07.02.10
Quote of the Day: “Gates Foundation Still Giving Windows Away for Free”
Protests in India used Boycott Novell banners
Summary: The leaked story of how Bill Gates fought GNU/Linux migrations in India evokes accusations against the Gates Foundation
WE occasionally point out that the Gates Foundation helps make Microsoft stronger, sometimes by blatantly blocking GNU/Linux adoption in libraries and schools. This meddling by the Gates Foundation in education has made this foundation some prominent foes/critics [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7] and in reference to leaked memos regarding EDGI (where Gates on behalf of his foundation steps in to interrupt GNU/Linux migrations across India), Barney wrote this comment titled “Gates Foundation still giving Windows away for free”:
How interesting it is that Gates was all for giving Microsoft software away for free in 2002 and they set up programs inside of Microsoft to help do this. We’ve heard that Bill will be giving his billions away and we learned he created a foundation for his family to run and act as a place for him to….wait for it….give his money away. Guess what he also has done there? Yup, he’s given out Microsoft software to educational institutions.
It is actually self promoting. You see, if Microsoft gets knocked from their lofty perch, the name Bill Gates and Microsoft end up quite faded. But, by Bill heading off Open Source Software and software freedom in the educational sector, he looks like a hero, slowly spends his monopoly money, and he keeps Microsoft brand value high. He also hooks children into the Microsoft software cycle of renting bad software and paying for the next fix which is advertised as being better.
I wonder if he wrote about this in his book, “The Road Ahead” since it seems he’s been thinking about this for a very long time. It is a rather convenient plan since he’s to way more than anyone could spend on his own needs. By spending that money on Microsoft software then giving that away, he preserves the market value of Microsoft software and heads off the open source software from gaining in the education sector and growing from there. And his name still seems important in the world of computers.
To which another person replied with:
I think it’s worse than that. I seem to recall that a condition of dealing with the Bill and Melinda Foundation was that you couldn’t use Linux.
And this
http://www.gatesfoundation.org/about/Pages/terms-o f-use.aspx#system
seems to confirm it. (Though I seem to remember it was for computers they donated as well)And that doesn’t even get involved in some of the other things that the Foundation’s been up to.
Seems the foundation was investing in companies that were doing bad things. And in a rather bizarre turn of events, some of the foundation’s efforts were to try to ameliorate the conditions caused by the companies they had invested in.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la- na-gatesx07jan07,0,6827615.story
And when this was found out, their effective response was that it was too much work to try to stop investing in such companies.
The term philanthrocapitalism contains the word “capital” in it; it’s about making good things happen while earning money (or power). As we wrote last week, Bill Gates still works for Microsoft. █
