Or the Mac?
Recently I’ve been trading geekery with a gent in Pennsylvania who is in the process of moving a personal website from remote hosting to self-hosting. He’s a Mac guy and he bought a copy of OS X Server to run on his Mac Mini.
I was curious about this server software, so I looked into it. Seems like a nicely packaged product, typical Mac ease of use and polished user interface. The web server part of it runs on a modified version of Apache. List price is $499 and the best street price I could find after a brief search was $349.99.
Three hundred fifty bucks. Three. Hundred. Fifty. Dollars.
And that’s the discount price. I’m sure there are lots of people paying five benjamins to buy it directly from Apple.
My reaction to this reminds me of when Windows Vista was first released, and to buy the full (i.e. non-upgrade) system at retail cost up to $400 – and the way Microsoft controls their prices, discounters were practically nonexistent. I’d walk into, say, Office Depot, and they’d have retail boxed versions of Vista Ultimate on display, and I’d just gape at the $400 price tag. Four hundred bucks, for software, and not even very good software. Eventually they dropped that by 20%, and the Windows 7 pricing is the same, but still. That’s just for the OS. If you want to run a Microsoft office suite, you’d shell out another $400 to $680. And don’t get me started on what server software costs from them.
I have been a Linux user for years now, and mostly I don’t think about the cost of software anymore. Just about everything I want to do has a free software app that does it. I only run one piece of paid proprietary software: TwonkyMedia UPNP server, which cost me $29 about four years ago. Considering how much I do with computers all day long, that is a trivial amount of paid software. Contrast that with a Windows box, where you can wind up paying over $1000 just to have an operating system and an office suite.
After all this time with Linux, I find I’ve stopped thinking of software as something you pay for. Increasingly software is something you just download and use, part of the virtual environment like air and water in the real world. It actually gives me a shock to see someone paying significant money for OS X Server, which while slick and attractive is really just Apache and Unix with a pretty interface. I don’t mean to say that they’re being foolish; I imagine the support and the slick interface are worthwhile for users with different priorities. It’s an individual choice. The shock comes from the idea of paying for software, and it brings along an aftershock of, “Wow, have I changed! When did that happen?” But it has. Paying for software feels wrong.
Back before I started using Linux, I bought into the Microsoft ecosystem, literally. I have three or four (can’t remember anymore) legitimate paid licenses for retail Windows XP, not counting the ones that came with computers I acquired used. At that time, I had no problem paying for software. I used to shop the aisles of shiny boxes with pretty pictures, looking for cool things, and it didn’t faze me that I was buying mostly an empty box; one CD and a lot of air. Now I go to Fry’s, for instance, and I barely even glance at them; or else I wander the software aisles for a few minutes and look at price tags. Here’s the PowerDVD player app for $50, there’s Nero to burn CDs with for $70, here’s a virus scanner and firewall for $50, and so on, and I look at them and think what I paid for the equivalent apps – free, free, and free. It’s a source of strange amusement, but it doesn’t really hit with the same impact as seeing an operating system or an office suite that costs more than most people’s car payments.
Most expert Windows users are irritated by the condescending attitude Linux users have toward them, but this is one of the big reasons why that attitude exists. The majority of web and mail servers use free software. I don’t see a compelling reason to buy software for these uses when I can do everything for free. Ditto with my desktop machines; all the things I need to do, I can do with free software. So I probably do come across a little condescending to people who are still in the paid-software paradigm. They’re not used to having people regard them the same way they regard AOL users: people who are paying to have someone bring them something they could get for free.
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Clarification: A friend of mine commented to me privately that he thought this article could be construed as advocating piracy. That’s not the intent. When I say “Paying for software feels wrong,” that’s not in the moral sense as in “Adultery feels wrong,” but in the much milder sense of “Wearing your shorts backward feels wrong.” So, not wrong in the sense of immoral, just wrong in the sense of funny and strange.
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Update: Comments are now closed on this post and the one that follows it. This is to prevent myself from continuing to argue to no further effect. I regret that I allowed myself to be drawn into the argument in the first place. You may interpret this lack of self-control as a character flaw if you choose; draw whatever conclusions you like.
Update 02/01/2010: Now that things have cooled down, I’m reopening the comments.
Perhaps my brain is wired funny, but your mention of boxes that are mostly empty air reminds me of your post on the manic chickens and so forth of the cereal boxes. A grand unified theory is requested.
The other think about Linux is you can have an operating system specific to one job.
You can look around at the various flavours or even compile your own with just the software you need for that job. That means an operating system a lot less hungray for resources.
When I am surfing traffic exchanges I use a version of Slax that is even wholy in the memory, no accessing hard discs or cd’s to slow it down.
Forgetting, of course, that “Ultimate” is a Windows version designed to suck money from the foolish, 7 Home Premium and Pro are direct analogues of XP Home and Pro and are substantially cheaper. You also do not HAVE to buy the worlds standard office suite, since you can use OOo. Likewise you can buy MS Office to run in Wine. There are freeware apps for everything in Windows. I’m surprised that you don’t gasp at the price of Photoshop CS in comparison to Gimp, nevermind that the far cheaper Elements is the consumer version and that Gimp has been ported.
No, my friend, the reason that “expert Windows users are irritated by the condescending attitude Linux users have toward them” is because you lot think that (free)price always trumps quality and can’t understand why anyone would choose to pay for GOOD software rather than using FREE software. The net is full of evangelical blitherings from the converted and their “more leet than thou” hubris as they wax on about spinning cubes and the like.
I’ve used linux on and off for years. It’s always been long on promises and short on delivering anything other than alpha and beta grade disappointment, and I am well past the age where tinkering with a computer OS to get it to behave itself is something that I consider to be a fun pastime.
The “elite” have always found it necessary to express their sense of superiority in an odious attitude of disdain. Artists often sneer at the ignorance of patrons, (yet gladly pocket their patronage). So it is that uber-geeks who’ve mastered the intricacies of FOSS platforms have a low regard for the plodding minions of Redmond/Cupertino.
The dirty little secret of FOSS is that often the software is simply better than anything proprietary for a given job. Far less secret is the fact that most software requires installation and configuration. In a world where losing email is considered by many a trauma equivalent to divorce, and the computer is an unknowable and fragile black box, is it any wonder that many eschew the less trodden path and simply go to Best Buy?
With voices ever more shrill, skeptics attack FOSS for its supposed shortcomings. Still, Open Source grows and outpaces its rivals. “Not ready”? Look around, it’s already here. Are you ready?
A lot of spouting, no substance.
Explain to me: how am I, as a user, more free by limiting myself to the Open Source ecosystem? Using a proprietary operating system like Windows or Mac OS X gives me *all* the benefits. I have a *stable* OS with *stable* APIs/ABIs, I can use Open Source software and I can use proprietary software. I’m *truly* free.
But I guess that this is too hard to understand for followers of the cult.
Ah, I nearly forgot: I have yet to see any cross-platform Open Source software that doesn’t run better on Windows. Even pathetic GTK drivel.
You forgot to include the actual prices. Here, I’ll help. $199.99 for Premium, $299.99 for Pro. Substantially cheaper? Pro isn’t, unless you consider $300 to be “substantially cheaper” than $320. You could make that claim about Premium, I suppose. But even $200 is a lot of money just for an operating system.
Kind of straying from your next point here, aren’t you?
Ah yes, the “if it’s free, it can’t be good” argument. The psychological need to justify the money you spent will lead you to all kinds of rationalizations. I’ve heard this one pretty often, but it’s ringing increasingly hollow as open source continues to gain prominence. If Linux is inferior, why does it now dominate every space except the desktop? There are more Linux web servers than Windows (hi, Google!), embedded devices overwhelmingly run Linux, your Tivo runs Linux, smartphones are largely Linux (or its cousin BSD, in the case of the iPhone). How about the top 500 supercomputers list? 1% run Windows, 89% run Linux, and most of the remainder run one of Linux’s cousins (Unix or BSD). The Large Hadron Collider runs Linux. Do you really mean to claim that the builders of these multi-million or multi-billion dollar projects choose Linux because they don’t want to spend a few more bucks on something “good”?
Anyway, you’re missing the point. I’m not arguing that Linux is better just because it’s free; as I said in the article, I gladly paid for Windows in the past. My point is that living in the Linux ecosystem for all this time imperceptibly changed my attitude toward software cost. I didn’t switch for price, but it eventually made its impact on me anyway.
You mean you’re too old to figure it out? The blinking 12:00 VCR syndrome? That’s a shame. It doesn’t have to be that way. I first started playing with Linux at the age of 43. I had been a Windows power user, so there was some unlearning and relearning to do, but eventually I switched completely and I am far happier with Linux (especially after having done some tech support for hapless Vista owners). I’d like to think you could do it too, but you’d certainly know your own limitations better than I would, so I guess I can’t argue with you on that point.
Kinda defensive, aren’t ya?
I really wish Linux fanatics would quit latching onto BSD to try and claim the iPhone space. Sorry guys, BSD is not part of the Linux family. That’s why BSD actually works.
BSD and Linux are both part of the Unix family. Therefore cousins. Certainly they’re both built on the same model, and they have far more in common than either does with Windows.
Can you dispute that?
I came from windows, and still have a windows system (IE6 testing and Photoshop mostly), but wonder what Linux the people with problems are using, and what their problems are. I haven’t troubleshooted the sound problems on my fresh XP install yet, but it’s annoying. Bet Ubuntu on there would work fine just as it does elsewhere.
[...] « How much is that software in the Windows? [...]
Yeah, because I enjoy having to reformat oOO documents because they forget that formatting is supposed to be saved. Just one example – never had that happen with MS office in ~15 years of use. Now have I known anyone whose experienced that. How hard is it to save a file as formated?
If you have a problem paying people for the hard work that they put into a piece of software then you have serious entitlement issues. It seems that you feel that you have a right to have this other persons work for free, because “it feels strange and funny” to pay them for their effort. That is sad.
I’d be willing to hazard a guess that he means his time is worth more than sitting around a computer trying to keep the OS stable enough to use. Or we can go with your oxygen thief thought and assume they can’t do it. Is that easier for you to understand then “I don’t want to.”
Nor have I vice
Well, now you do, because it’s happened to me. I’ve never had OpenOffice forget formatting, though.
I think it’s hilarious to see people jumping up to defend Microsoft products as categorically perfect. MS Office has no bugs? Really? Really?
You really don’t understand open source, do you? It’s about sharing, not stealing.
Logically, if that were what he meant, he’d be using Linux. Or a Mac. Anything other than Windows.
Let me ask you something. Do you have a server? Web server, file server, any kind of machine that has to stay up reliably for long periods? If so, what OS is on it, and what’s its average uptime? There’s a reason so many servers run on Linux and Unix, and here’s a hint: it’s not to save money on the OS. It’s because if you want to “keep the OS stable enough to use,” you don’t choose an OS that needs rebooting every time you install something, or every time you apply a patch, or every so often “just because.” I just checked my Linux file server’s uptime. It’s been up for 197 days without a reboot. That sounds “stable enough.” Is your Windows box that stable?
I would not put OOOO as a paragon of free software development, because since Sun lost interest in it, it roll downhill. It’s still missing some basic feature one expects to find in text editor, has some stupid limitations, tons of bugs which are unlikely to be fixed, as developers left the project. It misses Project, Outlook, InfoPath, Publisher, and its Base is awful as FoxPro. It much worse than some primitive commercial office suites, like Softmaker’s one.
Of course MS Office has bugs, but they are untrivial and get fixed without much fuss.
@dwasifar –
“BSD and Linux are both part of the Unix family.”
Wrong. To be part of a family, they would have had to branch from the same development tree at some point. The development trees for BSD, Linux and Unix are three distinctly different trees. Just because someone wears the same clothes and speaks the same language doesn’t make them family. That is why both BSD and Linux are referred to as Unix-like operating systems.
Windows is POSIX compliant. By your reasoning, Windows is part of the Unix family.
So, Windows XP and Windows 98 are not both part of the Windows family then? Which one isn’t?
Dissemble all you want. I’m sure you can gin up some reason why these two OSes, which don’t share the same development tree any more than Linux and BSD do, are nonetheless family while Linux and BSD are not. I’m looking forward to your creative reply.
@dwasifar –
That’s a weird response. Did you misread what I wrote or does your mind block understanding that you’ve been proven wrong?
Funny, I was just going to ask you the same thing.
@dwasifar –
Really? Because, you seem to be missing my point entirely.
On the comment before last I made 2 points.
1) Linux is not a cousin to BSD or Unix. That is my view and I think the view of most rational people.
2) But, if we use your reasoning that Linux is a cousin to BSD and Unix then Windows is also a cousin to Unix, BSD, and Linux since it is POSIX compliant.
So, I agree with you that Windows NT (XP, Vista, 7) and Windows 9x are two entirely different operating systems. In fact, I’ll point out that in the early days there was a lot of software that would only run on one or the other. Most games only ran on 9x, while a lot of enterprise (i.e. networking) software would only run on NT. The only reason that both were called “Windows” is pure marketing.
But, I don’t think you accept this. So, let’s go with your cousin definition. So, Linux is a cousin to BSD. Therefore, Windows is a cousin to Linux.
I guess Linux is doing really well on the desktop given that its cousin, Windows, completely dominates the market.
And that is my point. You are trying to claim that Linux is a success by latching onto other operating systems that have nothing to do with Linux other than also being other operating systems.