can REPLACE the OEM license
with a Volume Managed License.  The Corporation purchase these Volume
Managed Licenses in bulk, usually enough for every employee, plus up
to 20% extra, depending on how many non-computer using employees there
are.  This allows the company to use a single license manager server
to validate all of the licenses.

This is usually coupled with a support package which often includes
support for Windows, Office, Project, Visio, and other Microsoft
applications, similar to the support offered by the Microsoft
Developer Network.  The prices are undisclosed, but have been rumored
to range anywhere from $50 per employee per year to $150 per employee
per MONTH, depending on service levels, applications covered, volume
discounts, and other "negotiating factors" (threat of switching to
Linux seems to drop the price quite drastically).

The point is that when the corporation switches to the Volume Managed
License, this VOIDS the original OEM license.  Normally, the
corporation is required to purchase machines that have the OEM license
in order to qualify for the Volume Managed Licenses, but once the
machines are switched, the OEM licenses are no longer valid.

Most corporations use the PCs for 2 to 4 years.  They are either
leased, and returned at the end of the lease, or they are purchased
and recycled at the end of their depreciation cycle.  To legally
recycle the machine, they usually have to pay recyclers up to $200 per
machine to disassemble the computer and dispose of it in an
environmentally safe way, or they can donate it to a charitable
organization, along with $10-$25 for shipping and handling.

The Charity computers can be donated to schools, Red Cross, or any
other worthy organization, but they no longer have a valid Windows
license (because they have been used with the corporate Volume
license).

However, as a result of various court settlements, and other good-will
gestures, Microsoft is willing to "donate" Windows licenses to these
worthy organizations, schools, and institutions, if they meet a few
requirements.  They have to provide the serial number of the machine,
this allows Microsoft to validate that the machine did at one time
have a legitimate OEM license.  They have to have status as a 501-C
non-profit organization, so that the "donations" can be tax
deductable, alternatively, they can be part of a government agency
that does not normally purchase computers or computer software - so
they can get the tax deduction.

If the 501-C corporation is giving the PC to a family, they have to
provide some information about the family as well, such as annual
income, immigration status, place of residence, and other demographic
information - to be sure that the computers are not being "donated" to
families who could otherwise afford to purchase their own computers.

If all of these requirements are met, Microsoft will donate Windows
licenses for these machines, but there is a modest "handling fee" of
around $5-10 per machine to handle the overhead of reactivating the
license for the serial number.  Normally, the charity gives Microsoft
credit for the donation equal to it's retail value.  So if Microsoft
gives the Red Cross 200 Windows XP Professional licenses, they get a
tax credit for a "donation" of "$60,000".  After all, they are losing
the revenue that could have been raised by selling that license to the
end-user or organization at full retail price.  Since these are not
OEMs, they do not qualify for OEM pricing.

Of course, if the charity or organization in question has several
thousand "White Box" machines that are running Linux and are being
used by 20-30 people per day, such as a public school classroom,
Microsoft will often waive the requirement for serial numbers, and
several other requirements.  After all, Microsoft's top directive is
to "Win Against Linux At ALL COSTS".

In many of these cases, Microsoft will attempt to issue these licenses
on an exclusionary basis, requiring terms that prevent the
installation of Linux and other Open Source Software, but this is
often a negotiating point, and is often a point given if the customer
is already satisfied with Linux.  However, there are usually some
nondisclosure and benchmarking restrictions which prevent these
organizations from declaring their love for Linux once they have
accepted the Windows licenses.

I've been getting a lot of this information from charities who have
wanted, or accepted Linux computers, or want to expand their
consumption of recycled computers.  When I start discussing how they
can get more access to additional "Linux Ready" computers, they start
explaining the restrictions of their terms with Microsoft.

I still give them the information they need.  After all, I am more
interested in getting computers into the hands of kids in the Ghettos
and Barios, the kids in the poorest parts of South America, Africa,
India, and Asia, and making sure that they can "bridge the technology
gap" if they want to, and less concerned with whether the computer
they get is running Linux or Windows.

The propblem usually arises when I'm talking to an organization that
wants $20 computers (which are typically 5-6 years old), but they want
to run the latest version of Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office in
their school or community center.  A computer made for Windows NT 4.0
isn't designed to support much more than 64 megabytes of RAM, even the
early XP machines were shipped with capacities of only 256 MB of RAM.
If they want Vista Business, Office 2007, and some good educational
programs, a machine made in 1997, or even 2001 isn't going to cut it.

But Dell has about 50 million of these older machines coming back from
lease return every year, and these machines run Linux perfectly.  Many
of them were "Linux Ready" when they were purchased, even those that
weren't usually have all of the devices supported by now.  Sure, you
might not want to turn on all the bells and whistles on KDE, you might
want to set some "best performance" settings on the configuration
panels, and you might not want to install every imaginable application
in every known language, but you can still get a pretty nice little
Linux system that is perfect for kids from 8-16 years old.

The problem is that Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows NT 4.0 are now
"unsupported", you can't even get them from Microsoft anymore.  Even
if you could get a copy of the installation media, it's probably not a
legal copy, and Microsoft won't grant you a license.

If you have a 400 Mhz pentium, with 64 megabytes of memory, a 20
gigabyte hard drive, and a 1024x786 S3 video card, you aren't going to
be happy running Windows XP on it.  I'm not even sure XP would boot on
such a box, and Vista absolutely would not.  On the other hand, the
same computer, running Puppy Linux, Damn Small Linux, or even SUSE or
Fedora with FVWM would give you pretty nice performance with not too
much effort, and no additional expense.

> > Now, the SA runs Linux on all servers, desktops, workstations, and
> > won't accept any systems that might be older than 5 years.

I would like to know more about that.  I have helped several people
while they were in SA, as a 12 step sponsor.  It would be interesting
to see if they are getting the chance to learn Linux and *Nix
administration as part of their recovery process now.

> http://toolbar.netcraft.com/site_report?url=http://www.salvationarmy.org

http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph?site=www.redcross.org
Interesting, The OS is Linux, but the server is IIS?  Sounds like a
signature spoof to me.

> > M$ and Bill G screws with charity, churches, and populations, using
> > 'piracy' to enter new markets, to undercut and flood any emerging
> > market economy in any place just coming into the computer revolution.

Bill Gates personally thinks that any PC that is called a PC and
doesn't run Windows is "piracy".  Microsoft has an official "Mission"
of "A PC in every home and office, and Microsoft products running on
each of them".

Apparently, this means Microsoft products running EXCLUSIVELY on each
of them, since Microsoft seems unwilling to "share" the PC platform
with other competitors once it has established it's hold on a
market.

Linux has been willing, happy, even eager to share the platform, and
has provided mechanisms such as Dual-boot, Emulation, Compatibility
libraries, and even Virtualization - all in an attempt to "play nice"
with Windows.  Linux has found ways to play nicely with Windows any
number of ways, including letting owners of legitimate Windows
licenses run Windows as a Linux application.

Microsoft on the other hand, refuses to let OEMs deploy ANY of these
innovations unless they are done in a manner which gives Microsoft
complete control of the machine, and the ability to exclude
competitors such as Linux, Solaris, OS/2, UnixWare, OpenOffice, Lotus
SmartSuite, WordPerfect, Stacker, RealPlayer, even Norton Antivirus,
McAffee Antivirus, and Symantic Antivirus.

Perhaps the Linux community should call desktops and laptops powered
by Linux something other than a "PC".  Maybe we should call them
"Penguins".  Maybe we should call a Linux server an "Emperor", a
Desktop a "Royal", and a Laptop a "RockHopper".  And of course, there
would be the "Little Blue" for the OLPC sized Penguins.

> You sound very bitter that open source software isn't competitive with
> Windows and commercial programs.

If you lived in the midwest, like Missouri in the 1880s and 1890s, you
had one link to civilization, and that was the railroad.  The railroad
owned the general store, and at the store you would have to pay as
much as 3 times more than you would pay in the east for fabric, for
tools, even for seed.  And when the harvest time came, and you brought
in a nice big crop of wheat or corn, the only person buying was the
owner of the general store, and he was only willing to offer 1/3rd of
what the commodity market was offering back east.  Even though the
actual cost to the railroad was only about 5%, they made 300% coming
and 300% going.  Of course, the store would give you CREDIT, and
usually only at 20% interest.

And at the end of the 7th year, when the homesteaders got title to
their property, the railroad would bring in cowboys and cattlemen, who
would burn the crops.  In many cases, the father and sons over 18
would be killed.  Since women couldn't own land, the family often had
no choice but to turn over the land to the railroad - which graciously
granted the widow a ticket back to St Louis or Chicago, where she
could work as a washer-woman or a sweat-shop seamstress for the rest
of her life.

Microsoft is nowhere near so draconian.  They just come in every 3-5
years and hit the largest corporations in the world with a huge bill
that forces them to lay off as much as 20% of their work force.  The
companies have to finance their purchases and upgrades, and this puts
additional strain on the economy.

Today, instead of Unions, the highly skilled technical workers have
joined consulting organizations, and these companies provide training,
support, benefits, and help them find assignments, in some cases even
assignments with their former employers who pay as much as three times
their old salary to do the projects they used to do as employees.  In
some cases, even the administration of the systems is "outsourced" to
these consulting companies, and in many cases, the people are simply
transferred to the consulting company.

Microsoft's business model of licensing software for royalties based
on "percieved value" has almost gone the way of the Buggy Whip.

Today, businesses are more interested in business solutions than
software, more interested in Software as a SOLUTION (Service) than
some general purpose "One Size Fits All" application like Microsoft
Office.  They are looking at software as a Business STRATEGY, highly
customized to their business rules, industry regulations, and
contracts.  They are looking at Open Source, not because it's "better"
but because it is more easily customized.

Microsoft is trying to adapt with .NET, but even today, .NET is often
a very small portion of the total business SOLUTION.  There is more
emphasis on Open Standards, Standards Compliance, Open Source,
adapters, plug-ins, and frameworks, all adhering to strict, open, and
PUBLICLY AVAILABLE standards and specifications, as well as Open and
publicly available source code.  This is where Microsoft so often
falters.  Bill Gates can't resist the urge to "twiddle" with the
standards, and then insists on putting these "tweaks" into
Nondisclosure protection.

It's ironic that Microsoft attempts to claim that Linux has violated
patents when their technology was proprietary and protected by
nondisclosure while "similar" but not identical technology was
developed, published, and promoted throughout the Open Source
community, often as much as a full Decade before Microsoft was granted
their patent and the information became public.

Too often, Bill has simply tried to imitate Open Standards based
technology in a proprietary way, and too often, these proprietary
"enhancements" were just "back doors" that allowed Microsoft to peek
into the hard drives of users' computers.  Supposedly, these were
intended for "piracy control", "support", and "market research", but
too often, these back doors were used for identity theft, sabotage,
espionage, and other criminal acts.  Microsoft even attempted to
license some of these acts, calling the licensed access "spyware" and
encouraging vendors to pay for the right to hack into users' computers
by purchasing certificates from Microsoft and it's subsidiaries and
satellite companies.

Today, Malware, Viruses, Worms, Trojans, Spyware, Bots, Identity
theft, and are costing an average of $1000 per PC User per YEAR.  Much
of this is paid in the form of involuntary overtime required to meet
deadlines and other commitments even in the face of such malware
effects as drive corruption, total PC failures, spam in corporate e-
mail, and other time consuming activities that have been brought to us
as by the nice people who brought you ActiveX, .NET, ActiveScript,
script executing e-mail, macros embedded in documents, and OLE objects
that can call any library function on the PC without your knowledge or
permission.

According to Microsoft, there are over 1 billion PCs in use in the
world today.  There are probably close to 2 billion PC users in the
world today (many share PCs in libraries or internet Cafe's).  Many of
them have never used anything BUT some version of Windows, but that
doesn't mean that they LIKE Windows so much that they would never even
consider anything else, it just means they haven't SEEN anything
else.  Microsoft would like to keep it that way.

The Linux and OSS community, on the other hand, are doing everything
they can to get Linux and OSS into the hands of as many of those 2
billion users as possible.  Firefox has now achieved as much as 40% of
the market according to some web surveys.  Open Office has been
downloaded by as many as 500 million people, and can be freely copied
to USB thumb drives, CD-ROMs, or DVD-R media.  Nobody knows how many
people have installed Open Office, or how often they use it, or
whether they are opting not to purchase MS-Office on their next PC
because OpenOffice is "good enough" and MS-Office is too expensive,
it's just not worth an extra $200-$400 when you can get the same core
functions on OpenOffice.

Linux can now be booted from a CD-ROM or DVD without even having to
install it on the PC.  A USB thumb drive will let you store your
personal information into a private directory, and you can mount the
NTFS file system on the host PC as a read-only drive.  You can even
get an external USB drive and have all of the power of Linux,
including a full suite of applications, on ANY PC that is "Linux
Ready", and it's personalized to your specific needs and tastes.

These days, WiFi is widely available, often for free, in hotels,
airports, restaurants, even libraries.  You can download a CD-ROM
sized copy of a Linux ISO in about 20 minutes.  You
can download a DVD sized ISO in about an hour.

More and more book stores are stocking shelves with books that contain
Linux CDs or DVDs.  They are stocking magazines that offer the latest
versions of numerous Linux distributions.  There are even PC magazines
which are now including Live-Boot versions of Linux on DVD or CD.
There are even magazines which include vmware player images of Linux
that can be run like Windows applications.

Just because a machine is sold with Windows, doesn't mean that's the
only OS it ever runs.  Just because a machine is shipped with Windows,
doesn't mean that's the way it will be used.
Just because a machine has Windows on the hard drive, doesn't mean
that's the only OS that it is running.

Sure, there aren't that many "Linux Only" systems out there, but that
doesn't mean that there aren't hundreds of millions of people out
there who are using Linux in ADDITION to Windows.

The reality is that Open Source Software IS competitive with
commercial applications.

The reality is that Linux IS still growing at exponential rates.

The reality is that Linux and OSS IS having an impact on the PC
market, including how machines are designed, manufactured, and
marketed.

Dell doesn't have to offer Linux as a drop-down option on their web
site, they just have to make sure that their laptops and desktops are
listed on the compatibility lists of major Linux web sites.

HP doesn't have to ship OpenSUSE with every PC they sell, they just
have to advertize that you can get OpenSUSE to run on every machine
they sell.

HP doesn't have to put the Linux logo on every printer they sell, they
just have to tell the Linux community that they will support Linux on
every printer and scanner they sell.

IBM/Lenovo doesn't have to put the penguin on every thinkpad, they
just have to make sure that when you google "Thinkpad Linux", that the
support for your Thinkpad is one of the entries.

And if you hadn't noticed, people seem to be willing to pay EXTRA for
a "Linux Ready" machine.  While "Linux hostile" machines have been
eroding in price, many falling as much as 70%, the "Linux Ready"
machines, such as the T61p have been holding their value much longer.

Linux users also pay for other features such as higher resolution
WSXGA or WUXGA displays, and 7200 RPM SATA hard drive, as well as
additional memory - up to 4 gigabytes on some machines, because Linux
can not only recognize the extra memory, the 64 bit processor support
and 64 bit addressing make it easy to access the extra memory without
resorting to funny "tricks".

But that doesn't mean they don't want windows too.  After all, if they
buy the machine with an OEM copy of XP Professional, they can use
VMWare Converter, generate a VMWare image, and run XP as a Linux
application.  Since Linux is providing buffering and caching for the
storage devices, XP runs quite nicely with a limit of as little as 256
megabytes of memory.

Vista Business on the other hand, is a memory pig, it eats memory,
it's hostile to VMWare, boot managers, and Linux friendly drivers.
You don't get the AeroGlass graphics unless you have a Linux-Hostile
DirectX/10 Video card, the firewall is a pain, the antivirus is
ineffective, and the license actually PREVENTS you from blocking
Microsoft authorized spy-ware.  Finally, if Microsoft decides it
doesn't like your machine's configuration, it can disable the machine
until you can prove to them that you are not violating the license.

Is it such a surprise then, that according to the January 2008 Edition
of Redmond Channel Partner, 53% of the IT decision makers have NO PLAN
TO IMPLEMENT VISTA, and only 13% have any plan to deploy Vista across
the entire enterprise any time in the near future.

The reality is that Linux IS WINNING!  OSS is WINNING!

Microsoft has attempted to "Lock out Linux" with Vista, and instead it
seems like a huge chunk of the market has opted to "Lock out Vista".

Rex Ballard
http://www.open4success.org

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