Ballmer, Gates on Microsoft's Future

RoadFever writes: "At the Microsoft shareholders meeting, CEO Ballmer acknowledged they may have a popularity bug. "We understand, based upon the fact that our industry didn't rally to support us, that we need to change the way we interact and relate to our industry," Ballmer said. There's a summary article in the Seattle Times and more stuff on the Microsoft investor relations page. Will words translate to action? Well, the company might want to start by toning down the habit of taking credit for every innovation: "Really, the reason you see open source there at all is because we came in and said there should be a platform that's identical with millions and millions of machines," Gates said." The question-and-answer session near the end of the meeting has the most juicy quotes.

Comments

innovation?

[jxa00]

just like MS DOS was theirs??

Driving people to open source

[90XDoubleSide]

"Really, the reason you see open source there at all is because we came in and said there should be a platform that's identical with millions and millions of machines,"

So wat he's saying is that the mass adoption of their inflexible software has driven people to create open products that will meet their needs, or am I misinterpreting him ? ;)

Re:Driving people to open source

[Ami Ganguli]

I was trying to figure this one out myself. My best guess is that thinks Open Source requires commodity hardware, and figures that Microsoft helped to create the commodity PC platform.

I'll grant that MS helped to create the PC (although it wasn't entirely their doing by any means - Intel and IBM certainly had a role to play), I'm at a loss as to why this would be relavent to Open Source. Free/Open Source software tends to be much more cross-platform than proprietary stuff, so it's a pretty bizarre statement.

Could it be that Bill still doesn't get this whole Free Software thing? Can he really be that clueless about the non-Wintel universe?

Re:Driving people to open source

[Null_Packet]

I think what Bill is saying is that he feels the Open Source movement is riding on the coat-tails of Microsoft's success. I think he is implying that Microsoft broke ground and created a standards-based system of software (Office, Windows, etc) and the Open Source movement is using some of his original ideas and yet claiming to be at odds with MS.

As far as Bill being clueless- remember any large Corporation's PR stuff is like a big card game. Bill and Co. are very, very smart no matter how evil they may or may not be. Don't think for a second that Bill hasn't thought through the whole OSS movement.

Re:Driving people to open source

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, you see, IBM tried to CLOSE the hardware down agian, with OS/2 and the PS/2 machines and Microchannel architecture. Microsoft, with Compaq and the cloners, prevented that from happening.

Believe me, the hardware market would be vastly more fragmented than it is if Microsoft hadn't become the titan that it was and is.

Hell, we'd all be fiddling around on X Terminals without any processing power at all of our own if certain other advocates (i.e. Sun) had won instead.

Or hooked with glorified terminals to AS/400 systems if IBM had won.

Re:Driving people to open source

[jued0001]

I'm not sure which is more wrong, this statement or the fact that it got moderated up. Comparing Gates to bin Laden shows just how mentally disturbed some of you Linux zealots are.

Re:Driving people to open source

[dcavanaugh]

I agree with your statement on commodity hardware, although I think Bill was trying to portray OSS as an imitation of Microsoft. As you say, it's a bizarre statement.

As most people would agree, it was the Internet that commoditized network service protocols, and OSS that built on that base to offer true cross-platform compatibility. Bill's products discourage the use of non-Intel processors, whereas OSS works on just about anything.

Of course, Bill neglects to mention that Microsoft was slow to adopt the Internet, at a time when OSS was already there. Who is imitating who?

When I hear Bill take credit for industry standardization it's like having Osama bin Laden take credit for world peace or Al Gore inventing the Internet.

Re:Driving people to open source

[taniwha]

You failed the SAT analogies thingy didn't you .... he didn't compare Gates to bin Laden - he compared a real statement by Gates to one that bin Laden might have made in some parallel universe and then tried to point out that both would be equally absurd

You then totally misread his posting and used it as an excuse to attack "linux zealots" - maybe you come from that parallel universe

Re:Driving people to open source

[Znork]

I hate to tell you, but Gates and the MS execs actually do spend every waking moment trying to invent new lies and twist words and warp minds. They are pathologically incapable of uttering anything but lies.

This statement by Gates is also yet another lie. Linux (as well as several other operating systems) runs on other hardware, and had Linus not had a PC he would have had another (cheaper, more powerful) platform to work on. Linux, BSD, hurd, whatever, we'd have the same thing today if Gates was retroactively aborted from history. He barely had anything to do even with the PC revolution; if he hadnt stolen QDOS, someone else would have sold IBM an OS, and considering people bought PC's because they were from IBM it would have gone the same, or a similar, way. And likely, without a dominant company with a severly mentally disturbed leader and leadership, we would have a far more healthy computer industry.

Re:Driving people to open source

[Jetifi]

I think we can thank our lucky stars that MS wasn't at all involved in the hardware side of things :-)

To elaborate, when the first IBM PC came out, there was a choice of some UNIX-alike, which was bundled at price+x, and there was DOS, which was at price+x-y, where y was enough to make most people choose DOS. On top of that, MS courted developers, and (I think) ended up with the Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet app.

You're right - hypothetically, other companies could have taken the place of MS - but they didn't :-)

Re:Driving people to open source

[kz45]

if he hadnt stolen QDOS

stolen QDOS???

You mean bought legally from another company?

it's called business.

linux zealoutry at its best

DUH!!!

[ackthpt]

We understand, based upon the fact that our industry didn't rally to support us, that we need to change the way we interact and relate to our industry," Ballmer said.

Like they haven't already killed off a lot of competitors, knifed in the back a lot of partners, and set their sights on other industries, which BTW could be customers of partners and competitors? The problem with being an 357.142851428 Kg. gorilla is, you can sit anywhere you like, but after you've done so, who's willing to be their friend and stick their neck out for you? Even some things PR can't fix.

Give credit where due

[NewIntellectual]

Microsoft was founded in/around *1975* at a time when nobody thought there was a market for PC software. Some of the Marxists-in-training who regularly snipe at Microsoft were probably not even born then. A standard, cheap Intel platform that can run e.g. Linux exists because of Microsoft software driven custumer mass demand for PCs. It's very "in" to be a Microsoft basher, but try looking at reality sometime.

Re:Give credit where due

[DrSpin]

Nobody? You must be kidding. I worked for a software house at the time. For a whole year, no software house released ANY software, because they were all reserving every programmer for when they had to port their new products to the IBM PC.

Anybody who knew anything KNEW the PC would be HUGE. Go back and read Byte Magazine or Dr Dobbs Journal.

Before MS, you always got the source code when you paid for software. (Well from DEC or IBM, anyway.)

And there was a big free software community eg DECUS the DEC user group. I still have DECUS tapes with Free software on. Including the ORIGINAL COLOSSAL CAVE Adventure game. (I ported a later, better, version to FreeBSD.)

And a Pascal compiler.AFAICR, Even Richard Stallman was around.

MS Stuffed the industry, and shafted the customer.

Free Software, and mass machines were around before MS. The scale was smaller, but then, lots of us were smaller.

Ballmer sums it up...

[Rice-Pudding]

"Second, we know we need to continue to focus in on our relationship with our customers. This is an area where we need to be ever vigilant. Certainly, as Bill talked about, we have opportunities for improvement in security, in virus protection, in the way we license and sell our products, and the reminders on that are always in front of us." --Steve Ballmer

I think this pretty much sums up a lot of what is wrong with Microsoft:
1) Security
2) The way they license and sell products.

At least they are realizing that market opinion is starting to go against them, and are trying to change this. I don't love Microsoft, but if they started to change their licensing tactics, I would be more inclined to buy their products.

How is this Juicy?

[NineNine]

How is this juicy? Gates and Ballmer have been asked by the people who own their company and all of the intellectual property if they have any plans of giving it all away for free. They said essentially "no", because then there'd be no business to speak of and all of your investments would be worthless. This is pretty damn basic. How is this "juicy"??

Interesting question:

[psyclone]

QUESTION: Is there a way that shareholders can get more information about [what effort is there to ensure that Microsoft is complying with its own business practice standards, and compliance policies]?

MR. BALLMER: We don't have a published document. But, I feel very good about where we are, there are no violations, none known to any of the executive management team, and I feel like we're in very good touch.

Microsoft has grown so large, even it's shareholders want to know if there are checks and balances within the company. Anyone have information on what other companies do for compliance of their own standards?

You forgot the What If part of it.

[SyntheticTruth]

Ya know, I do agree with you to a point: MS did push/prode some for of standards on personal computers back in the day. The merits of their system (I hated DOS then too) can be debated elsewhere.

Now, that said...

What if there had never been Microsoft? What if Bill Gates had decided to sell insurance and then get into designing role-playing games instead?

Would we not have PC's today? Would we still be in the 70's era of computers?

I highly doubt it. Somehow, we would have stilled ended up with PCs today, probably just with another OS and such. (Like OS Warp or even a true desktop *nix, who knows?)

So, arguing that MS is responsible for where we are today is kinda pointless and giving them lots of credit for it is just as so. They were in the right place, pushed the right buttons, and did so at the right time. Nothing more.

Microsoft invented the PC?

[astrosmash]

MR. GATES: Let me start out, really the reason that you see open source there at all is because we came in and said there should be a platform that's identical with millions and millions of machines, and the bios of that should be open to everybody to use, and all the extensibility should be there.

So, is Bill "Stop stealing from me" Gates now saying that his company is responsible for the open architecture of the IBM PC, and therefore open source in general?

How very droll.

Re:Pay a g**d damn dividend.

[FatRatBastard]

Companies that pay dividends are essentially saying "we can't think of anything better to do with this cash we've generated

Well, afaik MS can't think of anything better either. They're just sitting on a mountain of cash. So, if they're not going to do anything better with it then the investors should get it. An investor only invests to make money. MS is no longer on the rapid upward growth they were. That's not a bad reflection on them, they've just become "big." They're a big, extablished company, and their stock price is going to reflect that from now on. I'd wager the days of its valuaton doubling every 18 months or so are GONE. So, if I've got $$$ in MS, and their growth is at a pedestrian level (and thus their stock price) AND they're just sitting on a mountain of cash, then they better a) use that cash to rekindle double digit growth (which at their size ain't going to last too long anyway) or b) start handing it over.

Re:Juicy Excerpt

[pubjames]

This is so funny. These guys really don't get it at all, do they? Dangerous for them.

In the pre-software vision is that there would be no jobs in the software industry, there would be no testers, no engineers, no taxes paid, or anything of that notion.

Well Bill, all of those things can still exist under an open source model, but it's a different model to yours. Can't you see that?

If there's a key learning for us, we can't have free software,

So, Steve, you're saying you're older and wiser than IBM? Than HP? Than Compaq, Sun, Dell, Intel and all the other companies that are contributing to the Open Source community and releaseing code under the GPL? I think not. They get it, you don't.

It's still in the early phases, but we are massively mobilizing to try to stimulate communities, support communities, and really, if you will, borrow one from their playbook.

Can anyone point me to any evidence of this? Really? I've honestly tried to find it. Are there disussion boards where developers can openly discuss Microsoft technologies, and MS engineers will chip in with comments? I've looked for that, couldn't find it.

The clock is ticking Steve, Bill. Let me spell it out for you: YOU DON'T GET IT! If you don't get it soon, you're going to slowly die. Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock.

Microsoft wants to destroy Open Source!!

[mosch]

An actual Ballmer quote:

If there's a key learning for us, we can't have free software, it's kind of inconsistent with the goals of most people in the room. We recognize it, it probably doesn't fit in most of these people's mind's eye, so we're not going to embrace that.

More proof that we need to mobilize the power that is slashdot to write more GPL software. I love the BSD license as much as anybody, but it's obvious that Microsoft will hijack BSD licensed software, and use it for their own negative purposes.

Come on people, what GPL projects have you contributed to? File a bug report, write a patch, help with the documentation, write a HOWTO, anything. Help make Linux strong!

Re:Microsoft wants to destroy Open Source!!

[Mad Marlin]

... More proof that we need to mobilize the power that is slashdot to write more GPL software. I love the BSD license as much as anybody, but it's obvious that Microsoft will hijack BSD licensed software, and use it for their own negative purposes ...

The perfect example of this is how Microsoft hijacked the TCP/IP stack from BSD. However, I argue that this is a good thing. If they just take the code verbatim, then it most likely is going to be very compatible with everything else, unless they specifically go out of their way to break compatability. Notice that Microsoft is not planning to introduce a new .TCP/IP#, their use of the BSD code has shifted the issue to other things. They won't release any improvements back to the community, but they won't go out of their way to break a working system either.

Take the primary example used by most people against the BSD licence, that of Microsoft `stealing' an entire BSD system (whether FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, or whatever) and releasing it as their operating system. I argue that this would be a good thing, both for Microsoft and for everybody else, although I seriously doubt that it would ever happen. A few people who work on the BSD stuff would be annoyed, but most would not mind, only the Linux crowd would raise a real stink about it. Think about it: Apple is doing it (MacOS-X) and all that is going to do is help the BSD software community. Sure, OS-X has a lot of unnecessary differences from any standard BSD, but nothing that isn't just a matter of minor re-configuration, small shell scripts, and carefully placed symbolic links. If Microsoft were to release Windows-X, or MS-BSD, or whatever stupid name their marketing division thought up, while they would make a lot of stupid changes just to be different, it would still fundamentally be a BSD system at its heart, and that would be a good thing for Microsoft, a good thing for the purchasers of Microsoft software, and a good thing for the BSD community.

The BSD license is not about insuring that oh-so-evil Bill Gates finally gets his company destroyed. It is not about insuring that I can read the source code to every single piece of software on the planet. It is not about world domination. It is about insuring that quality, compatible systems exist everywhere.

Re:Popularity bug?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a joke about product activation...

Re:Pay a g**d damn dividend.

[cirby]

This is so amazingly wrong that it's hard to believe someone typed it.

The whole point of owning shares in a company is to get dividends (i.e., cash payouts) for your investment. The silly idea that the company will keep growing so much that the stock price will go up indefinitely is bent, and is the reason so many dotcoms died.

Wow, he admitted it.

[Erris]

In fact, there's a very virtuous cycle where people do free things, some people find that adequate, sometimes companies will take that work and turn it into commercial products, those companies will hire people, pay taxes.

"All your base are belong to us". Amazing! He's addmitted that he thinks his company should be free to exploit the labor of others without compensation and be the only conduit of that free effort in any "adequate" form. This does not do much for my view of M$. I'm waiting for anything M$ that is the equal of Debian, Red Hat or OpenBSD, and therefore adequate.

It's the blind leading the blind. Bill, where is your mind?

Re:There really is credit due, but...

[dinotrac]

Microsoft has had a significant hand in creating a common PC platform, and their biggest "contribution" came first.

That contribution? Convincing IBM to license PC-DOS on a non-exclusive basis. That left Microsoft free to sell MS-DOS to clone makers.

With the same OS available, only the BIOS needed cloning in order to produce IBM compatible machines.

No noble intentions, but a very powerful coup.

Re:Juicy Excerpt

[JeffL]

we came in and said there should be a platform that's identical with millions and millions of machines, and the bios of that should be open to everybody to use

I kind of see what BG is saying here, that the free software movement couldn't have taken off without open, commodity hardware. This is wrong. The free software movement, as it came out of RMS and the MIT AI lab was a direct response to proprietary, closed hardware and software. The free software movement grew out of the tradition of open access to software and tools on very non-standard mini computer hardware.

In the early 80s when the FSF was founded, it was not clear yet that the IBM PC would be such a dominant force in the computing world. Commodity home machines aren't even mentioned in RMS's initial announcement. In fact, he is talking about replacing the system on very expensive, practically custom built machines, which were only found in universities and big businesses.

Sure, the pervasiveness of computing has been a major boost for free software, but this is a base rate issue (i.e., there are x free software users out of n*x computer users).

Hard to install? Hah!

[Redline]

XP has one of the easiest installations I've ever seen, and no distribution of Linux has ever succesfully installed on my box!

Are you sure you don't have it backwards? For me installing Mandrake 8.1 or RedHat 7.2 is like a warm and pleasant dream. I honestly believe a total Linux newbie could manage it.

When I protestingly installed XP on a friend's machine last week (me: "I don't wanna touch Windows, I'm a Linux geek!" him: "But I want it *professionally* installed!") I was floored by the requisite 3 reboots and by major portions of the install being in text mode. It brought back a dusty old memory of installing NT4 before I discovered the Goodness of the Penguin.

No modern Linux distro would be caught with such a clunky setup. It would *immediately* be flamed for being too hard to install. I think it is time to have the "Linux is hard to install" FUD declared obsolete. Anyone who can install XP can certainly install a current Linux distro.

Billy is Afraid of the GPL!!

[DG]

Take a gander at this excerpt: (emphasis added)

MR. GATES: Let me start out, really the reason that you see open source there at all is because we came in and said there should be a platform that's identical with millions and millions of machines, and the bios of that should be open to everybody to use, and all the extensibility should be there. And so it was very predictable that once we had gotten the PC going, and going and gotten hundreds of millions of machines out there, that it had always been sort of free software and the universities would flourish and there would be more of that. We certainly accept free software as part of the software ecosystem. In fact, there's a very virtuous cycle where people do free things, some people find that adequate, sometimes companies will take that work and turn it into commercial products, those companies will hire people, pay taxes. And so you see the free software and the commercial software existing together.

There is a particular approach that breaks the cycle called the GPL that is not worth getting into today, but I don't think there is much awareness about how so-called free software foundations designed that to break that cycle

In terms of getting people excited about software and building communities around them, yes, that is a key to success. Nobody has done that more effectively than we have with Windows. Are there ways that we can do that better? Are there aspects of this where we're actually learning from all our different competitors out there? I think it's fair to say yes.

In the free-software vision is that there would be no jobs in the software industry, there would be no testers, no engineers, no taxes paid, or anything of that notion. So I certainly don't agree with the full sort of free software foundation view that there should be no jobs in this area, and that the kind of commercial advances and risk taking that we've been able to do you can't get that, you can't get things like speech recognition on a tablet computer coming out of that kind of a paradigm. You can get things that follow along, you can get some smaller software, and so we embraced the idea of the free software paradigm and the commercial software paradigm moving forward in really a self-reinforcing way.

Sounds like ol' Billy has seen his doom coming, and it's the GPL!

Take a good hard look at that rambling morass of a quote, and you see the strategy (and the enormous depth of self-delusion) that will be driving Microsoft forward. Free-as-in-Beer, Good! Free-as-in-Speech, Bad!

In Bill's world, Free Software is fine as a toy, an interim solution, and educational tool, but it takes a company to turn it into something useful! Nothing good ever comes out of the commons!

Except, of course, the "Microsoft Commons". Funny, when was the last time community work became part of Microsoft, except by force?

And gee, where have we seen this attitude before?

How about in the actions of every tin-pot political dictator who tried to buy off the goodwill of his oppressed subjects with free goodies! The barbarians are howling at the Gates, and Bill is offering Microsoft's shareholders bread and circuses!

Funny thing Bill, those dictators don't have much of a track record....

Stallman (for all his faults and foibles) is the Martin Luther of the information age, and bill is the Pope. Quick - who can name the Pope who was in service when Luther nailed his manifesto to the door of the cathedral?

Me neither.

Re:Billy is Afraid of the GPL!!

[WolfWithoutAClause]

>We certainly accept free software as part of the software ecosystem. In fact, there's a
>very virtuous cycle where people do free things, some people find that adequate, sometimes companies will take that work and
>turn it into commercial products, those companies will hire people, pay taxes. And so you see the free software and the
>commercial software existing together.

I'm sure that Bill Gates thinks the idea of selling software he obtained that was written by the sweat of people that he doesn't have to pay is extremely virtuous. But let's put that to one side for the moment.

He also seems to be implying to politicians that they should outlaw the GPL licence so that Microsoft can steal open source software and charge for it, and pay more taxes- this would be a good thing- right?

Of course the fact that this would allow him to sack quite a lot of Microsoft and would end up reducing the taxes that he pays.

>In the free-software vision is that there would be no jobs in the software industry, there would be no testers, no engineers, no
>taxes paid, or anything of that notion. So I certainly don't agree with the full sort of free software foundation view that there
>should be no jobs in this area, and that the kind of commercial advances and risk taking that we've been able to do you can't
>get that, you can't get things like speech recognition on a tablet computer coming out of that kind of a paradigm.

Actually, this is extremely not clear. There's nothing to stop companies financing software that they need for their business and paying for it; and having the software remain open source. After all if one company has the software that it needs, it doesn't mean that its competitor can even use the same software that they use; and to the extent that their competitors can; they both benefit, and each can end up contributing improvements back.

That's where IBM is coming from- the fact that their main competitors SUN and Micro$oft can't use Linux much doesn't hurt.

Re:Bill Gates on the usefulness of open source

[WolfWithoutAClause]

Actually its worse than that. That bit about paying taxes is trying to throw a line to politicians to change the law so that GPL is no longer legally binding on Microsoft; that way they can extend and embrace Linux, charge as much as they do for Windows, and sack lots of their development staff...

Of course there's the inconvenient fact that they would end up paying less taxes that way... but perhaps your average politician won't notice.

I've always disliked Gates, but here he is so unbelievably slimy.

Re:Pay a g**d damn dividend.

[spencerogden]

The _point_ of womeone own shares is to own a part of the company. What is good for the company is good for the shareholder. If what is good for the company (including share holders) is giving out dividens, then so be it. If the managers think they have a better idea, then so be it. Berkshire Hathaway thinks they have better ways to spend money than dividends, and I think most of their shareholders agree that they are doing the right thing with _their_ money.

Microsoft and Open Source

[einhverfr]

I think that Microsoft HAS been the seminal power behind open source in a very strange and obscure way. So yes, Microsoft IS the reason that Open Source as a movement is able to compete today. People will disagree with me saying "Look at GNU. It is designed to be a UNIX killer, not a Windows killer. Look at Linux's effect on UNIX. It is not about Windows at all!"

However, let us look at the economics for a moment. Microsoft is a company with very little technical innovation but one world-shattering contribution-- the introduction of a multi-vendor OS manufacturer. This really does not seem like much but it really is. Microsoft's contribution really HAS resulted in lower prices for the consumer because they were able to help more companies sell their products hence spreading more of the cost of development around rather than letting it land on a comparitively few customers. This has allowed many more people to use computers because they can now afford to do so.

The ubiquity of the computer which really IS Microsoft's legacy is the driving factor of Open Source and Free Software because it allows a much greater number of developers to work on projects. Open Source has an economy of scale too. Would Linux have existed if Linus had not been able to afford a 386?

BUT: Open source then takes Microsoft's edge and makes it sustainable. It is a market innovation which beats Microsoft's market innovation. In this war, Microsoft cannot win.

Re:Pay a g**d damn dividend.

[rudedog]

There's not a single dollar in the country that isn't taxed twice and more. That's a myth used by people to who want to rationalize why they don't want to pay a certain tax (i.e., taxable dividends, estate taxes, etc.).

Whenever I give a tip to a waitress, that money has been "taxed twice". Or should one of us not be paying taxes on that money?

Re:Knifed in the back?

[ethereal]

Not to mention the gran-daddy of all the knifings, DR-DOS and Windows 3.1, which is a fully-documented conspiracy complete with encrypted code. Face it - Microsoft is just as dirty as they're made out to be, and only rarely do they allow the same sort of thing to happen to them.

People say "well, Money hasn't won" or "Real still exists" or "AOL is going strong" but what you don't see is that these are monopolizations in progress. Microsoft owns the PC platform - short of government action there is no way that Real, Quicken/Intuit, or even AOL are going to survive once Microsoft really starts hooking things into Windows XP++. Things are going to get a lot worse before they get better, because Microsoft owns the platform and after the DOJ capitulation, the whole industry knows it.

Rhetorically impressive, most impressive

[kannen]

You have to admire the man's rhetorical skills. He says its not worth getting into what the GPL is, but in so doing, he implies that the GPL is a mysterious, evil force that is going to keep people from making money. Gates states that the normal business cycle is one in which companies hire people and pay taxes. But the GPL tries to break that, so now you won't be able to feed your family and there won't be any tax money to pay for public schools and neighborhood patrols. Its a terribly insidious idea that the he has planted into peoples heads, and yet he avoids making a single factual statement about the GPL.

It occurs to me that maybe he should run for public office. His debate skills are most impressive. But then he'd probably find some way to oust the Chancellor, hunt down all the Jedi, and disband the Imperial Senate. (Can't you just see Ballmer jumping up and down in Vader's outfit? Tee hee hee.)

The Open Source comments

[shanek]

From the meeting transcript:

Let me start out, really the reason that you see open source there at all is because we came in and said there should be a platform that's identical with millions and millions of machines,

This is laughably wrong. RMS made the GPL and the Free Software movement in the early 80s, when Gates was still piddling around with DOS and saying that 640K should be enough for anybody. The actual movement started even earlier; the concept of open source predated commercial software.

In fact, there's a very virtuous cycle where people do free things, some people find that adequate, sometimes companies will take that work and turn it into commercial products, those companies will hire people, pay taxes. And so you see the free software and the commercial software existing together. There is a particular approach that breaks the cycle called the GPL

Gates apparently doesn't know what a "cycle" is. A cycle, by definition, has to link back up again with its origins, in this case, free software. Microsoft breaks the cycle by incorporating open source code into, for example, its TCP/IP stack. The GPL restores the cycle by requiring developers to give their changes back to the community.

In the pre-software vision is that there would be no jobs in the software industry, there would be no testers, no engineers, no taxes paid, or anything of that notion.

Tell that to Red Hat.

Here's a telling quote from Ballmer:

If there's a key learning for us, we can't have free software, it's kind of inconsistent with the goals of most people in the room.

In other words, Microsoft is against freedom in software. Remember, we're talking free speech, not free beer. So all this stuff about "Freedom to Innovate" is nothing more than a thinly veiled apologetic for Microsoft's business practices.

Bill Gates is right, in a way...

[The Breeze]

Disclaimer: Yes, Microsoft sucks.

However, many Linux developers will admit something - Microsoft made the proliferation of cheap, cloned hardware economically feasable.

This in turn increased the pool of potential Linux developers.

It wasn't MS's intention, but that was the effect. Leave it to Bill to claim credit for a totally unintentional by-product of his company's sucess...

Gates is wrong about homogeneity

[SpringRevolt]

Gates: "Really, the reason you see open source there at all is because we came in and said there should be a platform that's identical with millions and millions of machines,"

This is not true. The real reason was that GNU software (which comprises a substantial part of what some people call "open source") was (and is) designed to be ported to a variety of systems (in fact, it is the most ported software). All it took was a POSIX complient kernel/library to provide the whole system. It had nothing to do with the homogeneity of systems, but with the skill of the program authors to provide the ability of the operating system to be ported to many kernels (such as the wonderful Linux, obviously).

Re:Why there is no g**d damn dividend.

[Tupper]

If the stock price also stagnates then large investors are going to demand a piece of the revenue pie (in the form of dividends)

No. Dividends are inefficent tax wise. A better run no-growth company will often buy back stock. This will have the same effect: money from the company is redistributed to stock holders. Only that money is taxed at the lower capital gains rate.

This strategy also has the side effect of increasing the value of the corporate officers' stock options.

No, he's right.

[Erris]

M$ installs are more difficult. Red Hat and Debian are both much easier. Assides from reboot issues, the one or two install disks have ALL the software and drivers you might need. When you are finished with the W2k, 98, XP, ME install you are left with typical M$ half functionality. You will then be goaded to buy expensive comercial junk that M$ will own or break. When you are finished with a Linux install you are left with a system that does what you want it to and can easily be expanded.

The largest problem with Linux installs comes from Windoze bassed intentional hardware obfuscasion. There may be 100s network cards bassed on NE 2000 that can be run by a single driver, for example. M$ makes you have the specific brand name driver to work the $10 ass pain. Sound hardware is even worse. Free software avoids this as nothing is hidden. The information is on the web now, and more companies will be dumping that little M$ flag for the sake of honest development.

My problems have been few with Linux. Either a driver is available and it works or it's not. With M$, it was only a matter of time before something would break the registry and devices failed.

Friends don't help friends install M$ trash.

Surprise! Gates doesn't get OpenSource future!

[slashbrent]

While the article had many blundering answers from Gates & Ballmer(C)(TM), and i'm sure most have been picked apart already (450 posts!), one that caught my one was the following...
This is from the 3rd "GATES:" section from the bottom of the page:

So I certainly don't agree with the full sort of free software foundation view that there should be no jobs in this area, and that the kind of commercial advances and risk taking that we've been able to do you can't get that, you can't get things like speech recognition on a tablet computer coming out of that kind of a paradigm.

First of all, let me say... APPLE!!! ever heard of Darwin, that would be the Open Source, fuh-ree version of Mac OS X? - a mighty fine OS if you've ever taken 5 minutes to sit and enjoy it...
and Second Of All, are you implying that university professors and post-docs aren't churning out amazing, GPL'ed advances in Computer Science, like maybe those fabulous molecular modeling apps, or create neat creations like the CAVE with the help of Government and industry and not have to be a vertically integrated illegal monopoly? No Way!!! Say its not so...

Whatever what really matters is that the whole paradigm of CS changed in a matter of 3 years, and the genie is out of the bottle. Linux and Open Source apps will thrive forever now that enough people came on board and we have the attention of everyone who can spell programming.. next its Corporate America/World (my Fortune 100 company has Linux/OpenSource programs running in every corner of the buildings, and they're only picking up steam)..
then it's time to kick Bill's ass and demand a refund for a lifetime of low-grade, shitty software!

They killed my computer.. you bastards!!!