UK standards authority tells MS to drop 'misleading' Linux ads

An ad running in the UK that implied running a Linux operating system is ten times more expensive than running a Windows operating system has been oficially condemned as misleading by the UK's Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), after public complaints.

'Weighing the cost of Linux vs Windows?' the advertisement said. 'Let's review the facts'

Unortunately the "facts" - supposedly adjudicated by analyst firm Meta Group - were so misleading that the UK's Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has ordered that Microsoft amends it.

A graph in the ad compared the cost per Megabit per second of "One Linux image running on two z900 mainframe CPUs" with "One Windows Server 2003 image running on two 900 MHz Intel Xeon CPUs". Meta Group measured the costs of Linux running on IBM's z900 mainframe for Windows-comparable functions of file serving and Web serving, and reported that IBM z900 mainframe running Linux is much less capable and ten times more expensive than Windows Server 2003 as a platform for server consolidation.

The discrepancy in the hardware used for each OS was the heart of the complainants' objections. The ASA upheld their complaint after experts confirmed that it would have been perfectly possible to compare the two operating systems on the same hardware.