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What is Bill Gates Learning From Open Source?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the how-to-love-the-bomb dept.

christian.einfeldt writes "In the world of Free Open Source Software communities, Microsoft is often viewed as the very epitome of the Cathedral-style model of software production. But is Bill Gates learning from the software development phenomenon that he once compared loosely to communism? In commenting on the results of a Microsoft-commissioned survey of approximately 500 board-level executives about the importance of interpersonal skills versus raw IT coding skills, Gates starts to sound a bit more like a member of the Apache Foundation than the take-no-prisoners king of cut-throat competition: 'Software innovation, like almost every other kind of innovation, requires the ability to collaborate and share ideas with other people, and to sit down and talk with customers and get their feedback and understand their needs.'."

8 of 194 comments (clear)

  1. right by wwmedia · · Score: 5, Funny

    are microsoft good or bad this week?

  2. What have M$ learned from OSS? by lattyware · · Score: 2, Funny

    From what I see in Vista...
    Very little. (And yes, I have used Vista enough (unfortunately) to say that. Arch Linux/Ubuntu user primarily)

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    -- Lattyware (www.lattyware.co.uk)
  3. Learning a new recipe by Recovering+Hater · · Score: 3, Funny

    Maybe he is learning how to properly cook and eat crow?

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    My humor is probably your flamebait
  4. Re:Bill is okay, Steve Ballmer is the problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Actually, she wasn't his wife when she was responsible for Microsoft Bob.

    I think marrying him was the penalty for it. Me, I would have chosen death.

  5. Re:That's easy ... by Breakfast+Pants · · Score: 2, Funny

    "Google releases their applications for multiple platforms."

    Really? I may be wrong, but I don't think I can run Google News on Yahoo.

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    WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
  6. Re:That's easy ... by Constantine+XVI · · Score: 2, Funny

    However, Yahoo News does, in fact, run on Google.

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    "I think an etch-a-sketch with an ethernet port would beat IE7 in web standards compliance."
  7. Re:Bill is okay, Steve Ballmer is the problem by paiute · · Score: 4, Funny

    Gates is hardly visionary himself. The first edition of The Road Ahead , his view of the future, infamously lacked mention of the Internet. Once the Internet exploded in the mid-1990s, Gates and his ghostwriter had to hastily put out a second edition.

    I remember seeing stacks of this book. There was actually a sticker on the front that read: "Now revised to include the Internet". I recall thinking that this was a probably inadvertent admission that the author could not really see the road ahead.

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  8. Re:That's easy ... by His+Shadow · · Score: 2, Funny

    Yahoo is a platform?

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