Office Professional Plus 2010 Microsoft kills its

It had been a lengthy time in coming. But Microsoft has lastly acknowledged that its anti-Linux web site had gone past the point of usefulness.On August 23, Microsoft pulled plug about the “Get the Facts” web site, replacing it with a new Windows Server “Compare” website.The goal of the website is to offer more in-depth information and customer-to-customer opinions about many of the issues IT administrators face,” a company spokeswoman said. “It turns out people wanted 3rd party validation in addition to people;s experiences making OS purchasing decisions so in addition to customer case studies, research reports that compare platforms the web-site will also offer guidance around best practices, net casts, etc.”Get the Facts had a lengthy and controversial role in Microsoft;s battle against open-source software vendors. Recently, it came to light that Microsoft tried to influence some of the analysts it hired to perform studies in 2002 comparing Windows and Linux to portray Microsoft offerings in a more favorable light. Microsoft;s whole policy of sponsoring analysts to conduct studies comparing its products to open-source ones — which many company observers believed would naturally show Microsoft products and strategies to be superior — had been a bone of contention since the web-site launched at the start of this decade.Why did Microsoft lastly do away with “Get the Facts”? Not surprisingly, there are no talking points available on that one.Maybe its open-source partners (Novell,Windows 7 Home Premium, Linspire,Office 2010 Code, Xandros, SugarCRM,Microsoft Office 2010 Professional Plus, XenSource, etc.) asked Microsoft to stop fanning the flames. Although there is a “Compare Windows to Linux” tab on the new Compare internet site, nearly all the material there is targeted specifically at Red Hat — one of the Linux distributors that is continuing to refuse to sign a patent-protection agreement with Microsoft.Or perhaps Microsoft agreed to do away with the site in order to regain ground it has lost with the open-source community around its patent-saber rattling? Or to win more friends in its quest to gain Open Source Initiative (OSI) approval for its Shared Source licenses?It absolutely was a little tough to figure out from Microsoft;s press statement issued on August 23 that “Get the Facts” was a goner. I heard earlier this year that Microsoft intended to kill off the Get the Facts web site. But Microsoft told me,Office Professional Plus 2010, at that time, I should get my facts straight, and that there was no intent to do away with the site.When I for an official response today,Office 2010 Professional Key, I received the following statement, attributable to Ryan Gavin, director of Platform Strategy:“Customers have increasingly asked for not only credible 3rd party information from other customers and industry experts, but also for Microsoft;s perspective on platform decisions as a key technology partner. Customers want to consume this information in a variety of formats - from short Q&A to more in-depth business cases - from videos and podcasts to research reports. Compare was designed with these requirements in mind - to provide in-depth information about how Windows, Linux, UNIX and Mainframe stack up along key attributes. Given that the /compare website will provide 3rd party information, Get the Facts will be retired as a destination.”So far, the new Compare web-site looks like it is little more than “Get the Facts” the sequel. I;ve asked Microsoft whether the company intends to continue to sponsor third-party research studies to use as ammunition about the new internet site. So far, no word back.“Microsoft will have some studies that were published on Get The Facts available around the /compare website and it may commission 3rd party research if customers ask for it and there is a need for more information not currently available in existing research,” a Microsoft spokeswoman said.