<div class="gmail_quote">2009/10/8 Matthew French <<a href="mailto:matthew@gillyweed.co.za">matthew@gillyweed.co.za</a>> <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> Over the decades the one thing Microsoft has been good at - actually they have almost perfected it - is FUD: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear,_uncertainty_and_doubt" target="_blank">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear,_uncertainty_and_doubt</a> They have been doing it for so long that I begin to worry when they don't have FUD. Unfortunately when it comes to FOSS I suspect people are quite capable of making up their own FUD. Microsoft didn't create many of the dubious reasons for not using FOSS, people came up with those by themselves. Still, Microsoft's "Get the facts..." campaign of two years ago was incredibly irritating example of FUD. They managed to include some important and valid points - the OS is only a small part of the cost, Linux administrators cost more than Windows admins, etc. But they never produced any convincing case studies. Each case study could be debunked, but the effort involved was not worth it. Imagine if they had put all that time into improving their software. And of course the campaign should have been called "Get the facts we want you to hear without worrying about the facts we don't want you to hear." It is probably best to ignore the latest round of FUD and focus on keeping your Linux users happy. FOSS mostly spreads by word-of-mouth, and these amateurish scare tactics are unlikely to impact that. - Matthew <div><div></div><div class="h5"> </div></div></blockquote></div> Similar FUD going on at Best-Buy <a href="http://www.dailyfinance.com/2009/09/09/microsoft-yep-we-teach-best-buy-to-trash-linux/">http://www.dailyfinance.com/2009/09/09/microsoft-yep-we-teach-best-buy-to-trash-linux/</a> - Neil