Slashdot Mirror
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.
"Funny thing is, the MS executive (Chris Sharp) used to work for Red Hat."
Funny? It's scary more than anything, as it'll just make what he says seem more 'credible'. Of course, he's just some greedy bastard, and it's good to see him not working for an OSS company anymore, but it doesn't help Linux much in this propaganda campaign.
governments planning to use it will damage their own economies
...And governments using MS products aren't damaging their own economies by exposing themselves to 31337 h4x0rz, virii, spyware, seineewerasreenigneepacsten style backdoors, and other closed source, proprietary crap that only Microsoft can spoonfeed to us?
*rubs index finger and thumb together* This is the worlds smallest violin, playing a sad, sad song for you, Microsoft.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
'"If you are compelled to give back to the community, then you don't have the opportunity to benefit from that knowledge,"'
-Chris Sharp
translated:
f**ck you all. We're only here for the money.
And if you want to start a company in this world and make money while giving away source code, go right ahead. Lots of companies are doing just fine that way. It's only the proprietary, lock-em-up, IP theft is a crime!, sign this NDA! crowd that will fall further and further back.
MS sounds like tired old prostitute complaining about women that give it away.
Most hardware manufacturers, for their components, include the exact same warning. Look at a TI datasheet - at the bottom you'll find the exact same kind of warning.
It has nothing to do with MS's quality, it has to do with the requirements for mission-critical systems (things like aircraft flight systems, medical life support, etc.). These applications require a higher standard; a standard Linux isn't allowed to be used either.
---
Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
(I read with sigs off.)
In my part of SE Asia, piracy must be a very powerful ally of M$. People have grown so accustomed to M$ products and proggies running on windows 'cos they know where they can get them - and they've all been so "trained" in them cos of their "availability". And I would think that much of the general comp literacy in the region is due to this ally - I wouldn't be surprised if M$ sees this region as rather "safe" since Linux is kind of a "hardcore" "server" "alternative" solution.
oh yes i must also mention that after all those years of "free education", M$ started "cleaning up" several years back. Talk about traitors.
At least it's good for the US's economy. M$ is basically funnelling money from around the world back into the US, which has a lot to do with why the rest of the world (at least EU, Latin America and Asia) are so hyped about an alternative. Especially nowadays with Bush increasing anti-American sentiment like never before seen.
In that sense if a non-programmer wants to help the FOSS movement then translating a how-to, a man page or something else is a great way.
Sending money to Redmond, Washington, United States does not help your economy, unless you are in Redmond, or to a lesser degree in Washington State.
It's good for the economy when things like steel and coal and fabric gets cheaper, because it means a better standard of living for consumers. Businesses also become more efficient; when their raw material costs go down, they either make more money or drop prices, both of which are good for the local economy.
So if cheaper steel is good, why on earth is cheaper software bad?
But Microsoft is trying to assert that if you wnt any chance of growing your own Microsoft, you need a strong IP regime.
But the simple fact is that there will be no new Microsofts. The existing one will make very sure of that. Only people who completely change the rules and play a different game entirely can hope to succeed against a compaany with half the money in the world.
If your local economy actually DID 'hit gold' and come up with a wonderful new software idea, it's virtually certain that Microsoft would simply subsume it into Windows. This has happened many times over the last twenty years; Microsoft has put company after company out of business by leveraging Windows. (Stacker, Quarterdeck, Lotus 1-2-3, Netscape... the list goes on and on.) The Windows software ecosystem has very little diversity; there are a few big companies and a lot of small ones, but very very few midsize ones. The sharks eat them instead and get bigger.
In other words, with Microsoft already existing in the world, the chance of creating your own local Microsoft is ZERO. The creation of the closed source software industry was a very special event that will only happen once; it will not be repeated.
There can still be small software niches, of course, ones that are too small for Microsoft to bother with. But if you grant that you most likely can't make huge piles of money, why not give away the code for free and sell services and support instead?
As a government, why not encourage consulting-type technology businesses like this? Service businesses can make very comfortable amounts of money. While they don't have the huge potential upside of being able to sell, over and over again, a product that costs them nothing to duplicate, they don't really have that upside ANYWAY because of Microsoft. The open-source industry is still forming, and there's lots and lots of room for new companies.
If you REALLY want to help your economy out, get behind open source and PUSH. Your local government spending $5,000/year for local companies to support and fix their Linux servers is a HELL of a lot better for your economy than is sending a check to Microsoft. Money that goes to Redmond is gone; money that is spent locally stays in your local economy.
Now, if Microsoft offered solutions that were wildly better than their open-source counterparts, it might make financial and economic sense to buy Windows. If you can be twice as productive, say, on a Windows box, and the total cost of Windows is less than twice that of Linux, then it's an overall win to buy Windows. I'm setting aside control and forced upgrade issues, along with many others, but economics is ultimately about cost, and you can abstract all those factors into cost of ownership.
But if, as I believe, Windows' overall advantage over Linux is slim at best, then it's just wasteful to send money to Redmond when you can spend it locally instead.
There's one other scenario, too... you may be so technically savvy you that you don't NEED support. In that case, you you can drop your computing cost to ZERO. This is STILL better for the local economy, because that $200 you don't send to Redmond is money you can spend at the county fair.
In a world with free alternatives, paying for Windows is very much like a tax. Taxes are always harmful (at least directly) to an economy, because it's wasted money...profit that didn't get reinvested.
Seriously, selling products for less in other countries encourages businesses to leave the united states.
I can't blame a company who outsources work to another country because its less expensive.
I can BLAME an American company who intentionally lowers prices in other countries and rapes us here in the states.
I'm trying to argue both sides here - but Microsoft does offer free support and such free, comprehensive Linux support doesn't exist.
I call bullshit.
Microsoft's knowledge base is nice, yes, but honestly, it's there out of strict necessity. And it's not as good as Google anyway. For both Linux and Windows, Google is the way to go.
If you have a real problem with Windows, it won't be on support.microsoft.com, it'll be on Google. Probably Google Groups. And probably with a bunch of people with titles like "Microsoft MVP" chiming in with their two pence, all wrong and clueless. Guess why? Because nobody knows how the software works. And these real problems don't get solved.
How do you solve the problems? By calling up Microsoft. They'll charge you hundreds of dollars, to be refunded if they decide it's a bug in their software. You will be on hold for hours on end, and their support is far from helpful.
I spent over six months with Microsoft support on a single issue a few years ago; I still see the problem today, so their solution obviously didn't work, but we just learn to live with the problem.
More recently we experienced a bug with Windows 2000 Server SP4; it just kept rebooting randomly. Turns out this stems from a fix of a vulnerability in SP3 and below. Microsoft support was useless and to my knowledge they haven't actually fixed the new bug. Google Groups, on the other hand, helped us find the problem (we just use SP3 now, vulnerability and all).
I've set up GNU/Linux in mission-critical situations. When problems come up, IRC or Google or Google Groups has always had the answer. The three have a combined 100% track record. Why? Because the developers listen, and if not, you can always look at the source code. (You'd be surprised how easy it is to find the problem in the source code going by nothing more than an error message.)
In my experience, GNU/Linux support costs all of $0. But if I had a scary manager who wanted support, I could always recommend one of the zillions of companies selling Linux support. I doubt any would be as good as newsgroups, but they can't hurt. They'd certainly be more helpful than Microsoft, since in my experience Microsoft support is nothing more than a waste of time and patience.