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Windows Operating Systems Software Microsoft The Almighty Buck

Windows Cheaper When Studied by MSFT Analysts 425

Posted by CmdrTaco from the well-here's-a-surprise dept.
richdun writes "Here is a study done by an independent research firm which claims that under certain circumstances, it is cheaper to develop applications and enterprise solutions for Windows than for Linux. They cite costs from more education, time developing, etc. Of course, the story is quick to state that the whole study was funded and commissioned by our favorite Redmond, WA based software giant. "
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Windows Cheaper When Studied by MSFT Analysts More

Windows Cheaper When Studied by MSFT Analysts

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  • You can't beat free! (Score:3, Troll)

    by usotsuki ( 530037 ) on Tuesday September 09, 2003 @09:08AM (#6908709) Homepage
    Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeh!

    Windows will NEVER be cheaper than Linux or FreeBSD.

    -uso.

    • Re:You can't beat free! (Score:4, Insightful)

      by MoonFog ( 586818 ) on Tuesday September 09, 2003 @09:16AM (#6908783)
      This study takes into consideration more than just the price of the OS. Things like support, salary for developers etc.

      This study is sponsored by Microsoft, so it's probably biased as hell, but a Linux system is never absolutely free for a corporation.

      • Re:You can't beat free! (Score:5, Insightful)

        by brlancer ( 666140 ) on Tuesday September 09, 2003 @09:44AM (#6909023) Homepage Journal
        This study is sponsored by Microsoft, so it's probably biased as hell, but a Linux system is never absolutely free for a corporation.

        No, but most of the "costs" that are assigned to Linux presume an existing greater knowledge of Microsoft Windows; it never includes the money spent training these people to use Windows originally nor does it try to compare costs of complete training: how long does it take to get an admin for *nix and Windows (respectively) to go from 0 to 60?

        Despite what people say about the "learning curve" of *nix, I believe most of that is due to breaking bad habits they learned in Windows. I picked up Unix exceptionally quickly, in part because I never knew Windows very well. So, if one were to remove the costs of Linux training that they have ignore WRT Windows training, the cost is significantly less. Realistically, the costs should be counted for both, not discounted for both...

      • This study takes into consideration more than just the price of the OS. Things like support, salary for developers etc.

        Its a simple formula.

        1) Find the categories your predetermined winner has advantages.
        2) Weight those areas heavily
        3) De-emphasize or omit any areas the predetermined loser has strong advantages
        4) ???
        5) Profit!
        Sorry,
        4) Release study!

        This has the added advantage of creating contreversy, which:

        1) Increases visibility
        2) ???
        3) Profit

        /Quickly runs from room/

      • So well-paid developers tend to choose Linux. A well-paid developer tends to be an experienced developer. Maybe through experience they have learned to develop and deploy on Linux. Note that this study says nothing at all about the quality of the software developed on either platform.

    • Re:You can't beat free! (Score:2, Insightful)

      by teg ( 97890 )

      You can't beat free!

      Sure you can. TCO isn't just a buzzword, time spent making things work is expensive for companies.

      E.g., installing Red Hat Linux on a server or a workstation is quick and will only need a small tweaking, while the same is far from truth on Windows, where installing the OS is just the first 5% of the job. This applies to other things... buying something which works can often be a lot cheaper than trying to find an open source project which works.

      • Re:You can't beat free! (Score:5, Insightful)

        by EastCoastSurfer ( 310758 ) on Tuesday September 09, 2003 @09:26AM (#6908885)
        installing Red Hat Linux on a server or a workstation is quick and will only need a small tweaking, while the same is far from truth on Windows

        Look, I use and like linux like the best slashbotter, but lets be real. Either OS you end up using in a corporate environment is going need a lot of time for tweaking and customizing. I wouldn't let a virgin Windows or Redhat install just rollout to an entire enterprise.
        • With things like yp, ldap, autofs etc. available, Red Hat Linux works pretty well out of the box.

          Windows, OTOH, doesn't, unless you buy it preinstalled.

          Installation/initial configuration is just a small piece of the picture, of course, but an area in which Linux excels.

      • Re:You can't beat free! (Score:4, Interesting)

        by PainKilleR-CE ( 597083 ) on Tuesday September 09, 2003 @09:27AM (#6908894)
        The study doesn't really have much to do with Linux, except that it was the OS used to host the J2EE apps. It's a study of the costs of developing web-based software for .Net vs. J2EE.

        The study was based on interviews with 12 companies, seven of which use Microsoft's .NET platform and five of which use Linux.

        Forrester said that the main difference in cost was not due to price of the basic software, but rather the price of developing the software, including labor costs.

        Despite the difference in costs, however, the Forrester report also noted that "many organizations will adopt Linux instead of Microsoft's alternative" because of the expertise they have built up on the Unix platform, Sun's proprietary operating systems used to run computer server networks.

        Not that I hold much faith in 'interviews with 12 companies' as a solid foundation for a sweeping generalization on the costs of development, but it's easy, for me, to see how developing for a Java platform would be more expensive for some people than developing for the .Net platform.

      • buying something which works can often be a lot cheaper

        Yes, going with something that works [zdnet.co.uk] reduces the TCO. That's why there is a market for OS X, QNX, and Netware.

        From my past few years, I've found that RedHat and SuSe are much easier to maintain than the MS offerings, and installation seems easier and faster. Debian and OS X still lead on ease of maintenance.

    • Re:You can't beat free! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Falrick ( 528 ) on Tuesday September 09, 2003 @09:23AM (#6908854) Homepage
      Why is it so hard to believe that developing on Windows could possibly be cheaper than developing on a Linux box? For you, as a developer of an open-souce, I code because I enjoy it, project, you are right. Developing under Linux (or FreeBSD) will always be cheaper than developing under Windows... for you.

      However, the corporate world is quite often very different. When you have preasures of deadlines and QA, quite often you don't have the time to work with a somewhat less feature-rich, but free, tool. Some tools just make developing certain kinds of applications more efficient, take VisualBasic for example. There's not much else that can compare to the RAD capabilities of VB. Sure, you might argue that there is no long-term viability for a VB app, but long-term viability isn't always needed. Neither is peak performance. Greater development efficiency directly translates into greater profits. Greater profits may quickly overcome any savings that you may have gained from developing your solution on an open source free OS with free tools.

      Take for instance a relatively simple GUI application. Say that it takes two weeks to develop the application under a free toolkit like GTK. Now say that it takes only one week to develop that same application under VB. If we use a $60k developer salary (which is only about half of what it actually costs to employ a developer), then we see that one week of time is worth ~$1154. After one month, the license for VB and Windows has quickly paid for itself.

      So, for certain kinds of development, yes, you certainly can beat free.

      • > Take for instance a relatively simple GUI application. Say that it takes two weeks to develop the application under a free toolkit like GTK. Now say that it takes only one week to develop that same application under VB. If we use a $60k developer salary (which is only about half of what it actually costs to employ a developer), then we see that one week of time is worth ~$1154. After one month, the license for VB and Windows has quickly paid for itself.

        In my experience, companies that want more bang

      • Re:You can't beat free! (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Lysol ( 11150 ) *
        dude, this just doesn't make sense:

        "Take for instance a relatively simple GUI application. Say that it takes two weeks to develop the application under a free toolkit like GTK. Now say that it takes only one week to develop that same application under VB. If we use a $60k developer salary (which is only about half of what it actually costs to employ a developer), then we see that one week of time is worth approx. $1154. After one month, the license for VB and Windows has quickly paid for itself."

        Let's r
      • "There's not much else that can compare to the RAD capabilities of VB."

        Oh yes there is. It's called Delphi. Delphi beats VB in every way: language, speed, price, etc. And Delphi is available for Linux too (Kylix).
    • Munich.

      (if you don't get it, search Slashdot for it)

      Cheaper (price) isn't always the biggest benefit either. However, I think it is safe to say that Windows will never be "more free" than Linux.

  • Cheaper when... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 09, 2003 @09:09AM (#6908713)
    SCO charges apply...

  • Taking aim at the server end. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by grub ( 11606 ) <slashdot@grub.net> on Tuesday September 09, 2003 @09:09AM (#6908714) Homepage Journal

    (from the article:)
    The study compared applications built to run over the Internet on Microsoft's .NET platform to applications developed with J2EE, a development platform backed by Sun Microsystems Inc. favored by the Linux community.

    That speaks volumes: the study is aiming at J2EE and Sun. Granted these are the "certain circumstances" mentioned but MS is taking direct aim at its diminishing server market share with this. They know the desktop is still pretty much a lock-in for the time being.

    Here's a clue: don't trust studies. They are generally paid for by people with agendas.
    • J2EE, a development platform backed by Sun Microsystems Inc. favored by the Linux community.

      Says who?

      If they mean favored over .NET, then well duh. I wish I could get money for telling people the obvious.

      OTOH, maybe Mono and DotGNU can change that - if it is good enough, there isn't much reason to not choose the better proprietry platform apart from kneejerk anti-MS. But that is just between those two - I sincerely hope that none of those are actually going to be the favored one.

      • Says who?

        Says Microsoft. :) These types of sandbag-studies are directed at PHBs with a bit of technical knowledge, even if that knowledge is just having heard the word "Linux". Mindshare is a valuable commodity and by creating a slanted study such as this they take a shot at Sun and Linux in one fell swoop.

        MS knows they haven't a chance at swaying anyone with half a clue, but unfortunately most of the people that sign the cheques don't.

    • Re:Taking aim at the server end. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by rsmith-mac ( 639075 ) on Tuesday September 09, 2003 @09:23AM (#6908849)
      Here's a clue: don't trust studies. They are generally paid for by people with agendas.

      But on the contrary, don't balk at any study just because someone paid to have it done. As odd as it sounds, companies that do studies don't just pull "statistics" out of their ass, they are by and large sizable companies with good reputations doing honest work. The reason why studies seem to agree with the organization funding them is that often, the organization sets the parameters, creating a situation where things would look good for the company that funded the study. Looking at the numbers, I believe that Giga is right; in their subject pool, Windows was cheaper. The study should only be distrusted when the parameters used don't fit a situation you're trying to use it as proof in; for a company similar to the subject pool, this study would seem to be an accurate comparison.

      • It's really .Net vs. J2EE. I'm not sure that .Net is cheaper to develop on than J2EE, but I am sure that there are less expensive ways to engineer software than J2EE. If price is the critical factor (which it must be, since it's the only actual information in the press release) you'd think that they'd compare to PHP/MySQL.

        The lack of details makes me suspicions. Did they choose projects based on very expensive application servers and databases, rather than free alternatives, in order to offset the cost of
      • No, companies don't pull statistics out of their ass. They pull circumstances out of their ass to justify the statistics you want.

        Microsoft didn't say, "Make J2EE look bad compared to us", they said "Make us look good in one of these (a, b, c) areas." The company then looked around for a competing product that overlapped one of those and didn't perform as well as the MS product in at least one aspect. That's how these paid-for studies work.

    • They could be right. (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I know I'll get modded down for saying anything positive about MS but here goes:

      It's not absolutely damning that MS paid for the study. After all who else would pay. But of course the study would not have been released if it were not positive for MS. Still neither of these makes neccessarily untrue or biased.

      And its not unreasonable to believe it could be true. MS does make good development tools. And even just a few days ago there was a slashdot post lamenting the sad state of Java. It really cou

      • Re:They could be right. (Score:3, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Finally, it is quite obvious that stupid people find it easier to program in Windows. This is not true on linux.

        Wow. I guess ignorant, inconsiderate jerks are on both sides though.

      • Re:They could be right. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by molarmass192 ( 608071 ) on Tuesday September 09, 2003 @09:37AM (#6908976) Homepage Journal
        Finally, it is quite obvious that stupid people find it easier to program in Windows. This is not true on linux. Linux requires knowing a lot of intricate details and knowledge of ...

        Right, but this is irrelevant in Java. Also, Java suffers from history hangover. It had some growing pains but most of those have long since been corrected. Also, MS seems to have a penchant for comparing unoptimized Java code with highly optimized C# code, hardly unbiased. Finally, with Java 1.5 due out in early 2004, current comparisons between .NET and Java will all become dated. I'm not particularly worried about .NET but Microsoft appears to be particularly worried about Java.

  • Wait a minute... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by turbine216 ( 458014 ) <turbine216@NosPAm.gmail.com> on Tuesday September 09, 2003 @09:10AM (#6908721)
    how come when MS sponsors a comparison, and the results favor their OS and/or software over linux, it's just GOT to be a big conspiracy? Why doesn't the same criticism hold true for the supposedly "unbiased" comparisons that are done by linux-friendly companies like IBM and Red Hat?

    Oh wait, i forgot...this is slashdot.

    • Re:Wait a minute... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 09, 2003 @09:17AM (#6908792)
      By accepting open ideals, linux-friendly companies tend to be more open and include more detail. We like detail, it means more information and reproducability. With enough information, we can make our own conclusions. Of course, some 'studies' do resort to petty name-calling, but there are good ones too. The key is to ignore /. editor comments and make up your own mind.
    • Who do you think funded the studies that say that chocolate is healthy? M&M Mars, of course - they've got deep pockets and can gain from the results. While it's possible they influenced the findings, it's also likely they were the only people who would fund such a project.

      Privately-funded research comes from those who have something at stake. It can taint a paper, but it can also be groundbreaking. Wait until a major discovered paid for by an involved party has been verified by someone else before you

    • Re:Wait a minute... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by brlewis ( 214632 )

      Where's the post calling this a big conspiracy? A research firm finding results that its sponsor will like is not a big conspiracy. Where's the article where nobody criticizes an IBM or RedHat study as biased?

      Insightful my foot. Imaginative, maybe.

  • gotta love this... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ih8apple ( 607271 ) on Tuesday September 09, 2003 @09:12AM (#6908744)
    "The study compared applications built to run over the Internet on Microsoft's .NET platform to applications developed with J2EE, a development platform backed by Sun Microsystems Inc. (Nasdaq:SUNW - news) favored by the Linux community. "

    So, they compared .NET to J2EE development and called it a comparison between Windows and Linux?

    "favored by the Linux community"? Last time I checked, .NET didn't run on Linux!
  • Although I'm not a Windows fan, I actually could believe this, until I read this part:

    "Last December, Microsoft released a study that showed that Windows-based servers were cheaper to run than those on Linux in four out of five common server tasks."

    You just got to love studies funded by non-biased companies!

  • some quotes (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rokzy ( 687636 ) on Tuesday September 09, 2003 @09:12AM (#6908748)
    "The world's largest software maker, which is facing increased competition from Linux -- the open-source software standard that can be copied and modified freely -- hired Giga Research, which found that licensing, associated software, maintenance, labor, and training was 25 percent to 28 percent cheaper on Windows for certain types of applications."

    and

    "Last December, Microsoft released a study that showed that Windows-based servers were cheaper to run than those on Linux in four out of five common server tasks."

    how can anyone trust crap like this? WHAT TYPE OF APPLICATIONS? WHAT SERVER TASKS?

    • Re:some quotes (Score:5, Funny)

      by gl4ss ( 559668 ) on Tuesday September 09, 2003 @09:29AM (#6908911) Homepage Journal
      Apps: blaster, sobig
      server: mirc-slave, open mail relay
    • In particular, I'd like to know where those applications were running. Did they allow communications only among systems running Windows? Were they for the LAN (an easier environment to program for and administer) or the Internet?

    • Re:some quotes (Score:4, Funny)

      by cascadefx ( 174894 ) * <morlockhq@@@gmail...com> on Tuesday September 09, 2003 @12:36PM (#6911431) Journal
      Well 2000 does come with 4 games.
      They are Solitaire (which is pretty good compared to the Open Source versions), Minesweeper, Pinball, and Freecell.

      Lets break it down:

      1. There are not as many decks in the windows version of Solataire to choose from, so that would definitely speed things up. ADVANTAGE: Microsoft

      2. Minsweeper is small. You can't even resize the window. That's got to cut down on the number of CPU cycles that it uses. Of course you know they only tested it on the easy levels. My suspicion is that it would have only performed better on 3 out of 5 if they cranked Minesweeper up to Expert. ADVANTAGE: Microsoft (despite possible performance rigging).

      3. Pinball. That's just unfair. There isn't a version in linux that has the same kicking music. (easy) ADVANTAGE: Microsoft

      4. Freecell. Need I say more. That game screams. After all, they've had 10 years to perfect it. (another easy) ADVANTAGE: Microsoft.

      I don't know what you guys are whining about... the evidence is there.
  • A woman who recently had a baby claimed that her child was the cutest one on the planet!
  • How can a software solution that costs money and requires fees be cheaper than a software solution that's freely downloadable, totally supported by 1000s of people, 100s of books written about it and the essence of it is taught in basic CS courses?

    Perhaps the questions are answered if I were to RTFA...
    • its really not that complicated. you can get a subscription to ms dev tools for around $1000/year per developer. if a developer can gain a weeks more productivity in VS.NET than a competitive suite of products, the productivity pays for the software. if 2 weeks productivity is gained, then VOILA! your .NET solution is now cheaper to develop. /.ers seem to forget that peoples time more often than not costs way more in the long run than actual software licenses.
    • Well there are more people using windows and more books about it than about Linux. But it can easily be cheaper. If it everything you need is in the box for linux or windows linux should be cheaper. But if you have to develop some custom application software (and many companies do have to do that) it may well cost you more to develop it on linux than on windows.

      If it does cost more to develop custom applications on linux than windows, then we as the linux comunity have to get better at building the kinds o
  • Am I the only one who read this in the mysterious future and thought the "See any serious problems with this story?" line was funny?
  • From the article:
    The study was based on interviews with 12 companies, seven of which use Microsoft's .NET platform and five of which use Linux.
    I'm curious how they dealt with the variation in project requirements, etc. This is a far cry from a controlled scientific study.

  • .NET on linux (Score:3, Insightful)

    by unixmaster ( 573907 ) on Tuesday September 09, 2003 @09:14AM (#6908767) Journal
    .NET works on Linux too with Mono [go-mono.com]. Why not compare Mono/Linux to .NET/Windows so we wont compare apples and oranges.

    • Re:.NET on linux (Score:4, Insightful)

      by pmz ( 462998 ) on Tuesday September 09, 2003 @10:22AM (#6909472) Homepage
      Why not compare Mono/Linux to .NET/Windows so we wont compare apples and oranges.

      Because .NET really does not work on Linux. Only a small subset does, and that is with Microsoft's toleration (for now).

      Conversely, there are full-blown fully-sanctioned-and-supported J2EE implementations for Linux distributions. In fact, there are several full-blown J2EE implementations available. From different and competing vendors.

      Funny how proprietary lock-in isn't a criteria in these "studies".
  • The first thing my wife said when she saw the title of this story was that she thought it was 'Windows Cheaper When Studied By MISFIT Analysts'.

    What could I say? When you're right, you're right!

    ;-)

  • Time Spent (Score:5, Insightful)

    by kannibal_klown ( 531544 ) on Tuesday September 09, 2003 @09:14AM (#6908770)
    While I agree with previous posts that Linux is cheaper than Windows in just about every respect, I'm glad that his article touches on something.

    With the current development tools available for Windows, as well as all third-party utilities/db drivers/etc, development on Windows goes by much quicker.

    I'm not talking about little apps that could be banged out as a perl script in a few minutes, but more robust applications that companies need internally.

    However, this is just for the present. If/when more people adopt Linux as desktops then more people will learn how to develop for it and more/better tools will become available. Say what you will about Visual Studio, but the recent incarnations work exceptionally well, and they have a large user base. If we could see 1 or 2 similar development IDE's for linux that are HIGHLY ADOPTED (I know there are some nice ones out there, but the use-rate is still rather low), then things could change.
    • Oh you must mean a tool like VB for instance. Back in the real world, I watched all day yesterday as 2 consultants and 2 of our programmers burned the entire day because of a vb runtime error because of a shared component compatibility problem. The application was very trivial, sending text to a rs232 port. To do this in linux would require at most 10 lines of bash script. This was a text book example of the pain caused by a platform that has a lock on it.
    • With the current development tools available for Windows, as well as all third-party utilities/db drivers/etc, development on Windows goes by much quicker.

      That is not true. With any large project the benefit of a development tools will be drawfed by requirement gathering, analysis and design. The development process used will actually drive the cost factor. The technology and tools will not be a real factor.

      If you apply the same development process to develop an application for J2EE to developing an ap

    • Re:Time Spent (Score:2, Interesting)

      by jatsrt ( 691289 )

      I have to disagree strongly. I currently work in a shoop that develops applications in .NET and J2EE and we are always comparing and contrasting.

      The real conclusion that we find is that Eclipse, ANT, XDoclet and JBoss make a much more usable and more powerful deveopment environment than anything available for Windows.

      Our J2EE applications usually have a shorter time to market and a much happier customer when they don't feel like they have been taken avantage of in licensing fees.

      However this holds true

  • Full text of the Giga Group report? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by mforbes ( 575538 ) on Tuesday September 09, 2003 @09:15AM (#6908775)
    The Yahoo article doesn't link to it; without seeing the details I'm hesitant to fully swallow any synopsis.

    I don't find it unbelievable that some tasks are less expensive to produce under MS products than under Linux, but unless the report indicates other reasons, I'm inclined to believe the difference is due to the trained user-base.

    The article does say they interviewed twelve firms (hardly a statistically significant amount), seven of which use Windows & five of which use *nix. I'd be curious to know the sizes of the firms involved and the level of training of the personnel in each of them.

    In other words, my question is: Is all else equal? I suspect not.

  • Long term costs of windows (Score:5, Insightful)

    by CastrTroy ( 595695 ) on Tuesday September 09, 2003 @09:15AM (#6908778)
    When analysing the cost differences of Windows and Linux, the main advantage to windows always seems to be that little to no training is required, while on the other hand, Linux requires lots of training, with Expensive Admins. However, In the long term, if many companies and schools started using Linux, these cost would come down, as many more people would have experience and require less training. Also the number of qualified people would increase, making the salaries of qualified Linux admins go down.


    • > When analysing the cost differences of Windows and Linux, the main advantage to windows always seems to be that little to no training is required ...until the next version comes out, at which point you pack your entire stff off to week-long training seminars.

      > while on the other hand, Linux requires lots of training, with Expensive Admins.

      Do you include the price of cleaning up SoBig.[FGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ] in that expense?

  • Possibly true, if they are comparing RAD (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    to a well organized J2EE framework and good development practices. My guess is they compared a development process that has no formal design phase and everthing is designed on the fly without any real thought to extensibility or maitainability. Absolutely .NET will be cheaper, but it also means you have to rebuild 85% of it the next time you need to add a significant feature.

    There needs to be an organization that establishes a set of standards about how these kinds of comparisons are made with a detailed l

  • ... in the beginning, since the linux sourcebase is huuuuuuuge, and imho it is easier to use just a few predefined interfaces that to understand the code and to actually interface with it. but in the end, i think linux si more desireable for

    a. they don't switch interfaces and so on a routine basis, linux evolves but largely keeps its backward compability, whereas microsoft sometimes changed their interfaces at will and even dropped support for them
    and

    b. it is better to understand the whole foundation you build on (or the part of the foundation) instead of blindly trusting foreign interfaces.

    isn't that the main reason so many security bugs are found in windows applications? how can i program a secure app when i don't know what the underlying classes do (i don't get to see their source). What do you think of that?

  • Apples to Oranges But It is a real fact (Score:3, Insightful)

    by codepunk ( 167897 ) on Tuesday September 09, 2003 @09:17AM (#6908795)
    J2EE development is slow and cumbersome and it is no suprise to me that .NET whatever that is beat the pants off of it for development efficiency. But considering that the .NET stuff will not run on anything other than windows it is a dead end road. Now do the same study using php against .NET and the tables get tipped drastically.

    • Duh, did all the PHP fanboys just moderate the parent up to +4 Insightful? Get a life...

      .NET and J2EE are more than just ASP and JSP. Comparing PHP to them is way more stupid than what Giga Research group had to do in order make the /. front page...

    • J2EE development may seem slow, but this is because you are expected to do some serious analysis of a project and write scalable portable code: The time spent is a worthwhile investment. Comparing MS products with something like J2EE is rather like comparing Access to Oracle - you can write apps very quickly with the former, but you would not want to run a business with it.
    • I used to develop on J2EE and now develop for C# and ASP.NET and think both are very impressive patforms. Apart from one only running on Windows, there's little to choose between them and the only reason I prefer .Net is simply becuase I prefer the development tools for it but I certainly cannot say a bad word about Java. I am amazed you think it's slow and cumbersome, but that is more likely that you do not like or understand OOP.

      However, what both J2EE and .NET are able to do far, far outstrips what yo

  • what were the projects? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Dan Ost ( 415913 ) on Tuesday September 09, 2003 @09:20AM (#6908822)
    Has anyone seen the report?

    I'd like to know what the 12 projects were that were being compared to
    see if the comparisons make sense.

    Is there any chance at all that this is an actual apples to apples
    comparison?

  • Devil's advocate. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Ride-My-Rocket ( 96935 ) on Tuesday September 09, 2003 @09:21AM (#6908830) Homepage
    Ok, let's assume that within this select subset of applications, developing for Windows is 25-28% cheaper than for Linux per application. There's also the underlying operating system to consider. Windows, for whatever reason -- inherent security flaws or merely higher visibility / threat risk, I don't care -- is more likely to be attacked and infected by worms and viruses. As a result, the cost of maintaining applications and the operating system is higher. I'm fairly certain such a cost isn't factored into the study, and I'm fairly certain it's a considerable amount -- trying to keep things secured in my company's 250-user environment is hard enough.

  • This isn't totally off base (Score:3, Insightful)

    by rnd() ( 118781 ) on Tuesday September 09, 2003 @09:24AM (#6908864) Homepage
    If you consider the productivity gained by using an IDE such as Visual Studio .NET 2003.

    You have intellesense statement completion, automatic code formatting and highlighting, and intelligent help that will pull full documentation on any statement you are typing with one click.

    You also benefit from languages like VB.NET and C#, which are very high level and make it easy to write conceptually clear and error-free code.

    It makes it possible to become comfortable with a new object model without having to flip though documentation or constantly search the web. You'd be surprised how fast and simple it is to create relatively sophisticated apps that perform pretty darn well.

    • Re:This isn't totally off base (Score:4, Informative)

      by javatips ( 66293 ) on Tuesday September 09, 2003 @10:00AM (#6909147) Homepage
      If you consider the productivity gained by using an IDE such as Visual Studio .NET 2003.

      You have intellesense statement completion, automatic code formatting and highlighting, and intelligent help that will pull full documentation on any statement you are typing with one click.


      You have the same thing with Java IDE such as Eclipse (free) or WSAD ($$$) or JBuilder ($$$). The Java IDE that cost $$$ will have the additional benefit of having wizards and views that speed up the creation and configuration of EJBs and other J2EE stuff (Eclipse has some of these too, but they still have a some way to go).

    • [re: Visual Studio] You have intellesense statement completion, automatic code formatting and highlighting, and intelligent help that will pull full documentation on any statement you are typing with one click.

      So?

      EMACS has all these things too, plus it will make coffee for you!

    • Eclipse does all this (Score:3, Informative)

      by Decaff ( 42676 )
      All of these features are present in eclipse (www.eclipse.org) with Java.

  • It's J2EE, not Linux (Score:5, Insightful)

    by consumer ( 9588 ) on Tuesday September 09, 2003 @09:24AM (#6908871)
    This article really has nothing to do with Linux. It's about J2EE vs. .NET. No surprise that J2EE is expensive. The best Java developers on Linux use much better tools than J2EE and EJBs. A good open source stack with Struts, Velocity, and Hibernate will beat the stuffing out of straight J2EE for productivity. Of course there is also the fact that lots of web development on Linux is done in much more productive languages, like Perl, Python, and PHP. Amazon and Yahoo (on FreeBSD) do it, so it's probably good enough for your lame little site too.

    • Re:It's J2EE, not Linux (Score:2, Informative)

      by Decaff ( 42676 )
      You are confusing J2EE and EJBs (Entity Java Beans). Struts, Velocity and Hibernate are J2EE. Anyone who uses JSP or servlets is using J2EE - EJBs are only one aspect of J2EE. Many of the features of EJBs are now superceded by JDO (Java Data Objects) - an object/relational layer that makes database interfacing hugely faster and more scalable and more portable than with PHP/Perl etc.

      A better test would be .Net vs J2EE/JDO.


    • Of course there is also the fact that lots of web development on Linux is done in much more productive languages, like Perl, Python, and PHP. Amazon and Yahoo (on FreeBSD) do it, so it's probably good enough for your lame little site too.

      I can't find the post now, but on a recent thread on Slashdot someone made a pretty convincing argument that the oft repeated claim that Amazon have built their site on Perl/PHP is a misunderstanding based on someone seeing that Amazon were looking for Perl programmers. A

  • My study shows (Score:2, Insightful)

    by krray ( 605395 ) *
    My study, funded by me, has shown that Windows is the most expensive to maintain (patch, patch, reboot, patch, reboot) and use.

    Thank you Microsoft: for security reasons it was determined here that at NO TIME will _any_ operating system gain 100% penetration to the desktops. The datacenter already runs a mix of Linux, BSD, and Netware...

    Since the changes started we've rolled Linux out to some people and OS X to others (OS X is my preferred GUI of choice :). Amazing that IT isn't running around chasing thei

  • The catch! (Score:2, Interesting)

    by agwis ( 690872 )
    "Here is a study done by an independent research firm which claims that under certain circumstances, it is cheaper to develop applications and enterprise solutions for Windows than for Linux."

    I had to go back and read this. What do you suppose are the certain cirucumstances? Is it when you have a room full of developers all clinging onto their copy of Visual Studio and sitting in front of a linux box?

    I wish they had elaborated on this somewhat. I've been seriously trying to figure out for the last few min

  • Not hard for me to believe. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by chrysrobyn ( 106763 ) * on Tuesday September 09, 2003 @09:29AM (#6908918)
    Here is a study done by an independent research firm which claims that under certain circumstances, it is cheaper to develop applications and enterprise solutions for Windows than for Linux.

    My initial instinct was that this was a combination of "absurd" and "special case so specific it's mostly useless". But then I started to think of a Slashdot thread from just a few weeks ago about the big worms that started recently...

    The thread discussed how much cheaper it was to hire just any person and have [him|her] maintain the "Windows Server". Of course, an affordable admin in many small business cases would be unable to keep such a server patched well enough to fend off all the attacks and the machine would be compromised. The thread continued to say that if you compare a competant Windows admin with a competant *nix admin, not only are the costs similar but so is the security-- but you could have a Windows box up, running and making money with an incompetant admin.

    No offense is intended, by the way, in calling such a person an incompetant admin, just that many small businesses can afford neither a service contract nor a full time "real admin", so someone who does not specialize in such tasks part-times it. This is a rare situation with *nix, where the barrier to entry of a steep learning curve usually causes entry admins to be better than Windows (I have no real evidence to back up this assertion, only personal observation). The theory is that a small business can't afford to keep 100% uptime, but can afford to go down for 12-24 hours.

    This makes me wonder about programming on Windows in a general case. I can understand how someone can develop a Visual Basic program for cheaper than a C (or whatever) equivalent on Linux. Instead of comparing .NET to J2EE, as the article does, I'd be interested in seeing a problem solved by a beginning application developer in Windows (would (s)he choose Visual Basic?), another in Linux (C/C++ plus GTK or similar?), and then someone experienced on the two platforms solve the same problem and find out where the added costs present benefits. Can we tell the difference in benefits between the two skilled solutions or the two unskilled solutions? What benefits are gained by keeping one platform but redeveloping with a skilled developer?

  • Cost of _developing_ applications (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Woodie ( 8139 ) on Tuesday September 09, 2003 @09:30AM (#6908924) Homepage
    OK -

    First, RTFA. It talks about _developing_ applications. It wouldn't really suprise me if it were cheaper to develop applications on Windows.

    Visual Studio .NET is a kick-ass development environment. Even the older non-.NET edition is a lot better than most dev tools out there. Sure, it's pretty expensive - but say you're paying programmers $40/hour (ignore benefits, etc) - the fact you just spent $1200 on a development environment is no big deal: less than a 40 hour week of paying said programmer. And, I'm willing to bet he'll save a lot more than a week of effort by using a better tool.

    Say what you will about the quality of MS, and how buggy/bloated their software is. It seems to work well enough for a bunch of people out there. Their developer programs are excelent (maybe they need to be to cover up their crappy underpinnings).

    In the open source area you might be able to download some open source code, and cobble a system together to do what you want... But I think I remember reading a statistic that said something like 85% of all software written is custom, internal, business software. So you might have a tough time finding something that solves your problem exactly... But since it's open source you can modify it to fit - sometimes; sometimes it's more trouble than it's worth.

    With things like Eclipse for Java development in the open source arena the gap should close up in that area too (dev tools) - but don't kid yourself; we've still got a long ways to go.
  • The comparison was, as many already ponted out between .NET and J2EE, and then we have this quote from the article:

    Forrester said that the main difference in cost was not due to price of the basic software, but rather the price of developing the software, including labor costs.

    I don't know much about .NET development, but that J2EE is expensive is without a doubt. Long time to develop, and all those licensed experts that costs a ton. I wouldn't be surprised if MS has better tools too - for those that a
  • A study commissioned in Detroit announced that American cars are better than Japanese cars.

  • Hmmm... (Score:2)

    by BJH ( 11355 )
    because of the expertise they have built up on the Unix (news - web sites) platform, Sun's proprietary operating systems used to run computer server networks.

    So UNIX belongs to Sun now? Hmmm... I think Darl's gonna have something to say about this...
  • There are probably more MS-trained people out there looking for jobs than Java or Linux experts. A PFY [faqs.org] with an MCSE [linux.org.za] who knows a bit of Visual Basic and .NET will probably work for less than a bearded *nix guru.

  • .NET vs J2EE, not Win vs. Linux (Score:4, Redundant)

    by mystran ( 545374 ) on Tuesday September 09, 2003 @09:45AM (#6909032)
    This studies the costs between .NET and J2EE, not really Windows and Linux.

    One could also say that it compares native Windows and J2EE, but Java is by no means a native system to Linux, which is to say that this is like comparing apples with oranges.

    Having supported a largish J2EE application, I can tell that the it's equally awful platform, whether it runs on Windows or UNIX. I'd suggest that if one compared J2EE on Windows to J2EE on UNIX, UNIX would probably win.

  • But what about the whole TCO?

    you've got to pay real money for the end server software, the SQL-server and all the really big latest fancy hardware to run it on a cluster (ok so the hardware might not need to be bleeding edge anymore).

    You need lots of admins who need to pass their little exams and of course a company car for the remote admin :-)

    When you can all this for 1/2 the people costs with a *nix, never mind the s/w costs if you go for a free-nix.
    Of course should you wish to goto big iron (SUN/IBM/H

  • Linux cheaper when studied by Slashdot drones (Score:3, Interesting)

    by essdodson ( 466448 ) on Tuesday September 09, 2003 @09:48AM (#6909056) Homepage
    We should be aware by now that any company can manufacture a TCO, even those behind Linux. The only valuable TCO is the one that your company produces and uses to make its decisions.

  • The Netcraft Study (Score:3, Redundant)

    by cyber_rigger ( 527103 ) on Tuesday September 09, 2003 @09:51AM (#6909078) Homepage Journal


    Of course the Netcraft study shows that

    only Microsoft can afford the more EXPENSIVE

    Linux based server caching     (Akamai)

    http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph/?host=www.micr osoft.com [netcraft.com]



  • independent? (Score:5, Funny)

    by LMCBoy ( 185365 ) on Tuesday September 09, 2003 @09:51AM (#6909080) Homepage Journal
    "...a study done by an independent research firm...funded and commissioned by Microsoft..."

    You keep on using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means...

  • Windows programming cheaper (Score:3, Informative)

    by totallygeek ( 263191 ) <sellis@totallygeek.com> on Tuesday September 09, 2003 @10:37AM (#6909712) Homepage
    If it is cheaper; you get what you pay for!


    Seriously, I developed programs under many Unix flavors, and enjoyed developing solutions with Linux. But, when we needed to interface our software with Word for mail merges, or Excel for spreadsheet drop-ins, then (at least at the time) Windows programming was a necessary evil. Development of databases was done on Unix for stability, web applications using PostgreSQL and Perl, but front ends were usually Access or some VB application.


    There was also a problem hiring programmers. Salaries asked for by experienced programmers were much higher (IMHO rightfully so) than salaries demanded by Windows programmers. While the Windows programmers in general were less flexable to learn new languages or stray from mainstream programming, they were quite efficient. And, the tools they were using allowed them to create and alter code quicker than us Unix-folk. That having been said, we never had to cuss-out our monitors because of a blue screen...


    If I were a shop doing custom programming, it would be a mix of Windows and Unix, and Windows programmers would be about 2/3 or 3/4 of the programming population in the office. It is simply good business to sell a comfortable solution, and businesses are comfortable with Microsoft. Now, you don't have to disclose that MS-SQL will not be on the back end of that Access application...

  • No Doubt (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Multiple Sanchez ( 16336 ) on Tuesday September 09, 2003 @10:42AM (#6909761)
    I hate this. This is business. This is what business is. This is all it takes. Just fund the study that says what you want. On its face it looks rediculous, but who'll see it on its face? What you're really buying is the references to the study. The argument that "independent studies show..." All you need is that little bit of doubt, and you'll get sales.

    We need stricter rules! This is how businesses succeed, and it's awful! I hate the SCO lawsh^Huit, I hate the RIAA lawsh^Hit, I can't stand these false studies and it's just infuriating.

    Any reference to this study down the line should be required BY LAW to be labeled as "funded by Microsoft." Then there would be no manufactured doubt, and the study wouldn't happen in the first place, and businesses would have all these extra resources to spend on things like research and development, instead of things like fake false lying lies that confuse people and make it impossible to know what's really real and gee while they're scratching their heads let's just reach over and take the money out of their pockets. Monsters.

    Let's get rid of the "D" and just tell businesses like Microsoft, "F U."

    Monsters.

  • Refine the Questions (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Carcass666 ( 539381 ) on Tuesday September 09, 2003 @11:20AM (#6910337)
    It may indeed be easier cheaper to develop apps under Windows when the shop is all Windows; but is it cheaper to build cross-platform, interoperable applications that can communicate and run across the multiple platforms that may be encountered within (and outside) an enterprise? I would argue that J2EE development platform is a far more cost-effective, scalable and portable approach than .NET/COM +/DCOM/etc. Microsoft can put on all of the XML window-dressing it wants, it doesn't change the Windows-centric underpinnings.

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