Microsoft's Software Philanthropy: The Goodwill Ploy

bethanie writes "The New York Times has printed a story concerning Microsoft's plans to 'significantly increase its donation of software to the nation's nonprofit organizations, to a level that may approach $1 billion annually in the next three to four years. ...But the increase has also drawn objections from developers of 'open source' programs (programs for which the source code is freely distributed). Those critics say they believe Microsoft is using a giveaway strategy to undercut the so-called free software movement in the potentially promising nonprofit market.' What do you think? Is it true philanthropy or just another tactic to assimilate everyone into the MS collective?"

Comments

Re:More than both

[AvitarX]

That is entirly not true.

I would bet a good portion of Linux users started with Microsoft.

I know I did, I never paid for it personaly but usually it was legit.

I know use Linux only at home and the transition was only mildly annoying.

Word and excel 97 to Abiword and GNUmeric was totaly painless and on the desktop. And all server environments are pains in the ass in their own little ways unless you really know what your doing.

Your statement was the dumbest thing I have ever read on slashdot (browsing at one anyway).