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

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