Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Targeting Indian Developers
Pranjal writes "An Indian Business magazine, Business World is reporting that in it's war against Linux, Microsoft is taking the battle to the Indian developers. The logic is simple. India has 10% of the developer population of the world. If a significant number of these developers commit to work on MS platforms then the number of developers working on Linux platforms can decrease significantly and thus the number of applications. As Dilip Mistry, a director at Microsoft India's Bangalore office puts it, "This country can affect our (Microsoft's) destiny." [Quote From article] Local linux user groups are trying to counter this threat by targetting school and university students and increasing the awareness about development on a linux platform. Read the full story here. [Nice cover don't you think?]"
It's already the case that most of the programming shops in Bangalore specialize in Windows.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
I first read it as Endian. I thought they were going after former 68000 developers.
In related news, Bill Gates is visiting India and gave $100 million to fight AIDS in India. Although I geniuinely believe Bill Gates to be a humane person (really), _perhaps_ this action has something to do with leveraging Microsoft position in the Indian government?
I think MS will suceed in this war. The linux groups in India are all small and pretty restricted in terms of their activities. And Bill is doing his level best to woo the India programmers. There is a place in Delhi where you can buy any pirated MS software. Everyone knows about that. But there are hardly any raids there. I think MS is knowingly encouraging pirated software in India, so that they can get more developers.
Another thing is that software industry in India is mostly a services business, as in they sell services to other companies. They dont make any software products. Now its easy to guess what work do they get more, linux related or Windows related.
What's under yellowstone?
Oracle to double India workforce
It's fascinating to see these kinds of trans-ethnic business practices becoming a reality. To think that only a few hundred years ago, we were all in our separate continents, living in dull homogeneity. Now we've been thrust together, shaken up, and hung out to dry by the Information Age, and we have to adapt to a whole new set of rules.
I'll come clean. I'm white. While I wouldn't want to lose my job to an Indian, I don't think that white folks have any more of a right to their jobs than Indians, or anyone else. If anything, the Indians are slightly more deserving, after we have gone back on so many treaties with them. I imagine I'd stoop to using Microsoft instead of Linux, if it meant I could stop working as a blackjack dealer. So please, try and offer a little understanding before ranting about how you lost your job to someone who happens to have darker skin. We're all people, too.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
I want that cover, either in printed form or as a hi-res JPG or as vector Postscript.
Thinkgeek, are you listening?
www.eFax.com are spammers
This article's arguments are as valid as if it were saying "Microsoft is sabotaging the open source movement by recruiting the best minds at the best Universities. Give me a break...
Mother is the best bet and don't let Satan draw you too fast.
This is not a new thing at all. I was in India about 2 years ago, and even then I found the contrasts great. A slum to your left and right, yet hundreds of signs advertising C# training (Java training too)
I would say one thing in addition--many of the indian developers aren't exactly leading Silicon Valley hot shot developer lifestyles. As such, they will learn what they need to learn to get jobs and get money--ideology has no place here.
How can he fight biological viruses when he can't even keep viruses out of his software?
Rediffmail.com is India's largest email server and it runs entirely on Linux.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
What if tux sported a bindi?
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
They only specialize in Windows because Windows is pracitically free over there. In the Indian IT world, no copy protection laws are ever respected, and the Windows XP devils0wn edition runs on every computer.
If Microsoft began enforcing copyrights strictly for Indian IT companies, then you would see quite a switch to Linux over there -- and quite possibly a boost to the hiring of American programmers with Windows skills, if the H1B training mills are shut down because of it.
--- YEAH I SAW SPARKS FLY!! FROM THE CORNER OF MY EEEYYYEEE!!!
After all, he does have a computer science degree....
-ted
Jesus, this is low for even slashdot.
The guy and his wife are pledging 100x what most countries gave to the African AIDS epidemic (Italy: 1.3million). And somehow you have to tie this to some sort of anti-linux campaign.
Get real. The linux community over values itself if it thinks gates is going about eroding linux support by saving lives and preventing epidemics.
You think the $250+ million he dumped into Africa was to squash the burgeoning Linux user groups starting to take hold in Kenya?
Learn to draw the line guys. From early on the Gates Foundation has been doing about 50% of its donations to Global Health. So far that's like 2.7 billion. You don't have to like him, but you certainly don't have to belittle his philanthropic work.
-malakai
-Malakai
A Dragon Lives in my Garage
A year or two? Gates has more than a billion shares - if their stock goes up 10 cents he makes the money back.
Parent comment is total flamebait, as far as I'm concerned.
Bill Gates, via his foundation, has given more money, and more earnest attention, to public health issues like AIDS, tuberculosis, and vaccination, that any living human. He does this out of what I regard as a genuine thoughtful concern for the best way to make his enormous wealth do good in the world.
He doesn't have to do this - he could be like Larry Ellison and just dick around with his money. To say he's fighting AIDS in India solely to make a market for Microsoft products is rude and inaccurate.
But no, I haven't dug up any photos of him with the tika. I'd pay to see it, though.
four nine eighteen twenty-7 thirty-nine forty-7 fiftyeight sixty-nine seventy-9 eighty-8 one-hundred-and-nine one-twenty
Estimates put the present size of India's developer population at anywhere between 450,000 and 600,000. That's about 10% of the world's developer population.
So by these numbers, there are between 4 and 6 million software developers in the world. According to the Microsoft(tm) Annual Report, they have about 50,000 employees. So what percentage of the worlds developers need to be working on core open source projects before the open source developers outnumber the Windows developers? Looks like the answer is less than 1%!
And that's why I think Microsoft is doomed in the long run. Open Source already has most of the functionality of Microsoft's offerings. And it only takes a small fraction of the world's developers to completely outstrip the amount of effort Microsoft can throw at the problem. Hell, if 10% of the developers spent 10% of their time on core OSS projects it would be more than enough to provide a nice stable feature-rich desktop and server environment. Interesting.
Here is the reasonning:
If Indian programming shops are in majority unable to take up Linux-specific programming tasks, this weakness will be an opportunity to slow the leaking of programming jobs outside western countries. The US and European IT pros will, conscienciously or not, move to a configuration more favorable to their job security, and lead an evolution that will increase the value of their more versatile know-how. Hence tend to ditch windows. Already many politicians in Europe are aware that an OSS based infrastructure brings more jobs to their local service industry.
Gates has a history of philanthropy... just do a Google search for the Gates Foundation.
I suppose he's trying to follow Andrew Carnegie's example - be a ruthless businessman, but do some good with the money you earn.
The facts:
Bill Gates himself goes on a trip to a country that has recently started to develop significant Linux precence including cheap Linux devices for the masses. Bill's action can only be interpreted as an act of desperation.
Slashdot (and unfortunately most Linux communities) have been infected by Microsoft FUD, it's no longer funny:
Fear, Uncertainity, Doubt:
"Hopefully this won't have a large effect on it." (Translation: Whine, whine, whine, I'm so afraid, uncertain and doubtful.) Just read a few more posts, most contain similar statements. Yes, this is FUD by its finest.
By now we have even reached a point where it is no longer allowed to have optimistic points of view. It's considered obscene and strange if you do. When Eric S. Raymond said that Linux will gain massively on cheap computers, he was called crazy, a freak and whatever in the accompanying Slashdot-thread. (Of course Walmart and Gericom have already proven that Linux sells on cheaper computers - of course nobody realized that. When announced, everybody was afraid, doubtful and uncertain about the Linux-PC's success. (Would Walmart really sell a losing product for over half a year? Would Walmart extend their commitment twice? - They went from clean PCs to Lindows-preloaded, then later added Mandrake.))
Currently we live in a situation where almost everybody, even many Linux-supporters spread FUD (in the literal sense: "Fear, Uncertainity, Doubt") about Linux.
Such massive anti-propaganda would have killed almost any commercial product within only few years. Would anybody buy Windows when Bill Gates would constantly say stuff like: "Hopefully Torvald's speech on Linux-Expo won't have a large effect on our sales"? Of course not.
The FACT that despite this hostile environment, KDE/Linux is not only surviving but growing - in terms of development as well as in terms of marketshare, is the biggest proof that Linux is here not only to stay but also to become the standard platform on all mainstream computing markets within this decade.
The sad part is that most slashdotters don't seem to realize what they are doing - that they are spreading anti-Linux FUD.
Or to put it in another way: The FUD spread by Bill Gates in India (or anywhere else) can't be worse than the FUD spread by Linux-supporters on slashdot (or elsewhere).
"We are paranoid someone is going to come along and take away mindshare from developers. We're paranoid something out there is going to be more exciting to developers."
Lets see, a closed system with low quality, where they use proprietary protocols they don't want you to alter and then they change them, stop support and force upgrades, v.s. an open system of high quality that you can actually make better and costs almost nothing.
"No, we don't want to tell you how this works, and we don't want you to touch it" is not an attitude that creates mindshare.
I can see why it might be exciting to use Microsoft, but that type of excitement would reduce mindshare.
Geez. He has about $30 billion in stock options. Typically, when he makes a donation, he donates stock. The only tax write-off he gets is equivalent to the value of the stock he gave up - so it's as if he never cashed out those options.
You're a cynical fool if you believe he's getting a tax advantage out of donating money to charity. Read some of his comments on the subject of charity. He is worth about $43 Billion. He realizes he's never going to be able to spend that money - that's why he's giving it away - and having the stock price go up doesn't help him because it's still too much money for him to ever be able to use.
Mmmm.. Donuts
Why don't you atttack leaders like Sadda Husein then? He has an "insane amount on money", palaces all over Iraq, many with swimming pools yet he uses his money to bolster his military weapons programs, provide water for the gradens and pools around his palaces and tests biological and chemical werapons on his own population.
/. loves to cheer for the little guy facing unblievable odds, regardless of the facts.
Oh, I forgot. Since he's the target of a US and UN investigation, he's the underdog and
You go ahead and belittle Bill Gates donations but don't forget to check you own bank account and learn how little you actually provide to those in need.
When was the last time someone didn't starve because someone else wrote a new text editor and gave it away with the proviso that if anyone else does anything with it, they have to give away their work for free too?
http://iccf-holland.org/click5.html
Vim, arguably the worlds best text editor, does exactly that. Bill Gates is worthy of some respect for giving money away, but when compared to his net worth and rate of capital growth (never mind it's a tax deduction), you would be suprised what it's comparable to.
..don't panic
I mean, I know that Mr. Gates is heavy into the cause of fighting global diseases but wouldn't it have made more sense to donate to the #1 country (Africa) dealing with an AIDS epidemic than #2 (India)?
Sheesh, what make you think they aren't? Here's a clue: type "gates foundation aids africa" into Google. OH MY GOD! Look what pops up: A whole section devotes to Africa.
But it's probably all about those African software developers, right?
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
wouldn't it have made more sense to donate to the #1 country (Africa) dealing with an AIDS epidemic than #2 (India)?
Silly American, don't you even know that Africa is a continent, not a country? What makes you think you are qualified to comment on anything outside of Iowa?
Fortunately, Gates does.
To the detractors: You know, if you hate businesspeople that much; especially those who try to give back; you need to find a country where you don't need that dollar a day in order to survive. Even communist states aren't that simple.
I am the first to concede that Microsoft got to the top and then started knocking other people off the top by abusing their power. There is probably NO WAY to tell whether or not other powerhouses like Apple and IBM would have done the same -- on the other hand, there may be - Don Imus was talking about a book by a former IBM CEO the other day (but he was also mentioning that it seemed to be written in a vacuum; with no discernible mention of the worldwide sociopoliticeconmical situation at the time period; which is apparently the early 80s).
It just so happens, WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT, that Mr. Gates is very very rich. And you know what; even if 98% of what his company does is wrong; getting there was not as wrong as you think. And that man worked hard to get where he is; and deserves an ounce of your respect for that. There are two sides to a coin; and the very fact that he gives back in areas that many others do not or would not donate time or money towards is laudable.
As far as "the memo" is concerned... you/we/they ARE the competition. Every Pro-Linux gathering has plans to defeat the competition that is Microsoft - or corporate greed or whatever your noble cause du jour is. So do it!
Give Microsoft competition; give 'closed source' competition; don't just spew mindless immaturities - "Waaaaah, he gots a lollipop and I don't". Remember to ask yourself how you are going to make money giving something away for free - and DAMN you if you make only the first one free because that is the same practice you detest. And before you break out more immaturities; I use them all - Solaris, Windows, Linux - because each one has their uses depending on what or whom I'm working for. If you can get it in front of the multibillion dollar corporation and get them to adopt it as their baseline OS; then that will be my next job. I am less worried about the kind of systems I will be supporting than whether said support position will be funded next year.
I think with the interesting people, their lives can't possibly be wrapped up into a nice little package.
Yes, it's all a horrible and evil conspiracy, with the Gates foundation existing as nothing more than an extention of the Evil Empire.
Get real.
wouldn't it have made more sense to donate to the #1 country (Africa) dealing with an AIDS epidemic than #2 (India)?
Ok, first off, Africa is not a country. You've failed 3rd grade Geography. Perhaps you should apply for some of the $1.6B that the Gates Foundation has given out for global education.
That said - $5.9M over 5 years for research in Uganda, $10M over 3 years for African Children, $1M for 1 year for African First Ladies against AIDS, $25M over 5 years to fight AIDS in Nigeria, $7M for South Africa, another $1M for children with AIDS in Africa, and, finally, $50M for fighting AIDS in Botswana.
Obviously the $50M for Botswana was to insure they wouldn't go start using Linux either. Good business strategy there Bill!
Of course, that excludes the other $450M or so that has been donated to other countries or groups specifically for fighting HIV/AIDS and Tuberculosis. It also excludes the $2 Billion for other health programs. Which, overall, is roughly half of the $5.5B donated on behalf of the Gates foundation for charitable causes around the world.
Sorry, I hate Microsoft too, but this foaming-at-the-mouth, ad-hominum attacks on the Gates Foundation proves just how shallow and thoughtless a lot of the Linux fans are. Frankly, it's disgusting.
Then they'll regularly send someone by to see how things are going, talk up their latest "inno-cough-vative" offering, and see if the target company is _motivated_. Sometimes, if they're lucky, one of the new programmers will have some "happy fun intranet site, or happy joy widget" made with said technology to show off (you know, the port of something which has already been working in PERL, PHP, or both using Sun, or Zeus) that will probably score them some nifty t-shirts, a mug, or hey, maybe another dousing with the developer-cd firehose.
And then if they really want to see how things are going, they'll ask for a tour of the _server room_, the holiest of the holies for said company. The annointed one will be walked around, and they'll look for familiar names, like Compaq, or Dell. But, if they see "SUN", or beige boxen then the annointed one will carefully steer conversation towards determining the nature and purpose of these boxen. Depending on the cluefulness of the tour-guide, things could either go well, and the annointed one will leave, only making note of a possible hardware upgrade deal, or they will become wrathful, and the sales-calls, port-scans, and off-hours questioning through "chance meetings" will take place until they have enough information to confront the president of the company. They will act hurt, or betrayed, and say interesting things like,
"I thought we had an understanding that you were a Microsoft Development shop", or
"How can we help you fully become a Microsoft Developer?", or my favorite,
"How has Microsoft failed to meet your needs? We are eager to help you in any way we can."
Of course, years later when the BSA sends out their letters to the less-than-faithful, and begins bringing in the police to follow up on portscans and megabytes of downloaded header logs showing all of the boxen development-only copies of software running. there will be those who remember these honeyed promises aimed only at the hearts, minds, and struggling companies or schools.
M$ has much to gain, but in the end, as they squeeze diversity and skill out of developing countries, they will also loose these possibilities forever. Linux is safe, becuase just like the smart people in Africa who refused flawed crop-seed to avoid a hideous cycle of dependency, developers in India and around the world know that freedom is more important than easily made promises. Held to a hard-line of artificial ability and capability(M$ API's are Black-boxes...no lookee, no touch-ee, no-feelie) with brittle security, smart developers and business leaders will realize that there is no get-rich quick incentive to supporting a core of fatally flawed intractable components supplied by a company which is really incapable of doing anything more than strong-arming hardware and software developers(even savvy developers need support--and when they become the support they are no longer developers), coercing companies with hideous licensing schemes by buying legislation and counting coup on the legal system of the United States. Companies seeking to get rich by suckling at the four-paned teat would do well to remember that M$ eats it's young, and often the young of others too.
Every new form of media has it's own Requirimento
Here's an article where Bill Gates has taken a real interest in India... I don't think these two event are unrelated.
Bill Gates hands out millions to fight AIDS in India
Indians suck at manufacturing & are hardly innovative in any other field
Really? You seem to have a very low opinion of us. I might mention though, that we have other ideas.
As for open source route, we don't have to make open source software. We should use it. No need to pay big Bill a Big bill. right?
(btw, that's called Yamak alankar in Hindi. if you remember any of it, that is.)
The generation of future Indians are at the hands of the developers. Dont drive the only thing which you can produce to a zero value system.
Aww, come on. Since when have software developers
started shaping the future of countries? Most of em' have trouble shaping their own future! Let's not have grandiose visions, shall we?
Just let us be.
And how, pray tell, is this a boon to Linux? It may be a boon to your yankee job, but Linux improved in India is still improved.
Please, this is slashdot, let's have OS prejudice not race and nationality prejudice. On purely humanitarian grounds, parochial protectionism is no boon to the third world.
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
Roshan,
Indians would be just fine at manufacturing if it weren't for the high tarriffs. When the govt reforms those tarriffs, you may see a huge upswelling in manufacturing, and that would be a damn good thing.
Someone has to write the code and you have the most programmers in india, this = $$
Someone has to write serious government apps and people would pay money for this.
Open Source does not mean Free as in beer.
Open Source is Open Source.
You can sell programs, but the source code is free, you sell the compiled code, most people when they buy a game dont know how to or dont want to spend days compiling it, they want a CD, they want to pop it in, and have it work.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac