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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.'"
The growth of Free Software in Africa could be encouraged were Stallman to visit the area. His visit to India was enormously successful. Would that we have a better and more cheaply available biography of the man and his vision (O'Reilly's Free as in Freedom is good, but could be better) that could be distributed to influential figures in the African IT world.
PS: What is the chance that the person who said that at Microsoft will be looking for a job very shortly? Having your upper management assert that they are moving toward a more open model and then having some bozo say something like this must look terrible even to the Microsoft Marketing Department (tm).
Tomato wedge sperm darts that are Republican.
Umm, having developed software for charities at various points in my career, I have to say that is not the case...
Oh, wait, I am a nobody. At least so far as Microsoft is concerned. It's not that I didn't make enough money to "put food on my family", it's just that I didn't make enough to matter and I never will.
However, the feeling is mutual. If I didn't have clients who need products delivered on MS platforms, I'd happily never touch a piece of MS software again. It's not that I'm ideologically against them, but Microsoft doesn't cater to people like me; we're not a profitable market for them. In fact, we're nobody as far as they're concerned.
That's OK with me; the Gap doesn't offer a line of clothing for people like me; the local Evangelical church doesn't have special Sunday services for people like me either. I'm perfectly happy for each of these organizations to provide their services and wares for people who for whatever reason think they fulfill a need. We just move in orbits that, for the most part intersect.
I think the mutual indifference thing breaks down because Microsoft wants to be everything to everybody. They want to have the one important operating system and the one important file format "standard". Since they don't intend to cater to me, the only way for that to happen is for me to have to use products that were not designed with the things I value in mind. The file format thing is a great example. What I want out of office file formats is not at all what Microsoft is prepared to give me.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
MS Says:
Nonsense. Neither the commercial urge nor the recognition grabbing need have spread to cover 100% of those people producing software. Here is a database system in python that I wrote for my own reasons, and give away for free. No "GPL" or other pseudo-free restrictions, just free. PD. Take it. Do anything you like with it. Or not. Don't care. Not looking for money, not looking for recognition, not looking to promote free stuff over commercial stuff or vice versa, no requirements of any kind. Repost it anywhere, take my name off it, whatever you like. It's just... free. What do I get out of it? It works for me, that's all. Doesn't hurt me or compromise me in any way to give it away, so I do.
What Microsoft - and the GPL-fans, for that matter - have oh-so-conveniently forgotten is the mechanism of PD software. Write it, share it, go on with your life. The more people do that, the more useful things will get created. Personally, I find the GPL just as corrosive as software patents, and for very similar reasons. I try to stay away from both. But that's just me.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Indeed. Just because people don't see it doesn't mean it's not happening.
Do a quick Google for 'ICT4D' - Information and Communications Technologies for Development. You'll be surprised how much work is being done by organisations big and small, and by individuals, too.
I work almost exclusively with FOSS in Vanuatu. Small linux servers running on ancient hardware was the only way we could conceivably have brought small organisations and NGOs online when I arrived some years ago.
The server OS we use is SME Server. I worked for the company that created this software starting back in 2000. I went to work for them specifically because of this software's suitability for use in the developing world. After I left these guys, I worked for 3 years as a volunteer using the same software (and a lot of other FOSS as well) to help people communicate electronically, often for the first time.
FOSS is critical to development work. I've written extensively about ICT and Development. This essay explains in layman's terms why FOSS is often the right tool for the job.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
Additionally, programmers have copyrights, and software should not even be patentable. And if open source software devs having a ego-inflation from their work means they are not charitable, then the freaking ego-masturbation known as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation should not be considered charitable also.
Occam's razor is the blind faith in the natural selection of least resistance and in universal oversimplification. -- EF
You *have* to break backwards compatibility every couple of years.
Otherwise your software becomes bogged down and very inflexible.
It occurs in open source software occasionally. Look at KDE 4.
They are taking the opportunity to break compatibility in the name of progress.
Any old dusty and hackish code can be thrown away and be replaced with shiny new code.
This is Window's primary problem. Microsoft is scared shitless at breaking compatibility.
However they will need to do so very soon to survive.
Windows Vista is already filled to the brim with hacks and really odd behaviors due to backwards compatibility.
Want to see a really good example of how it should be done? Look at Apple.
They went from PPC to x86 and it was relatively smooth.
If you can't sell your own creation for a particular price, then it isn't worth that amount, no matter how much you think it is. Getting special laws passed to have your own business model enforced by the government doesn't count as free market, no matter how much you pretend it does. Although you were very polite about it and your post was well-written, the contents of your response was incorrect in almost every way.
There is no such thing as a "marketplace of ideas". This is a fantasy which can only be created by using government enforcement to create an artificial scarcity of "ideas".
I'll hazard a guess that because your choice of vocation revolves around concepts & ideas, your desire to control those concepts & ideas is distorting your viewpoint of what constitutes a free market.
I'm a programmer, so I work with concepts & ideas too, but I make the assumption that people are paying me for my service. If I want to keep getting paid, then I have to keep providing service. I don't expect to create a piece of software once, then be paid every time that software is used even when I don't do any more work. That would be greedy, but that's exactly what intellectual property proponents want to be able to force people to do.
Setting up artificial control of the flow of ideas through government enforcement for the purpose of "encouraging" innovation IS, by definition, using government enforcement to manipulate free market dynamics for the purpose of a social goal. How can you not call that social engineering?
This is also incorrect. Monopolies are not harmful only when they don't use their monopoly status to prevent competition. If the time period of their existence is short enough, then perhaps they cause very little harm - but that harm still exists.
That's why I added the "& use" in my statement, since patents definitely prevent you from USING ideas (at least not without paying someone something). Copyrights are definitely about restricting the spread of information.
As far as patents are concerned, if I come up with an idea independently (which happens a lot), why should I be forced to pay someone because they happened to file something similar with the Patent Office a little earlier?
As I stated at the beginning, in a free market, a product or service is only worth what people are willing to pay you for it. You don't get to decide the value of your product or service: the market does. And if you have to depend on government enforcement of a bad business model make your good or service artificially more valuable, then your business model has nothing to do with a free market.