[clue-talk] Vmware ESX / VI, WTF?

[David L. Willson]

Nate,

I think you're taking devil's advocate to an extreme here.  It was not my intent to
debate every economics issue, but just to hopefully prove that cost-benefits are not
always as simple as the immediate points.

Let me re-state my main point, and then ask you yours.

My point is:

The Microsoft ecosystem inhibits competition by creating vendor lock-in (which ought to
be called customer lock-in).  Lock-in is bad, even if the value is otherwise good,
expecially when other products provide equal value without the lock-in.  The Free(Libre)
Software ecosystem prevents lock-in, and promotes customer freedom.  Whenever I see a
vendor pushing me to give up my freedom, I protest loudly, and wait for a response.  If
there is no response, or negative response, I stop supporting the vendor.  It appears
that the roadmap of Vmware products ends with desktop lock-in, and I'm protesting that.
 I'm also encouraging other users and potential users of Vmware products to protest
desktop lock-in.  The protest and the vendor switch, are justified, not by immediate
cost-savings, but by long-term benefit to the industry we lead, and the customers that
industry serves.

The one example that you answered, that I care enough about to speak further on, is the
"Chipotle or KFC, free-range or factory" issue:

I'm truly sorry that you feel that treating food-slave animals humanely is worthless.  I
understand your perspective, I completely disagree with it, and I hope that further
consideration will cause you to change your opinion.

--David

On Mon, 08 Sep 2008 21:33:40 -0600, Nate Duehr wrote
> David L. Willson wrote:
> 
> > I think we're closer to a productive statement of points on which we agree and disagree,
> > so I'll say this, on this point.  The reason why I always choose platform neutral
> > products when such are available, is because I believe in the power of competition.  If
> > I let someone lever me into Exchange, or ESX, or MAGIC HDIQ, or Commtouch, or some other
> > choice-limiting product, I remove from myself, at least to a small extent, the benefit
> > of competition for my business.  A Linux-based product is ideally positioned to
> > encourage competition, because Linuxes are so very competitive with one another,
> > providing unprecedented lateral mobility for users and software makers.  If it were
> > "just me", then it would be only $100, as you say, but I think of myself as a leader, a
> > trail-blazer, a hero, an icon in the place where God put me, so I think of every move I
> > make as a "leading" move, something that others might follow, and that carries a
> > terrible burden of responsibility.  :-)
> 
> Hmm, I can't see how realistically running VMWare's app on Windows is 
> suddenly going to "leverage" you into Outlook/Exchange.  That seems like 
> some serious paranoia you've got going there!  (GRIN)
> 
> Linux products on the Desktop are currently an also-ran, as far as REAL 
> competition goes -- so far.  Nothing on the Linux desktop is compelling 
> enough for the masses to switch to it from [insert whatever they're 
> using here, probably Windows].  It's been promised for a long time, but 
> Linux devs are too fragmented and PO'ed at each other to really produce 
> anything useful.  I see Enlightenment is making a comeback in the latest 
> Linux Journal... LOL... it died when the main developer couldn't get 
> along with other folks, and the GNOME/KDE "competition" era started. 
> Neither has produced a compelling desktop in almost a decade of 
> development, and E is coming back?  Sad.  But not too surprising really. 
>   E was a nice clean Desktop with a little eye candy to help you feel 
> good about the choice, I suppose.  Certainly more lightweight and 
> well-written than the mess GNOME/KDE are offering today... or back then.
> 
> As a server platform, the kernel and GNU tools are great.  That's 
> "Linux" as most of us perceive it that wanted a way to set up servers 
> cheaply.  Without Apache, it would be nothing.  And Apache grew up and 
> runs on any OS now.  So Linux/Apache isn't the only game in town in that 
> market anymore.
> 
> As far as the Desktop goes... bah.  It doesn't exactly "suck" if you 
> load it ONCE and enjoy it, but the long-term upgrade paths and time 
> wasted fixing things distros do that cause collateral damage via their 
> packaging systems is pretty annoying after years of doing it.
> 
> I can get that from MS and Apple too, so "competition"-wise, Linux is no 
> better than the alternatives there, from a quality perspective.
> 
> "Competitors" that always lose are pretty boring, in the long term.
> 
> Not trying to be a troll, just stating where we're at today -- something 
> fans are loathe to do to ANY OS.
> 
> I'm not so worried about saying ALL this stuff (Linux included, but also 
> Windows and Mac to different extents) stinks to high heaven anymore.
> 
> I figure if enough people say it, maybe the crazy folks that have the 
> time to write code for free might have some motivation to fix it.  I 
> doubt it though, really... deep down.   Even the paid folks don't have 
> time to fix all that stuff.
> 
> Linux has and always will have the responsibility handed out with it 
> that says, "Don't like something... YOU fix it."  Frankly, I'd rather 
> pay someone else to do it.  I have other things to get done these days, 
> and I never was a programmer.  Waiting around for some dev to fix 
> something they broke that I was USING after an upgrade, really gets old. 
>     At least with commercial desktops there's a fairly well-defined set 
> of things they're NOT going to break on a whim -- in Linux, it could 
> literally be anything.  Risky for the end-user who can't and/or won't 
> program.
> 
> The performance of the commercial "leader" in Linux is pretty poor on 
> the Desktop, and they are OBVIOUSLY not interested.  They're a server 
> company.  [RedHat, that is.])
> 
> Since I can run servers without RHEL for free, and just fine... my 
> "needs" aren't met too well by "commercial Linux".  All I really want 
> out of commercial Linux distros is to stop changing things to 
> differentiate themselves from "regular" Linux, so I can run the free 
> stuff and the commercial stuff interchangeably, and not have to learn a 
> completely different methodology for running a Unix-like system.
> 
> Unfortunately, that's not how the software biz works... commercial 
> distros and commercial Unix (non-Linux) all do things a little 
> differently on purpose... trying to lock you into their systems.  Those 
> that tell me RH/Fedora is great, are usually completely LOCKED IN to 
> that methodology.  And often don't even realize it.
> 
> So if this is all about "competition"... Linux isn't competing 
> effectively yet... when it has 10% of the Desktop market share, that 
> argument will start to get more compelling.
> 
> >>From a pure cost/benefit perspective Linux is not always the best choice, but immediate
> > cost-benefit cannot be the only consideration, when a little short-term cost buys a
> > long-term benefit.
> > 
> > Let's take a couple example cases.  You don't have to agree with me on any or all of
> > them, but they are examples of when ~I~ choose to pay a little more to "do the right
thing":
> > 
> > A Chipotle chicken burrito is $6, and they treat they animals nicely before they kill
> > and cook them for me.
> > A KFC chicken meal is less bucks, but the animals may not be treated humanely.
> 
> This one's a non-starter for me.  Animals raised as food are already 
> treated as food, not as animals.  Cut 'em all loose and start hunting 
> them instead of having food factories, if this is a goal to treat them 
> better... I figure.
> 
> Seriously -- "humane" treatment of animals... that are already herded 
> into a pen as food, waiting to die to become a meal?  Not exactly high 
> on my "moral priorities" list.  There's a reason the word "human" is 
> part of the word "humane"... it's intended as a concept for how you 
> treat PEOPLE, not animals intended as food.
> 
> Animals domesticated as pets, that's a different decision -- the humans 
> taking care of those chose to take care of animals and breed them to not 
> be able to survive in the wild -- so they had better not mistreat them.
> 
> (I'm not a total "ogre", but humane treatment of food, isn't important 
> to me.  "Humane" treatment of pets, is.)
> 
> > Oil is $x per unit of energy produced.
> > Solar, wood, wind, alcohol, all cost more today, but as people choose to pay a little
> > more for clean reproducible energy, the benefits of commoditization and competition
> > become realized and the price difference shrinks.
> 
> Solar: I did my social responsibility and ran the payback numbers on my 
> house, and found it to be 17 years, even with non-free-market tax 
> incentives.  More without.  I live here in COLORADO where the weather 
> will DESTROY such a system long before 17 years is up.  Too expensive. 
> Glad folks are working on making it better though.  Get it down to a 10 
> year payback in efficiency, and I'm definitely interested.
> 
> Wood: There's already limitations in place to not allow woodburning as 
> primary heating unless you have nothing else due to pollution issues.  A 
> non-starter in urban cities.  A family member already heats their home 
> with wood here in the 'burbs of Denver, and the only way you can make it 
> cost-effective is to have enough free time (retired in his case) to hunt 
> down very large supplies of wood throughout the year, and many many days 
> of labor to prepare it for use in a very high-efficience wood stove.  He 
> ran his natural gas system about five days out of the last year, but 
> calculating the amount of time he had to put into it to get there, I'd 
> have about 10 weekends left a year to myself if I put in similar time to 
> accomplish it.  Not to mention the serious pollution problem we'd have 
> if even a significant percentage of homes in a large metropolitan area 
> burnt wood as a fuel source.  I think he's technically breaking the law, 
> unless he were to disable his natural gas system altogether.  Don't 
> know.  Don't have time to do it, so it'll never matter to me until 
> retirement age.  If it makes economic sense (he gets much of his wood 
> for free, downed trees, neighbors cutting them down, etc... and word 
> gets around that you're a "wood" guy, and that you have chainsaws... and 
> will travel...) -- I'll do it.  Not right now.
> 
> Alcohol: Same problem with power produced versus amount of fuel, like 
> solar.  Serious problems with affecting the cost of the food supply and 
> additional environmental problems that would likely result from the 
> additional farming activity if "everyone" were using it, too.  Good in 
> some circumstances, not so good here locally.
> 
> So I'd like to believe you that paying the extra for the above 
> "solutions" would work, but I don't think they're viable, long-term. 
> They're "hedges" against high petroleum costs, but like Linux on the 
> Desktop -- they're "also rans".
> 
> Natural gas, on the other hand... is here, not imported, and we've 
> learned how to get at a whole bunch of it with horizontal drilling and 
> other technology lately.  Burning it in vehicles is also technology 
> that's already here... I'm amazed it hasn't taken off economically more 
> than it has.
> 
> It'll start with large fleets, and others who can fuel up at the 
> specialized stations for it... but it's ready to go, today... burns 
> cleaner than petroleum products, and can sustain the country's needs for 
> a number of generations as the other technologies come up to speed.
> 
> > Throwing away plastics costs me almost nothing, but has a long-lasting and negative
> > effect on the environment.
> > Recycling is much more expensive, but minimizes the negative impact on the environement.
> 
> Change that to "throwing away anything" and you'll feel like you're from 
> the generation that grew up during the Great Depression.  Plastic 
> baggies can be washed (people freak out at that one), plastic water 
> bottles and $2 for less than a gallon of water was ALWAYS retarded (What 
> made it so popular?  Haven't people ever heard of tap water?  I guess we 
> did all that work to have indoor plumbing for nothing...), and the list 
> of things we throw out goes on and on.
> 
> How hard is it to recycle a COMPUTER, trying to stay to things THIS list 
> cares about...?  (Anyone want a large out of focus monitor?)
> 
> Why do we need new computers ever three-five years?  Could the software 
> folks work on making the software for the one I already have MORE 
> EFFICIENT instead of leading a race to the CPU speed frenzy we're 
> already at?  Linux has some niche people doing this for older machines, 
> but the majority want "gee wiz" stuff like Compvis?  Why?
> 
> On this one, I think we definitely agree -- recycling is the right thing 
> to do, and always has been.  What's it got to do with VMWare versus 
> [insert virtualization system that doesn't require Windows here].
> 
> > Windows is $x, but every person that only uses and only knows Windows is one more
> > prisoner to MS's interoperability FUD.
> 
> This is the crux of it, really -- they're not "prisoners", and they 
> don't feel like such.  They either get done with their computer what 
> they want to, or they go do something else.
> 
> There's NOTHING that Linux offers them as far as FEATURES that 
> Windows/Mac/Whatever don't also already do.  If Linux lived up to its 
> HYPE about how being "open" creates BETTER products... they'd be beating 
> down the door to install it.  But it really doesn't, or they would.
> 
> What does Linux *DO* that Windows doesn't that any regular person cares 
> about?  Sure some of us geeks can name some esoteric things, but none of 
> them are anything the average person cares about.
> 
> Show them something BETTER than Windows in Linux and clean up Linux so 
> it's virtually maintenance-free, they'll be BEGGING to install Linux.  I 
> promise.
> 
> (It worked for cars.  Early Honda's weren't good performers, but they 
> built a reliability rating for themselves over decades, and also worked 
> on OUTPERFORMING the competition while staying reliable as all get out. 
>   Linux needs to start outperforming Windows/Mac.  Problem is... that's 
> hard to do with volunteer coders...)
> 
> > Linux is $y and/or z hours of downloading and burning, and any person that knows any
> > Linux, can change OS vendors with an ease unprecedented in this industry.
> 
> The average user doesn't want to KNOW Linux.  They want to know their 
> APPLICATIONS and how to get around the desktop.  They're not IT folks, 
> not interested in the slightest about how the "car" they bought works... 
> they take it to a pro to get it fixed when it breaks, and they follow 
> the manufacturer's instructions on maintenance.  They also rate "cars" 
> on how much maintenance they require.
> 
> Linux needs to be low-maintenance, cheaper, and better for the average 
> Joe to want it.
> 
> The OS as a battleground is only a luxury geeks with spare time can 
> afford.
> 
> Everyone else has things to do (gotta cut up that firewood, for example) 
> and isn't going to invest huge amounts of time to learn how to care and 
> feed Linux.  Linux needs to care and feed ITSELF and also offer 
> something better than the commercial offerings, for it to survive the 
> Desktop market.  It doesn't.
> 
> In the server space, Linux holds its own by virtual of being stable and 
> more security conscious than other systems.  Hiring syadmins hasn't gone 
> away yet (the ultimate goal of the "best" server software ever), so 
> there are people around to handle the care and feeding of Linux in the 
> server farm -- it's just less care and feeding than Windows.
> 
> That's great.  But this is where the VMWare decision hits the road... 
> they just don't care if they lose you because you won't run a single 
> Windows desktop.  Given enough pressure, they might fix the problem, but 
> it takes away time they would rather spend on their core technology -- 
> virtualization.  Being competitive in the virtualization world takes all 
> their resources... writing and testing cross-platform control software 
> is probably one of the LAST things they want to spend time, money and 
> resource on... for a Desktop that has less than 10% market-share.  They 
> know deep down that Linux on the Desktop isn't there yet.  They'll make 
> a Linux version when it is... or if it'll cause a SIGNIFICANT hit in 
> their bottom line.
> 
> But demanding it of them will also indirectly make them take resources 
> and time away from their core product.
> 
> Nate
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-- David