This article speaks about how our friends in Redmond are trying to address the reality of Linux being able to run well on older machines. But, if one is to believe the story, the so-called testing being done by Redmond is yet another classic case of “fudging the data”.
Fairly early in the article, they are reported to be testing machines running RHEL, FC3, etc against wxp and their ws2003. If that were only the case. A few paragraphs down, the Redmond spokeman is quoted as saying that “… with the right amount of configuration, Windows CE can also run in much the same way on all sorts of small and old devices …”. If this quote is indicative of their test methodology and resulting conclusions (and data points for future FUD campaigns), I think we can call on their bluff right now.
Another patent site
Here is another site along the same lines:
http://www.patentreader.com
The searching does not have as many options as freepatentsonline, but U.S. coverage is great and it is very streamlined if you are after PDF copies.
Fighting the FUD
Hi Harish, my two cents …
Forgive me for starting out like this … but why bother?? Calling them cold, trying to extract answers from inconsequential people is futile, and it makes you more frustrated.
Confronting the companies point blank would only elicit evasive answers from them, since they already assume that you are hostile. Maybe a casual chat over coffee after hours would be more effective, that is provided you are friends with someone in there in the first place, and it is just to satisfy a personal curiousity.
There is no need to provide counter studies and research. We don’t even need to make point by point rebuttals. The people who fall prey to this kind of handwaving could not bother with the details (but unfortunately, these are the same people who make the purchasing decisions).
I’m sure we have all learnt this lesson – that the winner is not the most technically capable – it is who is most politically correct. The capable just gets overloaded. So what if Microsoft is more expensive and crashes more often? “A CIO never gets fired by buying Cisco and Microsoft!” Failures and downtime are alright, they just need to find someone to blame (and that is the vendor).
IMHO, a equally loud marketing campaign in support of non-Microsoft solutions is one possibly good way to get our message across. Finding other companies who would testify for the strength of Linux against Microsoft is going to be a difficult task, as they have no vested interest in doing so. I don’t think we should be fighting a technical war, but rather a marketing one.
I think it might even be a good idea to start marketing Linux only as a commercial product! People in the know can still download it for free – just do not claim to be ‘free’ in marketing and advocacy literature. I’m sure most corporate lawyers and senior executives would not accept and understand the Linux/OpenSource licensing model (I personally know of one such person!).
Cheers!
“credibility and scalability”
Translation: I don’t believe I should invest unless you gratuitously reinforce my earlier investments and I don’t think you can grow without my money.
-t