Posted on 11/06/2003 11:28:52 AM PST by antiRepublicrat
What's illegal/unethical about Microsoft offering discounts?
You offered up a reference that showed that the discounts don't exceed the price of the software/services. So you haven't been able to show that they're taking an illegal loss.
...your beloved Microsoft...
When did I ever say that I think Microsoft is so great?
Nice bringing up my RFP comment. It might be difficult to discern specific targeting from simple specifications. For example, if you demand that your mail or web server must have continuous uptimes measured in months while maintaining the latest security patches, that's both an understandable objective criteria and a criteria that could be considered to be purposely excluding Microsoft products.
In other words, change the subject, spin, blablabla...
A fund wouldn't be needed unless Microsoft was paying the client to use the software.
And here's where you don't get it, I'll say it again: how can you beat a bid on software and services against free software when your software costs millions in the first place without taking what would be considered a loss?
OK. I'm going to help you through this. Say Microsoft sells a particular piece of software for $1000 retail... Yet it only costs them a few bucks for the box and CD. So their incremental profit margin on a single box CD is almost $1000. That gives their salesmen a lot of leeway on large-volume pricing, while still making a small (even $1) per-unit profit.
Also, Microsoft may have offered the services at a cheaper price than the open source bidder. The open source bidder may have over-charged. 30M euro for services and the software is free? That's about $2500 per seat. Maybe Munich got ripped off. You're over-analyzing the low-bidder, and not even questioning the high bidder. And yet you feel that you could write an objective spec? LMAO! Get real.
Commercial buying is almost always negotiable, as opposed to retail. The software that I have written and sell is avg. priced in the ~$6000 per seat neighborhood. Do I get occasionally offer aggressive discounts to keep out competitors? Absolutely. Is this illegal? Absolutely not.
MS obviously believes it's needed, because it's there and has been used.
Yet it only costs them a few bucks for the box and CD.
Extremely simplistic view. That $600 license for a piece of software is not to pay for production costs, which you seem to think are the entire cost of software. It goes for development, marketing and all sorts of stuff. It costs a lot more than $1 to make that CD. You also forget that in enterprise cases, this CD you talk of doesn't exist one per seat, so under your estimate the per-seat cost is closer to one cent.
The open source bidder may have over-charged. 30M euro for services and the software is free?
MS's original bid was IIRC about 36M Euro and they cut it to 27M using the fund and playing with licensing. How much do you think the software licenses were worth in the first place? Do you think 9M Euro?
When a convicted monopolist does it to close others out of the market.
When did I ever say that I think Microsoft is so great?
You seem to think MS is best in all cases, forgetting that for many applications it is grossly expensive, unstable, unsecure and high-maintenance.
In other words, change the subject, spin, blablabla
You brought up the quote. It is impossible for an exchange server or an IIS server to match the uptime of the competition if security patches are regularly deployed. And that's not even counting stability.
Upon reading this, my first thought was, "I can't believe I debated this guy up to post 209 on this thread. What a waste of my time and jimrob's bandwidth."
If I tried my best, I couldn't come up with a stupider comment.
Good night, troll...
You have a problem with plain facts, don't you? My claims of expensive, unstable, unsecure and high-maintenance can be backed up by anyone who has had to admin MS systems. Unstable? Look at the low uptimes from Netcraft and the constant crashes admins have to deal with. Unsecure? A while ago, even Gartner suggested not buying MS because of the security issues. Personally, I'd only use IIS on an intranet site locked behind a firewall. I'd never expose myself to the internet with such an exploitable system.
Says it all.
BUMP
Support that statement.
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