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Open source projects: Why it pays to keep quiet

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Published: 25 Nov 2005 15:15 GMT

Large companies and analysts that work with open source are fond of talking about vendor "sensitivity" when they are explaining why some customers are reluctant to go public about migrations away from proprietary software.

Speaking at an OASIS conference in London, Erwin Tenhumberg, a product marketing manager at Sun's Client Systems Group said that organisations are reluctant to talk about migrations to open source because they "do not want to jeopardise their relationship with larger vendors."

Andrea DiMaio, a research vice-president for Gartner, agrees: "Users try to keep quiet not [due to] the sensitivity of commercial vendors," he says.

For more, read part one of our special report on open source migrations: Why open source projects are not publicised.

Companies may also choose to keep a low profile about projects to avoid a time-consuming sales visit from proprietary vendors such as Microsoft, according to Aaron Seigo, who works as a consultant with projects deploying the desktop environment KDE.

"I've seen it happen first hand," says Seigo. "Microsoft sees it as a lost sale, so you'll get a phone call and they'll try to send in one of their regional sales people. He'll ask 'why are you running Linux? How many machines are you running?' and so on. From a sales intelligence perspective it makes sense, but most companies find that invasive."

Won't take no for an answer
It can be difficult to avoid such a visit, according to Seigo. "They will keep calling. Microsoft usually has very good sales people so they will be persistent — they won't take the first 'no' for an answer," he says.

Microsoft is also likely to get involved if a company goes public about an open source pilot project. Mark Taylor, the chief executive of UK open source consultancy Sirius Corporation, says that if Microsoft finds out that a public sector organisation is evaluating open source, it will use "every trick in the book" to get involved. He claims that almost every partner in the Open Source Academy, a UK government initiative to accelerate the adoption of open source software in the public sector, has been approached by Microsoft.

The licence fee conundrum
Some organisations are taking advantage of Microsoft's interest in open source migrations, by carrying out public evaluations in the hope of getting a licence fee reduction. This strategy is often termed 'doing a Newham' after accusations that Newham Council used a Linux trial purely to force a better contract from Microsoft. A number of organisations that are willing to publicise a Linux pilot project are following this strategy, according to Gartner's DiMaio.

"A lot of the organisations that are doing public migration studies want to have a discount from proprietary vendors," says DiMaio.

Microsoft routinely denies that it will cut licence fees for those who threaten a move to open source, preferring instead the line that it can help customers cut...

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Its the applications and device drivers that run on windows that cement its dominance. How many people would fork out hundreds of pounds for Vista if Linux ran all the software and kit they wanted to use.