Google Lawsuit Exposes Microsoft Offshoring Deal

2old2rockNroll writes "In more news from Microsoft's Google lawsuit, it appears that Ballmer's 2003 trip to China may have had as much to do with Microsoft moving jobs as selling software. It seems that the Chinese are not pleased with the number of jobs being moved to China, and one of Lee's duties was to identify jobs for export. Although hiring in Redmond has slowed, a Microsoft spokesperson admits they are "growing their work force" in China. Is it possible that Bill Gates' recent lament over the decline of US CS graduates and research spending was merely crocodile tears?"

Comments

Re:SM's 'duh' moment of the week...

[Cromac]

on the other hand, though, they could justifiably (on the own grounds of what they're saying) argue that it's because the US has poor output in terms of CS types that they have no choice but to go abroad in the first place

Only if you assume that the only qualified workers have CS degrees. Most of the best developers and testers I've worked with either don't have a degree at all or have a degree in some totally unrelated field. Arguing that there aren't enough CS graduates is just an excuse for MS and other companies to try and justify outsourcing.

Microsoft... why software should not have owners.

[twitter]

why is this significant again? Companies offshore all the time.

If you work for Microsoft, it's very significant. You may soon be fired as your job is done by two or three competent Chinese slaves. This is simply an enlargement of their Chinese that will cost 1,000 employees their jobs.

If use Microsoft, you might be concerned by your software's origin. Microsoft proudly claims to be a US company. That's getting harder for them to say. A few years ago, Microsoft swore in court that releasing the source code to Windoze would represent a national security risk. They have since sold peeks at that software to China and the former KGB. They have set up places in India and China to actually write their "product". So, owned in the US but made and developed in China. Nice.

This exposes the non-free software end game: slavery. Microsoft is non-free software. You can't share it with your friends, study it, improve it or even run it as you please. They have the backing of US and just about every other country's laws. They are also working on hardware, mostly made in China, that does not allow you to run anything else. With China's co-operation, they will win. China is also non-free, in the worst of ways and this is why it's so cheap to get things done there. Now, very few benefit from Microsoft's ownership of software and the intentional waste of the upgrade train. As Microsoft fires it's own employees, you will see that the ultimately only one or two owners with zero tech knowledge will benefit as the rest of us are stripped of choice, privacy, freedom of press.

It's ugly, very ugly.

Further reading can be found GNU:

• why software should not have owners
• the right to read

Microsoft has never been your friend and friends that help you by screwing others will always turn on you. It's been said before and I'll say it again. Companies have obligations to customers, employees and share holders. A company that screws any one of these will eventually screw all three. It's all part of believing that it's OK to screw people.