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You seem to be making an argument based on what Microsoft says. But of course, what Microsoft says is not the reason for its decision. Microsoft offers an aca
by mhneu 7y ago
You seem to be making an argument based on what Microsoft says. But of course, what Microsoft says is not the reason for its decision.
Microsoft offers an academic discount because it thinks that getting students to use their products makes them more money as the students continue to use them later in life. Microsoft then SAYS they are offering that discount because students/degrees/training/teaching/whatever. What it SAYS doesn't matter. It's not the reason.
Similarly, Microsoft wants CERN to pay because it thinks it can make more money in licensing fees from CERN than it can from getting people at CERN familiar with Microsoft products. (Microsoft may have gotten this wrong, if CERN pushes more non-Microsoft products into the spotlight; whether they are wrong or right isn't at issue, their reasoning is the issue.) Once deciding they can make more money if CERN pays, now Microsoft has to come up with some reasonable-sounding reason that keeps its existing academic and industry customers happy.
So they came up with that reason. But don't think for a second the REAL reason has anything to do with anything but Microsoft's bottom line. Don't let them deceive you. This decision was made by executives at Microsoft by talking about profit.
- jjeaff 7y agoSeems short sided even from a bottom line perspective. For one, CERN is bound to employ plenty of experts that will familiarize themselves with the product and move on to other projects later and choose MSFT products. Additionally, CERN is such a high profile project that simply asking them to advertise the fact that they are "powered by Microsoft" would pay them more than any licensing fees. But maybe they thought they could charge 10x the fees AND still get all the benefits.
- fock 7y agoI guess "powered by Microsoft" is not what was happening at CERN as nearly all data analysis is "powered by Linux" (there's a reason, Scientific Linux existed) and iirc the ecad-software KiCAD is the only production focused CAD-tool which is good and free (mostly sponsored by CERN too)
- dukwon 7y ago> You seem to be making an argument based on what Microsoft says Well, yeah, I'm repeating what I remember them saying. I'm definitely not making my own argument, nor am I particularly willing to speculate about any ulterior motives.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- wmf 7y agoYep, the argument is academic since MS is also willing to increase prices on universities when they feel like it. I remember when they revoked per-seat pricing at the University of Texas 25 years ago.