Sterling Ball, a jovial, plain-talking businessman, is CEO of Ernie Ball, the world's leading maker of premium guitar strings endorsed by generations of artists ranging from the likes of Eric Clapton to the dudes from Metallica.
But since jettisoning all of Microsoft products three years ago, Ernie Ball has also gained notoriety as a company that dumped most of its proprietary software -- and still lived to tell the tale.
In 2000, the Business Software Alliance conducted a raid and subsequent audit at the San Luis Obispo, California-based company that turned up a few dozen unlicensed copies of programs. Ball settled for $65,000, plus $35,000 in legal fees. But by then, the BSA, a trade group that helps enforce copyrights and licensing provisions for major business software makers, had put the company on the evening news and featured it in regional ads warning other businesses to monitor their software licences.
Humiliated by the experience, Ball told his IT department he wanted Microsoft products out of his business within six months. "I said, 'I don't care if we have to buy 10,000 abacuses,'" recalled Ball, who recently addressed the LinuxWorld trade show. "We won't do business with someone who treats us poorly."
Ball's IT crew settled on a potpourri of open-source software -- Red Hat's version of Linux, the OpenOffice office suite, Mozilla's Web browser -- plus a few proprietary applications that couldn't be duplicated by open source. Ball, whose father, Ernie, founded the company, says the transition was a breeze, and since then he's been happy to extol the virtues of open-source software to anyone who asks. He spoke with CNET News.com about his experience.
Talkback
For the complete story go here:
http://news.com.com/2008-1082-5065859.html
What are his ideas about SCO?
How much money did he save by not going the Microsoft way (despite having to pay fines)?
Etc.
I am making the transtion to the linux world as we speak, I use full out pirated microsoft software due to my incapability to afford it. I am a single user who loves computers and I am a damn kid, I have no money! What do you want from me? Don't you think MS has enough cash yet? Can't they sell their software at reasonable prices? I have removed each and every aspect of microsoft from my system! I installed RedHat 9 and learned how to recompile my kernel (can't do that with windows!!!!!) to tailor it specifically to my computer's uses and needs! I have spent some time learning how to use the os and install specific driver support and yeah, its confusing but I blame microsoft for that, maybe if they'd let go of their hold on the industry, they started something great but they went the wrong way with it!
This reads like a case of sour grapes after being caught with the wrong number of licences. It beggers belief that the transistion was a breeze. A 'few proprietary applications' on top of a whole new OS doesn't sound like a breeze for the IT department.
I say well done!
Although Linux is a bit hard to move to from Windows and it does need a bit more software done for it. But it will all get there:)
If only it were that easy. Perhaps the guitar strings industry is one that doesn't have millions of dollars and hundreds of careers tied to an existing IT infrastructure. In most companies that have CEOs, the very idea of upgrading just the client load can be a year-long effort. Converting the back-end (servers and apps) that run the business to an alternate OS is a decision few companies could make without some serious contingency plans, lots of patient users and an unknown quantity of trucks containing sacks of cash. ($100K would be serious chump-change)
The story doesn't really say why Mr. Ball was humiliated by the experience. We shouldn't be humiliated by our own mistakes. Hopefully it wasn't just because he got caught with unlicensed software; a responsibility of his IT group.
The only way the transition was a breeze: If the abacuses would have really been a viable Plan B. But even with that, training required to roll-out 10,000 new abacus-based clients wouldn't be trivial.
All said, I think I would like to work for an IT group in the guitar strings industry.
Hey, Mr. Car Sales Guy who-doesn't-know-what-he-is-talking-about:
Chrysler uses Linux for car crash testing. Ferrari has been using Linux for 5 years for its email. There is a bank in Brazil with 12 million customers and 78,000 employees using Linux on a mainframe, Charles Schwab, Merril Lynch, Swiss Credit, etc., etc. are all using Linux. Suggest you do some research about who is doing what before you demonstrate your ignorance.
A very interesting story. I suspect that they will not be the last company to make the leap onto open source. Good for them. Perhaps this will help to force Microsoft into a review of its licensing policies and their subsequent enforcement.
Doesn't sound like they got treated badly at all, they had illegal software and they got caught! I am not really pro or anti Microsoft, both have a place in most businesses and both are too big to ignore. In my opinion any IT person who firmly plants themselve in one camp or the other is just blinkering themselves to a whole world of possibility.
Wonder who Anonymous works for? This is an appalling story of a arrogant monopolist consumed by its power and ego. Microsoft deserves no sympathy.
Lets face it, if only , as Ernie says, applications developers stuck with alternatives the despicable overweight monolistic arrogance of Microsoft would be whittled away.
They really don't care and act like a consumer business forcing unwanted product down the throats of consumers - and now apparently using the US courts to enforce unwanted upgrades! Bizarre!
Why can't people just continue to run the same old same old that worked fine - because Microsoft decides to deliberately disown and obsolete its own products while enforcing trick laws for more upgrade money. They don't deserve our business and their business strategy and its costs to customers should be hammered home in every available media.
Microsoft's disdain for its customers deserves to fail at every hurdle, and while their emloyees may be nice people Microsoft itself is a grasping stain on the computer industry, as its huge profits, cash mountain, attacks on competitors and giving software away to wipe out competition in each sector it enters shows. And also the greed for more.
A pox on the house of Microsoft for the damage its done to the IT business, and the regulators for putting government money behind these practices while failing to break up the monopolist. What a joke the US capitalist legal system is, you get the justice you can pay for, and even get them to pay you if you have enough money.
They are laughing at you, customer.
Not breaking it up was a huge missed opportunity but the money was always going to win in this system by buying off complainants in some way, threatening others and tieing up everything in technicalities rather than justice. This was an OJ verdict. A bit of equity was required rather than technical law. If "justice" won't help.........
Let's all do our bit by seeking alternatives and speading the word to those we advise the lessons of this story:
- that Microsoft is too expensive to buy, more expensive to maintain current, crashes a lot , is wide open to virus attacks and is using monolistic marketing to make all this even worse.
Otherwise its more of the same and un announced armed attacks on your offices where unused/obsolete copies of software on hand me down PCs may cost you your business.
Dan
I'm basically a cross-platform kind-of-guy... I do Windows, I do UNIX, and I do Linux.
My day-to-day is currently on Windows, but it won't always be like that. Heck, if I could start my own business tomorrow there wouldn't be one single copy of Windows running on any desktop, if I could help it. According to Mr. Ball, it sounds like maybe I could.
Yes, Windows tends to be easy... at least where hardware and basic usability are concerned. But have you ever tried to do anything complicated? If you can do it at all, you're picking through a bunch of menus and wizards and wishing on a star. Windows hides most of what's going on under the hood... great if you're a technophobe, not so great if you're trying to figure out why something isn't working the way you want it to. Windows has made great strides in stability... but it still acts flaky at times. And, it's expensive. Not just Windows, but all of the expensive applications you have to buy to complete your desktop.
Linux and Open Source in general, at it's heart, is not easy. But it's closing the gap and I think with Novell and IBM spearheading a move to the desktop (with Sun and Oracle as cheerleaders) it will close the gap a lot faster. It's empowering. It's cost-effective.
Maybe not cost-effective for big companies who already have a large investment in Windows... at least not in the short term. Long term? Who knows? I think Open Source will be key for Small Business and for start-ups.
Microsoft is not going away. There are still good ideas coming out of Redmond from time to time and there's a lot of wicked business savvy in that bunch. But they ARE going to lose market share one way or the other, and they might as well learn to compete through innovation rather than intimidation.