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

hmmm...

[mickeyreznor]

at least Balmer didn't use the word "hatorade".

Re:Driving people to open source

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea I couldnt really figure out what he ment there. I took it to mean that M$ was somehow responsible for the open source movement because when they started to develop, or steal whichever you agree with, MS-DOS they allowed all hardware to be the same so that everyone could develop on it. Hence open Sorce software was born, or something like that.
Either way I dont see them changing anytime soon. Bill and company is out for money, and they will get it however they damn well can.I dont see a problem with that as long as they do it ethically, however I think that in the past we have seen that they may not be a great example to use in a business ethics class.
I do have to admit thought they have the best damn maketing department in the world. The other day while in CompUSA *shudder* I overheard a guy yelling at the tech. He wanted XP on his machine, and from what I could tell he didnt really know why he wanted XP he just knew he needed it. In the end the guy paid $75 to have it 'professionally' installed, all beacuse the tech had to d/l a driver for the guys video card.
Now while I know the guy wasnt a tech God, perhaps because he was in CompUSA and because he actually bought a sony computer, but this serves as a great example of two things, a) CompUSA will rip you a new asshole if you let them and b) M$ products may be viewd as flawed but they could sell ice to a damn eskimo.

Ominous: Gates mentions "TAXES" twice

[flacco]

I think Gates & Co. is exploring the tactic of making open source work taxable. True, no money changes hands - but you owe taxes on barter transactions. If you look at it just right (i.e. from the perspective of a politician who's just had a big wad of cash stuffed up his ass), you could see open source work as a large amorphous blob of untaxed barter transactions.

I don't think this holds any water whatsoever but it might serve as the thread of a pretext to unravel the warm snug cozy wool poncho we all call open source. There are several dozen ways you spin this to make it look like those damnable hackers and terrorists aren't paying their taxes like everyone else has to.

"The power to tax is the power to destroy." - Some dude whose quote I haven't given much thought to until recently

Re:Billy is Afraid of the GPL!!

[JumpyMonkey]

Leo the Tenth

Semantics?

[Danse]

No. Not semantics. Fact. He didn't compare Gates to bin Laden. He compared a statement by Gates to a fictitious, yet equally ridiculous, statement by bin Laden. Nowhere does he compare Gates to bin Laden. I think the attack on your intelligence was warranted.