There is an interesting article linked over at Slashdot.org on how many of Microsoft’s customers are bailing on Microsoft’s highly dubious “software assurance” program. Simply stated, Microsoft Assurance was a scheme cooked up to get more revenue out of customers by having their customers locked into paying for a yearly maintenance contract so the customer would be guaranteed the upgrade price instead of the full price. Turns out that Microsoft isn’t cranking out new releases as quickly as they had “assured” their customers would be the case. A recent Forester study now shows customers are opting out because they aren’t getting much new product for the price they are paying. They are now choosing to simply pay the full retail price when they are ready to, which, contrary to what they were told by Microsoft, is still a better deal.

This is yet another reason to consider open source software. With open source, you can upgrade when you like and you don’t have to worry about missing out on an upgrade deal for features you may not want or even feel like allocating valuable resources towards implementing them either.

See the full story here.