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South African Minister Locks Horns With Microsoft
naheiw writes "The South African minister of public service and administration on Monday addressed the opening of the Idlelo 3 free software conference in Dakar, Senegal, saying that software patents posed a considerable threat to the growth of the African software sector (video). Microsoft responded aggressively, saying that 'there is no such thing as free software. Nobody develops software for charity.'"
Okay, so in the strictest sense of the terms, he's probably right. Software development isn't a charity.
Free Software (GPL/LGPL) is definitely not a charity, it's a give and take trading system. You put in, and you get out, and it largely self-improves through feedback, patches, bug reports, etc.
BSD comes closer, but still required attribution in the past, and of course, the developers were (back in the day) originally producing it as part of various university projects (ie, they get status in return), and more recently, are developing it as for-profit work, but are releasing it. Again, not charity.
That said, whether the argument's been taken out of context, or is accurate in other ways is another matter.
My jaw dropped too to see that South African Microsoft executive claim that. I've done a few transcriptions for CastingWords of recordings of discussions among Microsoft figures, and it's amazing how out of touch they are with the Free Software world. Granted, if you are working at Microsoft you are probably ideologically against the Free Software crowd, but most geeks are curious about other software projects going on just to get fresh coding perspectives--Jobs took a lot from PARC, for example. Microsoft just exists in its own little bubble.
Like the people in the RIAA, Microsoft just doesn't get it. The fundamental issue is not about whether software development is a charity (although sometimes I think that is a motivation), but about Economics 101 and prices in a competitive market. If they had paid attention in class, they would remember that, in a competitive market, the equilibrium price is found where price = marginal cost. The marginal cost of an additional unit of any digital work is very close to zero. So MS, the RIAA, and many others are engaged in an attempt (futile in the long run, IMO) to construct an economic perpetual motion machine by legal schemes and other rent-seeking behavior.
Microsoft in their arguement has managed to demonstrate a clear lack of understanding of the core issue.
Software is not a charity, nobody is discussing it as such.
Software is, however, a written tool, in the end. Control of that tool is the key to empowerment. South Africa, actually all of Africa was held under oppression for many centuries by corporate interests such as microsoft, who held the keys for livelihood out of the masses hands in order to force the yoke.
Microsoft cannot understand why people with such a memory would not jump at the option of putting a new yoke on their necks, to work themselves to death in order to enrich a new foreign master.
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
Even since the days before Stallman, the reason people shared software (that is, they gave it away for free), is because it is practically cost-free to reproduce. A community of hackers use the same OS and tools. In my life, it's been DEC TOPS-10, then UNIX, then Linux, but no matter. We all run into the same bugs. Better for one of us to fix and share, than for each of us to find and fix the same bug. Better for each of us to write a tool and share with all, than for each of us to have to write the same tool, most of us doing it poorly. It seems so obvious.
Why did Bill Gates become fabulously wealthy? Because he produces a great product? I think not. Because he produces (and markets) an ok product that he can reproduce for pennies and sell for hundreds of dollars each. And he has managed to lock people into using his products.
The point is that economically speaking, there is a strong argument for sharing (and thereby dividing up) the cost of production of tools if you can reproduce the tools for no cost and with no restrictions. Microsoft may not like this, but a developing nation should understand the point.
the 2 things MS is terrified of having to compet on.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
... if you don't allow patents, and therefore don't allow programmers to get money in exchange for coding... Huh? I'm calling shenanigans on you. Patents are not a mechanism by which programmers get paid for coding. They are a mechanism by which legal departments of companies harass their competitors, and by which companies that produce nothing engage in extortion. Programmers get paid to build software.and if you don't allow patents, and therefore don't allow programmers to get money in exchange for coding
That's called a non sequitur.
Most people who receive money in exchange for their work do so without having monopoly rights. There is no evidence that monopoly rights are necessary for monetizing software development; in fact, there's a vast array of evidence suggesting it's not at all necessary.
That evidence ranges from open source companies on one end to the vast majority of programmers hired for coding specific purpose software which is never released and for which copyright or patents is irrelevant.
On the other side is, eh, Microsoft. Claiming that they need software to cost money or they have no business model.
No shit. Wonder what makes them say that then.
Microsoft have used software libraries that were released by the BSD community in their products for years. They "incorporated" tools written by hobbiests into DOS, back in the day, without any note to the contributors. It only proves they move blindly towards the money, never look behind, and never clean the people they step on off the bottom of their shoes.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
Microsoft, in spite if its using the word to death, is simply too large and complex to innovate. Real innovators are far too likely to feel stifled and leave the company.
They aren't capable of admitting, or possibly even acknowledging this any more.
They came to my uni in 2002, and the main speaker, their head of whatever they call their hiring department (he did introduce himself, but I was only there for the pizza) went on what I can only describe as a polite tirade against 'hackers', meaning the proper meaning, not the criminal one. They didn't want them, they wanted people who thought like microsoft did, and were able to do things the microsoft way. A way we were assured was nothing like open source, and far superior.
Their problems quite obviously run deep, and to be frank it was obvious from that one meeting, I was not alone in coming away with that impression (note, not one person at that meeting went to work for them). They want to distance themselves from their hacker origins, but those very same people are what's driving the real innovation in the industry.
I disagree with you about the need for patents.
Ultimately, the best idea is to eliminate software patents entirely. Our software industry grew hugely profitable without them, so there is no demonstrable need for software patents (unless, of course, you have some anticompetitive ideas in mind.) Fact is, they are not helping, and so far as the United States is concerned they're not fulfilling their Constitutional mandate (admittedly, not much of anything Congress passes lately does.) However, if you must have them, give the USPTO the funding it needs to be critical about what truly is worthy of protection (I agree with you there) and shorten the term.
Without patents, the result will be predictable: most people will keep their algorithms a closely guarded secret.
So what? If it's secret, I can't use it, and if it's patented I can't use it. If I make a derivative work based upon your disclosed, patented algorithm odds are you'll still sue me. Without software patents, companies which understand that the only real way to maintain a competitive edge is to keep investing in R&D will simply be encouraged to maintain that investment. Maybe then they'll starting hiring fewer IP lawyers and more scientists, engineers and programmers. I'd say the country would be a whole lot better off if that were to happen. Hell, if you want an argument against software patents (indeed, excessive IP law in general) just look at Asia's high-tech economies. They don't have draconian Intellectual Property laws and they're doing just fine, employing a hell of a lot of people manufacturing a lot of products.
When it comes to software, the reality is this: if there's a way of doing something, there's probably a better way and sooner or later someone will figure it out. Furthermore, if something is protected by trade secret law, it's only secret until someone figures it out. And, if they figure it out independently (or do come up with a better approach) there's no patent system getting the way of that technology being commercialized. Software patents have proven to be a millstone around the U.S. software industry's neck and the Patent Office is utterly incapable of managing them effectively. Given those facts, we're better off without them.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
so how do they fail to be technological leaders ? don't get me wrong i think MS makes a lot of good products, sql server and .net are great products. And i think in many ways them being market leader has them in a damned if they do damned if they don't position - think if they REALLY altered windows vista how many compatability issues there would be?
all that aside though there needs to be a fundamental corperate culture shift at MS. they have consistantly failed to engage their customers, there is no grass roots movement on the ms platform anymore. instead of relying on people wanting to use their platform, they try to trap them into it, which hardly endears anyone to them.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
No, the fundamental problem with all forms of "intellectual property" is that they attempt to perform a form of social engineering (encouraging innovation) through the violation of free market principles (using government enforcement to reduce competition in the marketplace).
Encouraging innovation by restricting the spread & use of information seems highly counterintuitive to me.
Exactly, MS stands mostly to attempt to prove that free software can't exist, while doing that they managed to run away from where all the innovation is happening, where it has been happening for the last 20 or more years: the Homebrew/Hacker/Hobbyist scene. Apple saw this, took BSD, cleaned up the kernel a bit, took some free utilities and are now selling a very successful GUI as OS X. MS has to re-invent the wheel with every OS to make it look "new" and distance itself from the free community. This leads to failures such as Vista where it takes a *5*+ year development cycle to produce an OS that is more buggy then most alpha software in the free community. Note to Bill and Steve Ballmer, you can't run a company that ignores a large part of where all real innovation takes place, its ignorent and stupid to act that way.
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