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Microsoft's Chief Exec For Latin America Says 'Open' Means 'Incompetent'
An anonymous reader writes "The President of Microsoft Latin America, in criticizing the Brazilian government for its support of open source software, claimed that declaring something open is how you 'mask incompetence.' That seems especially funny coming from Microsoft, who has used 'closed' to mask incompetence for years. I thought 'open' meant that people could find and fix (or ignore) incompetence, whereas closed meant you were stuck with the incompetence."
As someone who speaks competent spanish, "Quando você não pode competir, você se declara aberto. Isso mascara a incompetência". Translates to "When you can't compete, you declare it open. It masks the incompetence."
"Going to war without the French is like going deer hunting without your accordion." ~General Norman Schwarzkopf
We have to be patient with the big dinosaurs. Word travels slowly inside such a large company.
1 June 2001, Ballmer's legendary comment, "Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches. That's the way that the license works."
From the comments in TFA, 8 April 2002 - FUD from Juan Gonzalez, General Manager of Microsoft Peru gets shot down in flames by Congressman Edgar David Villanueva Nuñez
20 February 2003, David Stutz, retiring group program manager, "delivered a kick in the pants to his former employer" saying "Microsoft is in danger of being swept away by open source"
12 May 2004, Windows Template Library (and Windows Installer XML) posted to sourceforge. The blogosphere reels in shock. Even slashdot isn't sure what to think.
I got bored at this point, but there's lots more popcorn-hour fun and games as this large corporation tries to deal with a rapidly changing industry.
Native brasilian here. Your translation is correct. Unfortunately this doesn't change the fact that what he said is obviously bullshit.
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