Ubuntu-Pakistan Licencing reasons

[Khawar Nehal]

Dear Mr. Burhan,

I have met a lot of people who use Linux to AVOID M$. Including me. So the
logic of I have not seen any does not mean there are none.

I have also seen people who show up at a 100% opensource exhibition and tell
us in the face that they prefer NT.
Dealing with such cases, our reaction is usually. "Good for you" and we do
not explain further.

To set the record straight. I was a MS Basher and OSS Fanatic earlier.

Now we are seriously supporting IT clients and all clients need Closed
source, shareware, OSS and other licenced softwares.

We do not bash M$ for the software which is getting better and as far as I
know beinged forced by the growing OSS market size to be more standards
compliant or having to make new open standards.

It is the attitute of licencing. Oracle and others are also closed source.
They do not force people to pay. They have a softer policy.

As far as MS is concerned I DO believe they DO NOT have the right to ask for
money because they have been involved in false advertising. They use
promising words like NT (New Technology) for 25 year old DEC VAX technology
and NCSA Compatible for IIS server which happens to BE THE NCSA WEB SERVER.
Mosiac compatible for IE which started with MOSAIC and almost all other
software which they peddle as "Enterpriseware". For your kind info they
temselves cannot run their own HOTMAIL on 100% Windows Servers like the OSS
people do.

It is the exorbitant prices and false promises which M$ makes which causes
MS bashers to exist.

We are offering 95% OSS and 5% closed source options as an alternative for
companies in Pakistan (Especially karachi) so they can make sure ALL of
their mission critical and non critical work gets done.

If companies use the LTSP solution, then they can make sure their Pentium 1s
keep their desktop response as fast as their fastest server on which their
applications run.

We offer support for the latest and greatest Windows servers which MS can
offer and run expensive PAID for softwares until they can migrate off the
expensive solutions.

We recommend parallel operations rather than rip the guts out of your closed
source and force shift to OSS.

Some companies can take up to 3 years to shift slowly. Some companies keep
discussing for more than 3 years and do not shift anything.

And these days companies are directly saying we want to rip M$ out and place
OSS. Not our idea these days. The clients are requesting
 it.

Since ATRC is 100% OSS for more than a decade I do nto get to see the
strange behavior of M$ software, viruses, worms, shareware popups asking for
money. We do no live in muree but we do live in the pure calm and reliable
world of OSS.

When we hear someone screaming from the "outside" world we get to see their
horrific situations.

We find it very unprofessional when we see a virus infection warning on a
client's server. It signifies that the IT administrator has systems for
which they are responsible for but have outside unauthorized softwares
running. These softwares can be doing anything on the Admin's responsibility
and watch.

Since OSS and Unix based technologies have been around for more than 40
years it is unprofessional to support companies which exploit the people's
trust in their marketing.  People have the attitute of "A company cannot be
that bad".

However they still do not know the alternatives because of the lack of OSS
marketing budgets.  The internet and the CDROM drive of the early 1990s
allowed the proliferation of OSS.

By 2015 I do not expect a lot of closed proprietary commodity software to be
existing on Machines. Softwares for common tasks like Browsers, chatting,
...

Wehn I say people do not feel like paying, I do mean it. Imagine someone
paying for a software which spits out ads or forces registrations or even
asls for your email when almost everyone knows of a better alternative which
comes on a 30 GB media prevalent at the time.

I mean the computers shall already have a minimum 500 GB harddisk chock full
of the BEST (Not commercial, NO ADS, maybe OSS) softwares available for ALL
of the common tasks by 2015.

DELL is offering Linux NOW.

We are planning on teaching hardware suppliers how to make a machine which
would be common in 2015 now.

People lets start downloading.

Not many people can see the long term trends.

The prediction of MS Office for Linux was 2007 and this prediction was made
by somebody in 1998. Way before Open office existed.

Some OSS people can see the future up to a decade with an accuracy of +-20%

Khawar


On 12/6/06, Burhan Khalid <burhan.khalid at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Khawar:
>
>   What you are talking about could be one of two things, either its
> WGA (Windows Genuine Advantage) which was implemented as a critical
> security update to Windows.  This little gem sits in the background
> and checks if your Windows license is legitimate. If it is not, it
> will popup these reminders from time to time. Eventually, it will
> prevent you from logging into the system.
>
>   The other thing that could be causing this is that somehow Windows
> has detected a major change in your hardware and its asking you to
> reactivate it.
>
> "If MS is preventing logins then I would like to see the reaction of
> people
> to this.
> Have the people come out with a cracked XP yet ?"
>
> What reaction do you expect? Microsoft has spent a lot of money and
> resources to develop their software, and they have a right to protect
> it just like everyone else that develops software. I don't see why
> this is such a bad thing. It is their choice to close the source of
> Windows, if you don't like it - you are always welcome to an alternate
> OS :)
>
> I don't believe talking about pirating software is withing the
> guidelines of Ubuntu, so I will not answer that question.
>
> "So the bad news is that I cannot teach prepare MS Project. This got me
> thinking.
> MS Software like IE and others do not work perfectly on Linux or Wine so
> if
> MS intends to register XP then they shall also restrict MS products like
> MS
> Project and others."
>
> They already do this. You must register and activate Office products,
> and you can only activate them on two machines. If you have a
> legitimate copy of a MS product that is not working correctly, you can
> call their special support line for activation issues (which is almost
> always a free call).
>
> "This shall force people to use Open source softwares like Imendio (which
> they never bothered to learn about) because OSS works perfectly on Linux
> and
> not so perfectly on Windows. In most cases OSS is available only for
> Linux."
>
> Well, it would force two things. Either they pay for software that
> they need to do their job (which is what most people end up doing) or
> they do what you said, find a free alternative.
>
> A lot of OSS software works perfectly on Windows too. A few examples
> that come to mind are Open Office, Firefox and Thunderbird.
>
> "This new situation is cool. The more Software is available for an OS the
> better it is. With the "great" move of restricting XP has caused MS to
> delegate their OS in the area of Suns and Irix and other PAID OSes like
> BeOS."
>
> This is a bit of wishful thinking because unless you have been living
> in some cave in the hills of muree, you would know that Windows has
> been around since the 80s and they have always had a closed soruce
> model.  I don't see how you can compare Windows to "Suns" by which I
> assume you mean Solarix, which by the way, is available for free now;
> Irix and BeOS -- other than being payware, these operating systems do
> not compete for the same market and are not designed for the same
> purpose.
>
> "The OS is now a commodity item and the world does not feel like paying
> for
> it."
>
> Which world are you talking about? The world of pirates?
>
> I am as big a fan as Linux, but this kind of unnecessary bashing is
> not adding to the image of Linux or its users.  People already
> consider us "fanatics" and "MS haters", which is not the truth. Almost
> everyone that I have met is using Linux not because they "hate"
> Microsoft or that they cannot afford Windows, but because its a choice
> that they have made for other reasons -- some like the alternate
> desktop; other enjoy Linux because it provides them access to tons of
> software that they cannot use on Windows; some (like myself) use Linux
> as a development OS because it has great support for development
> software and their related services.
>
> Lets pull this back on track ... to the original thread topic which
> was LiveCD on legacy machines.
>
> As others have mentioned, the main problem with livecds is the RAM
> issue. Most require a lot of RAM because by nature; a LiveCD runs from
> RAM.  The less RAM you have, the longer it will take for the system to
> load.
>
> 128 RAM is minimum for a good smooth experience. 256 is even better. A
> 486 really should be delegated to specialized distributions, like LFS
> or Gentoo.
>
> Regards,
> Burhan Khalid
>



-- 

Khawar Nehal

CEO
Applied Technology Research Center (ATRC)
C-55 Block A KDA Officers, Karachi 75260, Pakistan
Voice : 92-21-4980523 Mobile :
Karachi 92-333-2486216
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Email : khawar.nehal at atrc.net.pk
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Registrar
Preston Institute of Management, Science and Technology (PIMSAT)
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Shahrah-a-Faisal, Karachi, Pakistan
Voice : 92-21-2789888 to 90 Fax : 92-21-2789891
Email : khawar at pimsat-khi.edu.pk
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"Gambling increases risk. Investing decreases risk."

"God's test is simple. Who do you work for : Him or yourself ?"
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