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Gates Pushes Open-Source Approach to HIV Research
dan the person writes that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation "has donated $287m to 16 different research groups around the world to work on developing an HIV vaccine. The catch? They have to share their work even if the groups were previously competing against each other. Sounds like a familiar development model to me, I wonder where I have seen it before?" Besides the BBC's coverage, the Seattle Times has a good story about the grant, with a few more details about how the money will be spent.
company does anything it can to stop this kind of progress in the IT field, even though their previous boss apparently knows very well what the consequence of that is....
Until the consequence of lack of innovation in the IT field is millions of deaths I think you trivializing HIV/AIDS to try to make a point.
"reality has a well-known liberal bias" - Steven Colbert
Making jokes about a devastating mass illness that ruined the lives of many, many people from all over the world. That's ... tasteful.
the goal of microsoft is to make money.
the goal of bill gates' charity is to help people.
why should it be surprising if gates uses different methods to accomplish different goals?
Microsoft's job is not to expand the boundries of IT for all, it's to make money. While OpenSource and GPL software has shown that it can be profitable, that's not where the real money has ever been for individual companies. Therefore, they stick with privatized licensed software models. Since HIV research isn't a matter of profit for him, he'll go with what's the most efficient method for across-the-board advances. Makes perfect sense to me.
Do not confuse "Freedom of Choice" with "Free Will".
Except in cases of rape, people can easily avoid getting infected with HIV/AIDS. Abstinence or safe sex cost nothing, and they have the additional benefit of reducing population growth.
This is true for adults, but not for the children of people infected with HIV/AIDS. I'm all in favor of personal responsibility and the obvious solution the spread of AIDS does seem to be "stop having sex outside of marriage", but it would still be a fairly massive world-wide problem just in terms of those who already have the disease - especially those who have the disease through no fault of their own.
What's frustrating is the way it seems as though this has to be an either-or. Either we ask people to keep their sexual drives under control OR we try to save those who catch the disease. Pity we can't do both.
-stormin
The Southern Baptist Convention has creationism. On Slashdot, we have porn.