11.23.09

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General Electric (GE) Attacks Free Software, Microsoft Style

Posted in Free/Libre Software, FUD, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Patents at 12:41 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

General Electric

Summary: Microsoft’s friend and ally, General Electric, is doing some dirty laundry in the FUD department

Despite having issues with patent trolls, GE has been lobbying (jointly with Microsoft even) for software patents in Europe. This is indicative of a schizophrenic attitude that prevails in large companies like IBM because GE uses GNU/Linux (OpenSUSE) internally on the desktop. Even staff that does not want it is forced to use it. GE is not primarily a software company, so we typically mention it only when it comes to control of the media [1, 2] (also a joint venture with Microsoft and conglomerates).

“[G]iven that GE uses GNU/Linux internally (on desktops), this shows how bigoted some GE staff can be.”A reader has just mailed us this new article, from which he quotes: “chief information officer for engineering giant General Electric (GE) has said that open source software is only suited for internal “playground” applications and that businesses that use it for mission critical infrastructure are taking a huge risk…”

This is just funny. As if visibility of program code is indication of quality. Well, actually, good code is code that’s easier to share and “expose”, as Diebold teaches. Firefox, Apache, and Linux are high-quality programs that are used widely. Even agencies of the United States government (including the White House) would beg to differ, but the FUDmeister from GE continues: “I think open source is great for own internal playground type of things but if it’s running vital mission critical applications – networks running on open source for example – then that is a huge, huge risk to the organisation…”

“Who’s been feeding him this stuff,” asked our reader. It is hard to tell, but given that GE uses GNU/Linux internally (on desktops), this shows how bigoted some GE staff can be. █

“Anyone wonder why the Microsoft SQL server is called the sequel server? Is that because no matter what version it’s at there’s always going to be a sequel needed to fix the major bugs and security flaws in the last version?”

–Unknown

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