Linux club helps firms hide from MicrosoftUK:

So, it has come to this!!!

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/linuxunix/0,39020390,39146090,00.htm

Linux club helps firms hide from Microsoft
Graeme Wearden
ZDNet UK
February 10, 2004, 17:30 GMT


The first rule of Incubator Club is don't talk about
Incubator Club. The founders hope that their confidential
forum for organisations considering Linux will help stop
Microsoft 'doing another Newham'

Local authorities and companies who are interested in
ditching their proprietary software in favour of open source
are being encouraged to join a confidential scheme that aims
to protect them from the attentions of firms such as
Microsoft.
The initiative, called The Incubator Club, is said to be a
response to the tactics employed by some major software
vendors against firms and organisations who consider using
Linux.

According to Eddie Bleasdale of Netproject, an IT
consultancy firm that runs The Incubator Club, Microsoft has
repeatedly tried to stop potential Linux migrations --
sometimes with notable success.

"Whenever we've gone public about a client moving to Linux,
Microsoft has come in and offered remarkable incentives for
them to stay as they are," Bleasdale told the Open Source in
Local Government conference in London on Tuesday.

The Incubator Club, he said, is a forum where IT directors
can exchange views and experiences related to open-source
migrations, and one where problems can be identified and
addressed.

Companies joining The Incubator Club will be able to test a
pilot version of Netproject's Linux desktop, called the
Secure Open Desktop Architecture. SODA uses smart cards that
plug into stateless PCs running Linux, allowing users to
hotdesk between computers and claims to avoid the security
problems inherent in a Windows-based environment.

Bleasdale emphasised that in The Incubator Club,
confidentiality is paramount. "The number one rule is that
you don't talk about anyone else being a member," Bleasdale
told the conference.

Speaking to ZDNet UK, Bleasdale declined to say how many
members have already joined the club, which costs from
£15,000 -- depending on company revenue -- to join.

Microsoft scored something of a win over Netproject in
January, in the London borough of Newham. Newham Borough
Council had been trialling Netproject's Linux product, but
eventually abandoned plans to move to open source in favour
of a new deal with Microsoft instead.

Bleasdale, who expressed his admiration for the poker skills
of Newham Borough Council's head of IT, says that Microsoft
was forced to offer an "unbelievable deal" in order to keep
Newham onside.

Given Microsoft's long-standing fear of the effect that open
source could have on its dominance of the desktop market,
some in the industry believe that government bodies and
private firms could find that "doing a Newham" could
dramatically cut their IT costs without involving a
migration away from Windows.

Others, though, claim that software vendors are more
determined than ever to lock customers into using their
products, and that companies who don't start moving to open
source soon might never be able to do so.

Following its success in Newham, Microsoft launched an
advertising campaign in which it claimed that Windows was
cheaper than Linux -- an echo of a controversial piece of
research from analyst firm Gartner, which claimed that
migrating desktops from Windows to Linux would often not
save money.

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