A billion nays to Linux?

A report of the preeminence of Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office in China shows a nearly ninety percent (90%) penetration rate there despite the fact that Linux is also offered and available there for the price of free.

If, the one billion+ Chinese people, with the choice of the free Red Flag Linux (and other free alternatives) did not avail themselves of it, and decided instead to ante up some money for Microsoft’s wares, then why should you? I do not have the specific figures at hand; however, it is easy to make the assumption that whatever monies they pay for even a pirated copy of either Microsoft Office or any Microsoft OS is more than zero.

Yet, they didn’t bite!

Please, can the chorus of ‘Microsoft allows piracy’, OK?

If they really encourage it – like a (drug) dealer giving away samples for free – why didn’t free wean the populace away from Microsoft products?

Why?

Because the alternatives to Windows and Office weren’t good enough! That’s why!

If they were, wouldn’t they have conquered a nation where the government had initially declared them the winner by fiat?

Or, could it just be that the (smart) people of China

1. See past all the noise and realize that Microsoft products truly are superior to the Linux distros out there?
2. Rather fancy Microsoft’s operating systems and desktop productivity applications,
3. Want to compete in the real world with products that are first class and leading edge, not a cloned copy of the original by axe-grinding drones,
4. Correctly recognize a bill of goods was sold to them, and pulled the ripcord when they realized the products were not up to the task, and
5. Unlike in the EU, want to compete on the world stage without artificial restrictions placed on their rivals by an incredibly inept, extremely myopic, and totally misnamed EU Department of Competition?

Or, do they realize that in the end, they want to compete with the rest of the industrialized world using the same tools as the majority of the successful corporations?

In deciding what you want for your enterprise, do not be fatally attracted to the light of Linux for the wrong reasons.

Question the motives, and the WIIFM factor of the consultant extolling the virtues of Linux, for if it so free, how come services are so expensive.

A search for study conclusions on the Internet would show that while the entry cost into Linux is indeed somewhat cheaper than Windows, in the long run, all those gains evaporate. Moreover, when the cost of comparable tech support is computed, along with the toll of the required incessant, though necessary patching, Linux becomes more expensive than Windows.

In any form.

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