Monday, February 20th, 2006

Marc Andressen Plays the Fool – Reading through FUD, a mini-HOWTO


Ok, Marc Andreessen… smart guy, co-founded Netscape, co-authored Mosiac, made millions, all around “I want to be like Marc” type of figure.

So what’s with him attacking whitebox Linux all the sudden – this make no sense to me. In order to shamelessly plug his new startup, Ning, he’s taken the offensive on “a commercial Linux vendor” making a horrible comparison of Linux and Solaris support costs. Now, add a notoriously over-embellished Sun COO into the equation and you have this mess of atomic FUD.

So, they write about a fictional comparison supposedly about Linux versus Solaris support costs that starts with:

Sun x2100 (model 175; dual-core Opteron): 1A
Whitebox AMD (2x AMD Opteron 248): 2A
Intel dual Xeon: >3A

Sounds like a “Once upon a time in the Northwest, near the town of Redmond” story right…

First, this makes no sense – Sun has an Opteron box – why not just compare the same HW?? Ah, I know b/c notice the subtle difference here – Sun’s box is the only dual core box they’re comparing. Apparently none of the whitebox or other major vendors have figured out what dual core is yet and cannot compare . Unless you look at tigerdirect.com, CDW, Zones, dell.com, hp.com, ibm.com of course 

What this does is 1) increases the “socket licensing cost”. A socket allows for one processor – a dual core processor in a single socket gets you 2 cores/socket. Sun will undoubtedly win the next compare – because vendors price their support on the “number of sockets”

And, when you add another socket with processor (the power hungry part of a system), you increase the power used (what a concept).

And so  with this apples to Chryslers comparison, Marc supposedly determines, that an Intel system and AMD whitebox are magically more expensive than a Sun X2100 without once taking a look at any IBM, HP, or Dell offering – you know a legitimate vendor.

For the sake of getting to OS Support pricing, let’s assume we’re actually just comparing OS support costs and use Sun’s own hardware as the base comparison. So, an X2100 model 175 is our basis – a single socket, dual core OS.

Now, Marc takes another fall with the OS – he compares dual socket support licenses for an enterprise Linux distro (gee, what’s the mystery Linux distro????) and compares a 2 socket support license to a single socket, basic support for Solaris  hmmm . Let’s see that’s like insuring 2 cars under Progressive Insurance and 1 car under Geico and saying Progressive is more expensive b/c your 2 car insurance is greater!

So, looking at Sun’s own website, basic service plan costs $120/yr per socket. Red Hat starts at $349/yr per socket. Ok, now you may say “So Red Hat’s $229 more expensive.. but look at what you’re getting. With Solaris 10, you get . Drumroll  patches and online documentation (yep, that’s not really “Installation support” – it’s links to documents online) which last I checked you can get all this for free with RHEL (sorry Marc, and sorry to Red Hat and Novell for uncovering this seemingly sacred secret over at Sun). And if you’re really not in need of support, check out CentOS – all the packages and updates sans trademarks and support.

With RHEL for your $350 you also get 1 year of installation and basic configuration web support, 30 days of phone support on top of all the updates on online materials. But, like I said, to compare to Sun’s $120 support, you can download an install all the updates you want for free on Linux – not with Solaris 10.

So, the way it looks now  Solaris 10 costs $120 versus RHEL $0 for all 3 years for basic support.

But wait, Marc said his RHEL support costs $900/yr didn’t he – how is that? Well, let’s take a look. First, Marc should have used 2 socket pricing for Sun to be at least minimally fair. That would make Sun’s support $240/system again for Basic support which is free with Linux. Then, he added $380 for a per-incident charge without adding any cost for Solaris 10 incidents  um on basic support you get 0 support incidents Marc and you get no web support. Actually with RH, you’re covered for the year with web based support in your $349 if you had looked up the right support option.

Then, Marc has $900 for support – well he’s pricing 2 socket systems so he’s actually paying $450/socket for the boxen (yes, box plural is boxen now – kidding). For the life of me, I cannot figure out how he got $450/socket/year for Linux support. SLES and RHEL are both $350 for a year’s support and neither has an option for $450 or $900 per year. So I’m stumped on this one unless Marc started comparing Premium support for Linux versus Solaris 10 basic support – even more ridiculous.

Regardless, given the mess that was made of every other data point in this supposed email, I can rest assured this point is as much of a FUD factor as the others.

So there you have it – either Marc has become a prostitute for Sun’s marketing hype engine or he really just asks 1 overpriced whitebox vendor for their pricing and doesn’t like to shop around. Admittedly I’m biased towards Linux, but hey if people like us weren’t around in 1998 voicing our opinions, who knows if Linux would have ever taken off. Now that vendors with agendas are scared, we have to defend or ignore.

Let the debate begin… or continue depending on your POV.

Posted by md on February 20th, 2006 | Filed in Business, Technology | Comment now »



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