While looking around, visiting all the places I usually check out, I found something that escaped my view, posted on Friday.

In a blog article, John Obeto, in a column called ‘The Independent voice of Microsoft customers’ writes a piece about the market penetration of Microsoft products in China, and states that Linux is being soundly trounced there, because Microsoft offerings are so much better that the poor Chinese people will still pay for Office and Windows, rather than use inferior products.

Yet, just as this is in bold - he makes a statement, in the middle of the article, in the middle of the page, that he doesn’t want to hear about Microsoft allowing piracy!

How silly is that?

It has been widely reported that Microsoft has allowed piracy of these products, precisely to do what is happening - cause the Chinese to want Microsoft products - and at a later date, just as a drug dealer gives free samples, it will jerk the chain, and the flow will stop, or a new ‘update’ will render the pirated products useless (for awhile).

Beyond allowing piracy, again reported is the availability of Office 2007 and Windows Vista for as little as $3 (U.S.). That is clearly more (effectively) there than here, but still, if you could get Office 2007, or Windows Vista for, let’s say $40 dollars, with the promise that you would get updates (no matter what we might like to say, the updates will come, or Windows 7), and never have to worry about a knock at the door - wouldn’t you do it too?

With many getting the software free, and others getting it next to free, of course it will spread like wildfire - Microsoft formats (Office) are the de facto standard of the world, no one is going to bother trying to make OpenOffice go from 95% to 100% compatible if they don’t have to. This is most likely the real reason why Linux hasn’t gone corporate in this country in a big way. As soon as the Office formats are made 100% interchangeable, a mass of Windows/Office 2007 users will move to Linux offerings.

Why do you think Microsoft, while publicly extolling openness and cooperation, has not delivered on its promise of making the conversions for OpenXML available?

It isn’t the same problem as the people at Sun (OpenOffice), who don’t have the source code available to them.

The gentleman gives several other reasons why he thinks Microsoft products should be used, and why Linux is not to be trusted - all sounding like Bill or Steve couldn’t have said it better.

Or, could it just be that the (smart) people of China

See past all the noise and realize that Microsoft products truly are superior to the Linux distros out there?
Rather fancy Microsoft’s operating systems and desktop productivity applications,
Want to compete in the real world with products that are first class and leading edge, not a cloned copy of the original by axe-grinding drones,
Correctly recognize a bill of goods was sold to them, and pulled the ripcord when they realized the products were not up to the task, and
Unlike in the EU, want to compete on the world stage without artificial restrictions placed on their rivals by an incredibly inept, extremely myopic, and totally misnamed EU Department of Competition?

Or, do they realize that in the end, they want to compete with the rest of the industrialized world using the same tools as the majority of the successful corporations?

In deciding what you want for your enterprise, do not be fatally attracted to the light of Linux for the wrong reasons.

Question the motives, and the WIIFM factor of the consultant extolling the virtues of Linux, for if it so free, how come services are so expensive.

A search for study conclusions on the Internet would show that while the entry cost into Linux is indeed somewhat cheaper than Windows, in the long run, all those gains evaporate. Moreover, when the cost of comparable tech support is computed, along with the toll of the required incessant, though necessary patching, Linux becomes more expensive than Windows.

In any form.

My eye immediately goes to the phrase ‘along with the toll of the required incessant, though necessary patching’. Who does he think he is fooling? Is this not what ‘Patch Tuesday’ is all about?

I vote that in Wikipedia, when someone looks up ‘Microsoft fanboy’ this guy’s picture be there, to the right.

How about you?

Tags: fanboy, john obeto, networkworld, microsoft, openxml, linux, red flag linux, china