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.'"

Comments

Disgusting

[arotenbe]

Microsoft responded aggressively, saying that 'there is no such thing as free software. Nobody develops software for charity.' I develop software for "charity" all the time. No one is giving me any incentive, yet I do it anyway.

He added: "For innovation to continue, there needs to be value - and even open-source applications have some form of market model, which incentivises them to continue innovating." Excuse me while I barf.

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).