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MS Proposes Disclosing Windows Source To India
raghuram writes "Interesting news from Economic Times of India, I found an interesting story, Microsoft Planning to Share Code with India." He excerpts from that article: "Microsoft has already made a proposal to the ministry of information technology (of India) for sharing the Windows source code with one government body. The nature of the body has not been spelt out; it will presumably be worked out after discussions between the company and the government officials. Interestingly, the offer comes at a time when state governments are showing interest in rival Linux operating system as the latter's source code is free and downloadable from the internet."
I do not feel that this is a smart move for a company that cares about protecting it's source. Piracy and illegal computer activity are densest in asia, and india is close to china, the piracy capital of the world. Microsoft's NT code and interface code would be gold in the hands of one of their rivals, such as Apple, and that could give the competition quite a boost.
I feel MS should be more careful with their products, free software would deffinately be more appropriate for piracy-rampant asia. go linux!
GoatPigSheep, the 3 most important food groups
Wow. Are you wrong. First off, the price of an OS + office suite is not zero. The price of a complicated, difficult to install, esoteric, very difficult to learn OS & office suite is zero. The price of an OS that works OUT OF THE BOX is several hundred dollars. If you were comparing apples and apples, then MS would already have stopped selling their software. But, they are not perfect substitutes, and most intelligent, rational people know that. They are not even close to perfect substitutes.
And in the end, I think that that's what pisses off OSS zealots such as yourself. You guys literally can't even *give away* your software. People (like myself) would rather pay hundreds of dollars for Windows. You ever heard, "I wouldn't do that even if you paid me?" Well, millions of people wouldn't touch Linux even if you paid them. Literally. Ouch.
Based on fact? How about the fact that MS is a business and businesses need to make money. Making money necessarily means fucking the customer out of money -- because if the customer isn't getting a shitty value, then you're really losing.
MS will enter into a short-term contract with the Indian government at a very good bargain with perks, perhaps, only to make them dependant on Windows and MS' proprietary formats. Then, when its time to renegotiate, they'll say "fuck you, start bleeding through the asshole".
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
/* winMain */
#include <stdio.h>
#include office.c
main(){char *machine;
machine= (char) malloc(sizeof(char) * 100000000000);
...
are you implying that /. is full of uninformed morons?