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Linux vendors hit back at Ballmer's email

Ingrid Marson ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 28 Oct 2004 15:54 BST

In a 2,600-word email sent to Microsoft customers and partners on Wednesday, Microsoft's Steve Ballmer drove home the key themes of Microsoft's "Get The Facts" campaign. Bill Gates' second in command claimed that Windows was a better choice than Linux in terms of security, total cost of ownership (TCO) and protection against legal action over patent violations.

"And it's pretty clear that the facts show that Windows provides a lower total cost of ownership [than Linux]; the number of security vulnerabilities is lower on Windows; and Windows responsiveness on security is better than Linux; and Microsoft provides uncapped IP indemnification of their products, while no such comprehensive offering is available for Linux or open source," he stated.

In the aftermath of Ballmer's mail, ZDNet UK sought out a reaction from the various Linux vendors to Microsoft's allegations that the open-source OS is expensive and untrustworthy.

Novell vice-president of strategic marketing John Hogan's first response to the various points in the Ballmer email is that Microsoft has cherry-picked sections of the reports to back up its 'facts'. Novell bought SuSE Linux in January 2004.

"Not surprisingly, the points made by Mr Ballmer leverage only those statements in its commissioned studies that reflect most positively on Microsoft," says Hogan. "A broader look paints a much more objective picture, one more favourable to Linux."

French Linux vendor Mandrakesoft levels the same criticism at Microsoft. "Microsoft has a well-know tendency to somewhat stretch the definition of 'fact'," says a spokesman from Mandrakesoft. "The 'facts' referred to in the above [Ballmer's] quote originally appeared in Microsoft-funded studies, the independence of which is, at best, doubtful."

Objectivity
Ballmer attempted to head off claims of bias in his email, claiming that the research cited is independent. "In each case, the research methodology, findings and conclusions were the sole domain of the analyst firms. This was essential: we wanted truly independent, factual information."

Novell's Hogan says that Microsoft has often specified the exact system configuration in benchmark tests. For example, in two Veritest studies which compare Windows 2003 Server with Linux, Hogan asserts that Veritest fine-tuned the Windows set-up but did not do the same for Linux.

"The test used Windows protocols only, while Linux had to emulate the Windows protocols using Samba," says Hogan. "As far as we can see, the testers did not even make the smallest optimisation for this Linux/Samba setting, while Microsoft helped Veritest fine tune on Windows."

Hogan also claims that Microsoft turned off the Windows 8.3 file-naming convention and made tweaks to the TCP stack on the client machines and to the buffer-cache pool on the server. "Obviously, Microsoft invested considerable time and effort in finding the best possible configuration," he says.

Total cost of ownership
In the email, Ballmer attempts to reinforce Microsoft's claim to lower TCO with findings from a Yankee Group from April 2004, entitled "Linux, UNIX and Windows TCO Comparison". He claims the study concludes that upgrading Windows was cheaper than switching to Linux for large enterprises.

But according to Novell, the Yankee Group study also found that the relative TCO of Microsoft and Linux varies according to situation and that the TCO of Linux is considerably lower in, for example, small firms, organisations with customised vertical applications and in "greenfield" sites

An alternative report on TCO carried out by Research and Markets found that Linux had a 30 percent lower TCO than Windows, according to Mandrakesoft.