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Gates: Open Source Kills Jobs
theodp writes "On the Malaysian leg of a whirlwind Asian tour, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates voiced his concerns over the growing goodwill towards open source, especially in Asia, emphasizing how damaging open source software can be. 'If you don't want to create jobs or intellectual property, then there is a tendency to develop open source. It is not something you do as a day job. If you want to give it away, you work on it at night,' he said. Gates, who apparently has never contended with the horrors of a VB upgrade, when on to say that '[Open source] doesn't guarantee upward compatibility.'"
On one hand he says that the TCO of a Windows server is lower because it requires fewer admins to manage/maintain.
Then he comes out and states with equal fervor that Open Source (read: Linux) causes the loss of jobs.
So, which is it, Mr. Billy Boy? You can't have it both ways.
Good security is based upon reality and common sense. Common sense is a function of having common knowledge.
If you have a lot of "free" time on your hands why not:
-volunteer at a local charity
-become a big brother.
-volunteer with an international agency
All of the above are altruistic pursuits. While open source development only serves to inflate your ego.
You may think you are doing a good thing but companies which can afford to buy application software would buy software as a matter of regular business and treat it as a business expense.
If you create Application software which replaces software produced by smaller companies as closed source, you eliminate the following jobs: programmer, various support staff at the company, executives, advertising jobs, sales clerks, delivery/shipping jobs as well as all of the trickle down jobs in the community.
Oh and that non-software company that saves money with open source will most likely will not buy support from you and the principles will pocket the money instead of creating even Mc Jobs to support it.
Remember that charity idea? Most single parent families cannot afford any kind of computer so the most vulnerable in society will not gain any benefit from your largess but only the rich. Then there are the street people.
Why not contribute to society instead of contributing to its problems by putting more people on the street?
Go ahead and mod me down but you will only serve to reenforce the view that america is heartless when it comes to the poor.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Colin Png, director for Developer and Platform Evangelism, ...
That just struck me, although it's not really news. Hire someone to be evangelic about your platform? At least that's another thing the Free software community can do infinitely better, infinitely more honestly, and without having to pay or coerce anybody into doing it.
"Oppression and harassment is a small price to pay to live in the land of the free." -- Montgomery Burns.
every time a story comes up about India "stealing" jobs. Or when companies hire lots of young adults out of College.
Judging from the one-sided moderation, I guess Slashdot is fully behind the idea of companies dumping high paid workers and shifting work over to where labor is cheaper. After all, it's not about who is being paid or what they're being paid. It's about getting a product out. According to the majority of Slashdot users apparently the product is more important than the livlihood of those who make it.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
quote
My prediction?
This is finally the thing where Microsoft misses the wrong boat and spells the end of Microsoft pounding everyone else as though they were a hammer. They missed the boat because they saw it as a fad which had no chance of passing the real-world chance. "Who (and why) would subscribe to 'free' software? This is ridiculous. In the meantime, we'll continual making software for sale and when they come crawling back to us, we'll be there, passing the hat, and collecting their money."
end
I think you miss the point.
The point is simple enough, microsoft is a BUSINESS, from day one it has been in the business of writing code and licencing it to people (note, not selling) IN EXCHANGE FOR MONEY.
It is ridiculous to assume that Bill G and his crew cannot see or understand what Linux is, they probably have a deeper, more accurate and more profound understanding of Linux than eveyone on slashdot put together, fair enough since MS have probably spend millions of dollars analysing linux.
However, expecting MS to counter the Linux / open source movement is rather like expecting General Motors to do something about the fact that 500 cubic inch vee eight motors aren't going to be so pupular when a full tank of gas costs more than 5 dollars....
what you get is ever closer to the 100 dollar barrel of oil, and GM putting the bullet points about the motor itself further and further down the advertising material, because GM make cars, not pushbikes, walking shoes or horseshoes, they CANNOT change what they are, so all they can do is continue to do essentially what they have always done, while devoting ever more effort time and money into political power broking...
It's not GM's fault that a 2004 SUV gets worse mileage than a 1960 big block, oh no, it's osama bin laden's fault that you can't fill your tank up for 5 bucks any more...
see the parallels to MS?
IBM at least made physical products, so the shift from mechanical cash registers and type writers wasn't so bad, and IBM are still here today as a big and powerful company.
MS don't have that option, not unless ENTIRELY NEW markets open up that are essentially the same as the one they grew fat on, essentially meaning they do not have to re-tool too extensively.... oh wait, here's MS trying to get into everything from games consoles through media centres to mobile phones.... trouble is linux is there too....
No, unless something big comes around the corner, something totally new, but something that will work only with commercially written software, MS as a viable business is fucked.
if that thing comes in time for MS, watch out, that 50 billion war chest will move mountains in short order and all of a sudden everyone will be applauding BillG and MS for their incredible business acumen in cornering the market in hyperdrive jumpship AI's
http://slashdot.org/~GuyFawkes/journal
After all he did write one program, by translating some open source software (BASIC) to a popular home computer system, using someone else's hardware resources...
I just heard some sad news on talk radio - Apple CEO Steven Paul Jobs was found dead in his red-brick home in Palo Alto, California this morning. There weren't any more details, but Open Source is rumored to be a contributing factor. I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss him - even if you didn't enjoy his work, there's no denying his contributions to popular culture. Truly an American icon.
Show me on the doll where his noodly appendage touched you.