Summary: Microsoft caught paying to manufacture FUD against a Free software success story

Microsoft is losing business. Nobody loses one's job for dumping Microsoft anymore. Even Microsoft's CEO is getting out of Microsoft, or as some put it in Google Plus, in light of good performance from Google, "game over, Ballmer loses":

Microsoft CEO Ballmer to sell off 75 million shares | Microsoft - CNET News http://goo.gl/E6yyf #crashandburn ... the rats are leaving!

--looks like forbes deleted the article https://plus.google.com/104707914502304652469/posts/RzB77KLTsk4?hl=en ...but here it is The Phoenix Principle: Sell Microsoft NOW - Game over, Ballmer loses http://goo.gl/nM2Vp

Based on this report, it is the TCO nonsense all over again. Years ago we saw Microsoft trying hard to derail Munich's case study and now we see more new evidence of this, as covered by IDG: (via)

Microsoft and Hewlett Packard won't share a study claiming that the German city of Munich had its numbers wrong when it calculated switching from Windows to Linux saved the city millions -- although an HP employee did provide the data to a German publication that reported on the results.

By switching from Windows to its own Linux distribution, LiMux, Munich has saved over €¬11 million (US$14.3 million) so far, the city announced in November. But a Microsoft-commissioned Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) study conducted by HP suggests that the city's numbers are wrong, and claims that Munich would have saved €¬43.7 million if it had stuck with Microsoft, German weekly Focus reported earlier this week.

Ballmer tried bribing them out of it and used all sorts of dirty tactics which we covered before. Gartner played along.

Jan Wildeboer, a Red Hat employee from Munich, Germany (cited above) writes:

#Limuxgate HP guy claims his study shows that the Linux Migration in Munich is far more expensive compared to using Windows in an interview with a German newsmagazine, FOCUS. Turns out Microsoft paid for that study. And while the numbers of the city of Munich are publicly available, this study is now claimed to be "internal only" by Microsoft and thus not available to all of us. Classy. Public accusations but refusal to publish the numbers. Political campaign? You bet.

Well, later he translated the original article from German to English, with help from Google. Here it is:

(01/22/2013) Under the intriguing title “[Mayor of Munich] Ude has wasted millions on Linux machine?” Focus Money Online reported on a study that HP made on behalf of Microsoft. The study allegedly proves that the city didn’t save in the tens of millions Euro by switching to OpenOffice and LiMux, but actually paid far more.

Karl-Heinz Schneider, head of the municipal IT service IT@M:”Of course we want to deal with this criticism. I have asked Microsoft to share the study with us. What I could gather so far from press articles however raises a considerable amount of doubt on the validity of the study and its findings.” The study does not take into account the licensing costs that would be incurred for using Microsoft products. Schneider: “This simply drops seven million into the void – which is quite the biggest saving we had.”

The claim that no new versions of Windows and its application would have been needed is simply not true. Schneider: “A major trigger for the decision to put our operating system architecture to the test was precisely the announcement by Microsoft to drop support for Windows NT – the operating system that was used as a standard at the city of Munich at that time. A migration to a new operating system was therefore inevitable. ”

The claim that the city would have compared the cost of a current Windows 7 with a ten year old version of Linux is also simply wrong. Schneider: “Of course we have been gradually optimizing LiMux over time. The current version is far away from the original version and can stand a comparison with Windows 7.”

The study also falsely claims that one in four city computers still run on Windows as none of the specialized procedures can be migrated to Linux. Schneider: “It is true that not all business applications can be migrated to Linux. But that is ‘not all’ and not ‘none’. All web-based business applications can be used without any migration costs under LiMux and most of the procedures that are tightly integrated with Microsoft can be accessed with standard technologies that are also used by the Linux client.

Finally the number of remaining Windows machines in Munich that the study claims is too high. Instead of the claimed 75 percent, we have already moved 13,000 of the planned 15,000 machines to LiMux – that’s almost 87 percent. ”

Original german version published in the 2013-01-22 edition of Rathaus Umschau – Page 8 and 9

Here is Muktware's take on the news:

Bush Found WMD In Iraq, Microsoft Found Linux Migration More Expensive Than Windows

Microsoft is not new to propaganda and spreading FUD around Linux and open source. They have been doing it for ever. They are the master of the game and they have brothers in arm who assist them in achieving this.

HP recently conducted a story which claimed that the famous LiMux migration cost around €60.7 million over a period of 10 years to the city. The study said that the cost would have remained as low as €17 million if they stayed with Windows XP and Microsoft Office 2003.

What is the life span of Windows XP? When will it reach 'end of support' or in Microsoft's words, the date when Microsoft no longer provides automatic fixes, updates, or online technical assistance? The date is April 8, 2014. Microsoft recommends, "This is the time to make sure you have the latest available service pack installed."

Since it's proprietary and vendor locked (in Microsoft's own wordings), "Without Microsoft support, you will no longer receive security updates that can help protect your PC from harmful viruses, spyware, and other malicious software that can steal your personal information. For more information go to Microsoft Support Lifecycle."

So where is the cost of upgrade to Windows 8 as XP will be on ventilator next year?

The headline is political in nature. But then again, Microsoft is like a political movement. It is good that more people recognise this. ⬆

"There's free software [gratis, dumpware] and then there’s open source... there is this thing called the GPL, which we disagree with."

--Bill Gates, April 2008