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MS Rails On Open Source, Appeals To Gov't Greed
Bill Harper writes "Open source software is a 'waste of money,' a Microsoft executive has said. He goes on to say that governments planning to use it will damage their own economies and that giving away source code is shooting yourself in the foot. What's interesting though is that this is just the latest in a series of nonsense arguments put forward by MS in Asia because it's scared of Linux stealing the market. An early one was that open-source software is anti-competitive!" Funny thing is, the MS executive (Chris Sharp) used to work for Red Hat.
Sorry, I should have provided links.
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He goes on to say that governments planning to use it will damage their own economies and that giving away source code is shooting yourself in the foot. Though I distinctly remember a few hundred government PCs running Windows 2000 going offline for days this summer in Philadelphia City Hall after MS Blast was first rampid, while all Linux boxes were fine. If practically "self-imposing" a shot, to continue the analogy, isn't what occured by the government using Windows boxes unpatched, fully aware of their dangers, then I don't know what is. Also, IIRC, most Gov Linux distros are heftly modified;governemts are smart enough to not just run a freshly-downloaded distro. Matter of fact, the NSA developed their own Linux distro which highyly encorporates VMware, which I was a bit ago.
I know in the case of air traffic control the FAA must certify all systems, and with hospitals the various professional specialty organizations certify software within their fields.
Here's is a google cache copy of an interview that Chris Sharp gave just before the release of Red Hat 8 touting that RHCE are the highest trained professionals in IT.
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He did make one good point. "People tend to believe it is free, he said, but even companies that support open source are just as motivated by commercial interests as any other commercial software vendor." But so what? Is a MS executive really complaining about companies wanting to make money?
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
Sharp added that there are several myths surrounding open source. People tend to believe it is free, he said, but even companies that support open source are just as motivated by commercial interests as any other commercial software vendor. Apparently undermining his initial assertion about open-source ruining local software efforts, he pointed out that open source giants such as Red Hat and IBM are still after a return on their investments. "They are not for the greater good of the community; they are also after the money," he said.
So what he's saying is that doing both is no better than just doing the one?
He then contradicted himself again, adding that without getting back any commercial returns, a software company will find it difficult to invest in developing new software products. Intellectual property rights fuel sustained innovation, was his point. "With open source, there is no way to make more software."
WTF? He at least has to have heard of Mozilla...
This aggressive if confused approach comes after months of determined effort by the software giant to prevent Linux taking over as the de facto operating system in the world's largest expanding software market.
Months? Try years....
FUD.
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
Huh? Have you _ever_ read your MS EULA? You are _NOT_ able to sue MS for anything!!! If your whole business comes down because you run it on MS software only and get hit hard by a virus, guess what? You cannot sue MS and MS is not liable according to the MS EULA. period. So all that crap about who is responsible in OSS is bull, since in closed source software, and especially with MS, there is no you can hold responsible. Do you know how many _billions_ of dollare world wide that have been lost to viruses, worms and holes in MS Software? It is staggering. And yet, not one company that lost money because of using MS software has been able to recoupe money from MS.
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
You may be right to an extent: both camps have their agendas and are willing to do a lot (including lie sometimes) to move those agendas forward. But look at the motivations of each and things soon become much clearer...
Proprietary software is all about removing consumer choice in order to gain marketshare. The more people that dump boatloads of money into your software, the more people that train on and become experts on your software, the more people that develop towards your software, lessens that chance that those people will ever move away from your software or service. Why? Economics! If you paid several million dollars for software in this economy and invested huge amounts of time and energy in it you would be very wary about moving to something else - especially something of such highly contested value as open source. In proprietary software, the software's success relies primarily on the quality of the marketing department and not the software itself.
Contrast this with the open source model: you write software and give it away. But we're not talking freeware here we're talking source code and all. You're empowering consumers. You're saying "use this software and, if you don't like the way we're doing things then change it or go to someone else who'll change it". That is a powerful thing. It's forcing the development company to compete on a much higher level and necessitates that they develop much better software because there is much less incentive for a company to stay with you as a vendor if you mess up. With open source software, people stay with you because you are the best and they are loyal. In proprietary software people stay with you because they've dumped millions or hundreds of millions of dollars into your platform and are so confused by marketing FUD that they are afraid to leave. It's a huge difference.
Don't get me wrong: I am not saying that proprietary software is always a bad thing. I don't believe it is if it in the hands of an ethical and responsible company. Unfortunately, there are too few of them out there to effect change in the proprietary landscape. Personally, I would love to see a hybrid of the GPL and a proprietary license. Why NOT provide the source code with a proprietary product. Allow users to customize the product to their needs. Allow them to create very tight integration components that spawn whole communities around your software. But still sell it in a quasi-proprietary model. We could have the best of both worlds: fully business friendly OSS. Unfortunately, that probably won't happen for a very long time until open source developers stop being so freaking anti-commercialization. Like I said, that probably won't happen for a very long time to come.
Anthony Papillion
Advanced Data Concepts, Inc.
"Quality Custom Software and IT Services"
> It would be cheaper to simply hire some inhouse IT people to support and develop software than it is to pay outside...and multiple cities and governments can collaborate.
... no. At least not always. Things like word processors are best bought off-the-shelf. Of course, once you have slightly unusual requirements, customising COTS software (like, say, SAP) gets hideously expensive. This is _not_ an endorsement for MickeySoft, btw.
Err
What a long, strange trip it's been.
IANAP, but my dad and I plumbed our house a few years back. It depends on where the drip is coming from three likely sources are condensation on the fitting, the threaded area where the fitting connects to the tube leading to your toilet tank, or a malfuctioning valve. If the fitting is covered with condensation and it is dripping you can wrap it (with cotton or linen) to slow the dripping and spread it allowing evaporation to do the work.
If the leak is coming from the threaded connection, it's an easy fix. Close the valve, flush the toilet grab a bucket and wrench and unscrew it. Once it's off get a new o ring and wrap the threads with teflon tape (it's a white tape that sticks to itself and will provide a better seal for the threads). Slightly more expensive is to replace the entire flex tube that goes to the toilet tank, you'll still want some teflon tape. Take the old one in or measure it and just buy a new one if the leak is coming form somewhere in the flex tube.
If the valve is leaking (usually from the handle. You will have to replace the valve fitting. To do that you will need a propane torch to turn off the water prior to the valve, there should be some sort of shut off between the water entry and that valve, and a new fitting. You melt the solder and replace the valve and solder it back into place. To learn this you will probably want to see it and give it a try at one of those DIY shows at home depot or lowes. You'll probably have to cut the sheet rock out of the wall and patch that with plaster as well. Reply back with questions.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
Intriguing. I guess your situation wasn't that different from mine (http://exorsus.net/), but I started out with very few people as part of the collective (3 of us in fact), and the bills were never very high anyway, so, we're still a collective, kinda. different people have paid the bills at different times, sometimes me only, sometimes me and up to 4 others, right now just me and one other guy, but it has worked out nicely. Never be a business tho.
You can't win a fight.
IANAL....BUT....in the U.S.
Just because Microsoft says you cannot sue them does not mean your lawyer can't walk down to the courthouse and file a suit ANYWAY. Now the Microsoft Lawyer can hold his breath at the preliminary hearing all he wants complaining that the defendant is not allowed to be in the courtroom, but the judge can still rule that the plaintiff has valid grounds for a suit.
I can sue you for ANYTHING....including wearing a bad shirt, it may just be thrown out of court...or may NOT.