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Gates: Say No to GPL, Yes to the Microsoft Ecosystem
Andy Tai writes "As part of Microsoft's campaign against the GPL, Bill Gates is personally coming to the front line to launch attacks. While speaking at the Government Leadership Conference, Gates argues against spending R&D dollars for GPLed software development. He suggests countries that look to adapt the GPL model are denying "the benefits of an eco-system that has worked extremely well in the United States" and they should copy the system in the US (where Microsoft has an monopoly). He further suggests that source code availability is not generally needed, and when it is needed, Microsoft provides it. Invoking words like "capitalism" and "innovation", Gates argues that free software can exist, but should be like a free unix called "VSB" (probably a transcription error for BSD), without the GPL around it. Gates continues: 'A government can fund research work on BFP, UNIX, and still have commercial companies in their country start off around that type of work. You know, technology policies like biotech -- you only -- if your universities are doing work that can be commercialized, you will have IT jobs in your country. And if they are not, then fine, just say that farming is your thing, or whatever it is. All the taxes will be paid by those guys or something -- I don't know. And the farmers will go home at night and work on the source code.' It is interesting to note that Microsoft is increasingly using the same "ecosystem" arguments for defending itself in the anti-trust trial and attacks on the GPL."
Because his single biggest customer is the US and state gov'ts. He's got this one sewn up.
It was Janet Reno, upon her inauguration in 1993, that banned all non-MS software at the DOJ. Every lawyer used MS Word from that day forward, as did all the private lawyers that communicated with them.
I've always thought it strange for the DOJ to sue MS for abuse of monopoly, when the DOJ and other gov't agencies, by their purchasing patterns, enforce a defacto monopoly for MS.
ac wrote:
And comparing sharecropping to this is just absolutely asinine.
maybe you should familiarize yourself with the way the system works.. when something is in italics, it means that that was part of the story which was submitted by a slashdot user, in this case, Andy Tai. Furthermore, had you read the article, those were gates's words, not Andy's.
moving on. i know of hundreds of buisiness that use free software and make a profit because of it, so while there are only a few companies that make money selling GPL'ed software, there are hundreds of thousands of companies that make money working with open source software. The GPL is a wonderful, money making system if you stop thinking about companies selling consumer products and start thinking about buisiness computing, where most of the money is anyway. For the most part companies require at least some custom written software to do their work and fairly often this software is written in-house, by IT employees. now, say that company x needs some custom accounting software because the current enterprise accounting software packages don't have a feature that they need. they can a) tell their IT division to drop everything they're doing for a year or two and write this accounting system or b) tell their IT division to go download a GPL'ed accounting package, spend a couple days adding the needed feature, and release their changes under the GPL. the company in question would have saved hundred of thousands of dollars in labor and the GPL'ed accounting package would have an extra feature that may benifit some other company in the future. under a closed source system, those hudreds of thousands of dollars would have been wasted trying to "re-invent the wheel".
now tell me again how it's impossible to make money off of GPL'ed software.
Couple of reasons:
1. His company doesn't pay dividents on the stock - its value is entirely "buy low, sell high". When the stock stops increasing in price, it will start to be sold off in favor of other stocks that *are* increasing in price.
2. His company pays its people in average wages and stock options. If the value of the stock doesn't keep increasing, the compensation becomes less attractive and people leave. Not Good.
Due to devices of their own choice, Microsoft *must* do whatever it takes to keep the stock price up and going, or Very Bad Things will begin to happen. It's not so much personal greed (anymore) as the constant awareness of the need to keep that stock going.
While you can dismiss Bill Gates' words, things are not that simple. Microsoft is, in addition to FUD, taking legal steps to attack Free Software. The recent CIFS license is an example, and more may be coming. Microsoft can attack with patents and "technical standards", and that can significantly impact Free Software. We can dismiss the FUD, but we cannot ignore Microsoft--we need to watch their every move. This is a war.
Free Software: the software by the people, of the people and for the people. Develop! Share! Enhance! Enjoy!
Actually the term ecosystem was not used incorrectly: ecosystem n. An ecological community together with its environment, functioning as a unit.; parasite n. 1. Biology. An organism that grows, feeds, and is sheltered on or in a different organism while contributing nothing to the survival of its host. 2. One who habitually takes advantage of the generosity of others without making any useful return. (from The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Ed.)
~shiny
WILL HACK FOR $$$
Microsoft hasn't paid taxes for years. Look it up.
OK, I looked it up:
Period Ending: Dec 31, 2001 Sep 30, 2001 Jun 30, 2001 Mar 31, 2001
Income Tax Expense $1,074,000,000 $604,000,000 $33,000,000 $1,207,000,000
Its employees, of course, get reamed by the taxman just like the rest of us.
Yup. And the U.S. employees overwhelmingly live in high tax, high cost of living states, so they're really getting reamed. (Yeah, why I stayed in Michigan.)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Billy must be going license-crazy! I heard a radio ad for this "Licensing Event" this morning. I couldn't believe my ears. I mean, a meeting to discuss your Microsoft software's license status, and how to migrate licenses, etc, etc. In the radio ad, they even mentioned that they will help you make sure your licenses are all up-to-date. Yeah right - give me a break.
I see your point here, except that Microsoft probably wouldn't be paying for squat.
The Free desktop that Just Works
I would much prefer an API that is written well enough that I do not need to see the source to work out what is going on.
How many APIs, commercial or free, do you trust to that level?
I've seen, maybe, one. Vienna Definition Language to explain PL/I. Looked nasty enough to make algebraic topology look reasonable. The problem is that the API has to cover accurately all the edge and corner cases, which is never as simple or easy as it should be.
The source, after all, is the truest documentation of how the code works.
The truest is to trace out the machine states of what the code actually does. Long tedious and messy. To be avoided if at all possible, but sometimes what the code does and what it looks like are not the same thing. The difference between what the code does and what the API would lead you to believe can be rediculous. The source is the cheapest, most convenient, most accurate documentation you can get. The net effect is to get 1 or 2 more 9's reliability at almost no cost. (The reason 5 9's is "fabled" is that when that one-in-a-million freak does hit, you fix it, fast)
Rebuttal Number 1:
Do you need the source code of an operating system as a user of that operating system? That is, should you be paying your people to study the intricacies of how the operating system is built and stuff like that?
No, most people don't. There's actually a easy way out of having the simple end-user getting lost in the C and asm... Err, just don't look in the code.
Besides, there's two other segments of users not being addressed here. The first is people who actually by gosh *do* need the source code. There may not be that many, but their work is usually quite important/far-reaching and it affects those who do not need the source code. The second class Mr. Gates has overlooked by his unfortunate choice of wording is those who 'want' to look at the source code. If Mr. Gates needs a clarification of why someone would want to look at source when they don't need to, then his money's no good on thinkgeek.
Rebuttal Number 2:
That's something that for a few percent of the price of the PC you can buy a commercial operating system, where all the work of testing it, supporting it, delivering it, is included for a few percent of that price of the PC
Hm, I haven't the foggiest notion what Mr. Gates is trying to say here. It seems Mr. Gates holds the basic rules of grammar in as low regard as he does the GPL. Either that or he's excited about seeing Yoda in the new episode. Or perhaps he himself has no idea what he means. If he'll wrap that last one up in proper grammar, I'll be happy to respond.
Rebuttal Number 3:
For customers who want source code -- universities, large customers -- we provide that.
Doubtful. If Mr. Gates offered source code upon demand, to universities by way of example, I think we would have seen it by now. Any half-decent university would have jumped upon an opportunity such as this. Anyone out there with a university that counts MS as a supplier? Think you could provide feedback what happens when you say "Hey, we're a university, we have a big contract with you, and we'd like the source code." ? Hmm, large customers... anyone got any really fat relatives?
Rebuttal Number 4
Then you get to the issue of who is going to be the most innovative. You know, will it be capitalism, or will it be just people working at night?
OK, what we're saying here is that it's capitalistic gain that is the prime instigator of innovation. This means that you can't write a good book if you're not being paid shovel-loads. And you can't compose great music if you're not getting rich off of it. And you're not a decent football player unless you're playing with Real Madrid or Man U. Mr. gates, I beg to differ as strongly as possible.
Rebuttal Number 5:
And the farmers will go home at night and work on the source code. (Laughter.)
If doctors can code, I don't see a problem with farmers coding. Oh, and I'm sure a farmer would laugh derisively too at the notion of a software magnate going home to tend to his crops and feed his livestock at night too.
Rebuttal Number 6:
packaged software costs are never more than, say, three, four percent of any significant project
3-4%? What kind of computer do you base this calculation on, Mr. Gates? I can only imagine this figure would be accurate if you operated a Cray at home, or if you were referring to the cost of the RedHat CDs you bought. In other words, your math needs work as well as your grammar, I'm afraid.
# end of rebuttals - for now
As a final aside, I find it significant that most of the points in Gates' response concerned the welfare of the supplier/producer/seller. Mr. Gates appears to be wilfully disregarding that the GPL was designed to serve the user of the code, not the owner/writer. We really shouldn't let this man shift our focus away from this.
Silly man.
Blearf. Blearf, I say.