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
- See past all the noise and realize that Microsoft products truly are superior to the Linux distros out there?
- Rather fancy Microsoft’s operating systems and desktop productivity applications,
- 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,
- 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
- 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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Hey dude...
Have you ever heard of VENDOR LOCKIN?
Could that be the reason why many users can't just 'jump' to Linux/FOSS?
Maybe?
Also, many Chinese suffer from the whole 'Name Brand' tunnel-vision thing that we also suffer from in the West. To them, an expensive, name brand *thing* (ie, Microsoft Windows) is better than something without a big marketing budget and limited brand appeal (ie. Linux).
But as we in the more sophisticated West know, 'name brand' often has little to do with quality - viz McDonalds and Fox News.
Peace.
I hope Network World didn't pay you for this
Are you a rabid fanboy or a MS astroturfer?
You know as well as everyone else does that the only people producing TCO studies that favor Windows/Office are paid by MS to do so.Since MS has a lot of money, they've paid for quite a few of these "studies". And they're only believed by the naive and gullible.
There aren't a whole lot of those people here.
As for the Chinese government, it appears that they've done the "let's scare MS into giving us a 90% discount using Linux as a threat"... though I think if you do a bit of research, you'll find that MS is also donating a lot of useful things like computers to the Chinese government and in effect, paying China to take Windows. And given the known level of government corruption in China, probably paying off government officials in cash as well.
Enjoy your PR firm's client's victory while you can. It'll give you more time to learn Linux.