linux versus MS

Microsoft's Windows May Be Losing Ground to Linux

By ITNation Staff
Mumbai, November 6, 2002

Open-source software gave Microsoft a one-two punch this week, with the
European Union and an African nonprofit educational organization showing
preference for Linux systems.

The European Union recently awarded a $249,000 (250,000 Euro) contract to
U.K.-based system-integrator Netproject to study the feasibility of moving
the information systems of several member countries' governments to the
Linux operating system from Microsoft's Windows OS.



Microsoft's expensive licensing terms and its push for customers to speed
their software upgrade cycles are driving the European Union's interest in
open-source solutions, said Eddie Bleasdale, Netproject's CEO.

Describing a meeting with representatives from several EU member countries,
Bleasdale said Microsoft's current licensing terms had governments looking
for other options. "Everybody in the room said that they could not deal with
the cost of moving to Microsoft's latest products," Bleasdale said.

Adding insult to injury, SchoolNet Namibia, an organization providing
computing resources to that sparsely populated country, has turned down a
Microsoft offer to put Windows systems in their schools and decided to stay
with its Linux systems.

In a very public letter, the organization lambasted Microsoft for a plan
that would give the schools a $2,000 break on Office software but make them
pay $9,000 for Windows XP.

Although Microsoft wouldn't comment directly on the Namibia incident, Peter
Houston, senior director for the Windows server product management group,
did say the company's latest product push hasn't won the company many
friends. "It would be hard to say that things like our new licensing haven't
made customers look at Linux," Houston said.

In March, Peruvian Congressman Edgar David Villanueva Nunez wrote a letter
to Microsoft countering the company's attacks against a bill in Peru that
could advocate the use of open-source software by the country's government.

In the United Kingdom, the group responsible for making technology
recommendations to the U.K. police has pushed the use of Linux as a way to
cut the cost of software ownership by as much as 65 percent, according to a
Netproject study.

And in California, open-source advocates have proposed legislation, the
Digital Software Security Act, that would force government agencies to only
use software that didn't have restrictions on it.

The changes have Microsoft, and some policy organizations funded by the
company, on the offensive against open-source software.

For one, Microsoft's Houston takes issue with any cost-of-ownership study
that puts open-source software ahead of Microsoft's products.

"If you are going to use Linux, there is a high services component," he
said. "You are going to have to pay for that systems integration."