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.

Comments

Government suicide==MS partnership?

[Chris_Willman]

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.

Re:Riiight...

[damiangerous]

I don't think they actually use the words "mission critical". What they say (paraphrased) is that it should not be used in situations where lives would be on the line. Emergency services systems, hospital equipment, air traffic control, things like that. This is really just common sense (and ofen the law).

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.

Re:Sites really slow - article text

[dropoffx]

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.