“They seem to be pushing out their new people who soon tell a story, a fairy tale.”Regarding that story, told us one reader, "I've read a few Swedish novels in translation of the West and how it relates to Africa. A couple of them are from Henning Mankell: "Eye of the Leopard" and "Kennedy's Brain". They both provide good synopses of living conditions in Africa. The first is more in-depth about conditions in Africa, but the latter focuses on AIDS and speculates that some of these private foundations allegedly set up to find a cure for AIDS are not so good as they appear. The other is "Black Path" by Ãâ¦sa Larsson. Only a small part of it is in Africa, but the main suspect in the story reminds me of Bill Gates. He doesn't care so much about what effect his actions have on the world, because the only thing that matters to him is to prove his superiority."
In the latest pursuit for affection, Microsoft seems to approaching journalists with a sob story about the economy and how Microsoft can help the poor with proprietary software (as in, “they’ll get sort of addicted, and then we’ll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade,” said Bill Gates). This is covered not only by InfoWorld (they cite Boycott Novell) but also by eWeek, which plays along with the same old storyline that almost deliberately confuses "open-source" (the dash is intentional) with "cheap". There is of course not even a morsel of freedom in Microsoft's pitch because it's scared of this notion.
Anyway, here is how the eWeek story goes:
So not much will change in the way of messaging regarding Microsoft's outlook on open source. It didn't change much when Jason Matusow handed some of the handling of the Microsoft open source strategy to Bill Hilf, or when Hilf handed it off to Ramji.
[...]
Microsoft has appointed a new point man to put a face on its interaction with the open source community. That man, Robert Duffner, takes on a big task as senior director of Platform and Open Source Software strategy at Microsoft. His IBM and BEA roots will help him place his mark on the Microsoft strategy, but the core message remains the same.
I met with Duffner and my former eWEEK colleague Peter Galli for lunch here in New York.
Duffner also pointed out that today there are more than 80,000 open source applications that run on Windows, 30,000 of which were built specifically and only to run on Windows.
Comments
MisterMeister
2008-12-16 07:11:07
BILL GATES’: KILLING AFRICANS FOR PROFIT AND PR. MR. BUSH’S BOGUS AIDS OFFER
by Greg Palast July 14, 2003
(excerpt)
"Stephanie, let me let you in on a little secret about Bill and Melinda Gates so-called “Foundation.” Gate’s demi-trillionaire status is based on a nasty little monopoly-protecting trade treaty called “TRIPS” – the Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights rules of the World Trade Organization. TRIPS gives Gates a hammerlock on computer operating systems worldwide, legally granting him the kind of monopoly the Robber Barons of yore could only dream of. But TRIPS, the rule which helps Gates rule, also bars African governments from buying AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis medicine at cheap market prices."
http://www.bigeye.com/billgates.htm
Roy Schestowitz
2008-12-16 08:51:18
mpz
2008-12-16 11:28:18
For some projects it can attract new developers, but I think on the whole the MS eco-system is basically incompatible with free software - and all you end up with is a lot of less-savvy and less-polite users giving you hassles. Users want everything for nothing (no real difference to GNU users really), but developers from that side rarely seem to want to do anything without some direct recompense.
One only has to observe the Java eco-system compared to the .NET one to see the embodiment of these ideas. Even large and complex enterprise software is now basically a commodity and freely available on Java, on .NET you have to pay for every little extension widget or shitty 'framework' that fixes some short-coming in the basic system. It seems the only driver for 'innovation' is money - and no crappy little one-man ISV will ever make enough money on their 'shareware' to get anywhere, so they're really just pissing in the wind while the only winner is Microsoft, who is also pissing in the wind - up-wind to everyone else.
Roy Schestowitz
2008-12-16 14:07:39
It's more than just a port. It's also hosting, licences, proprietary formats, patents etc. Microsoft doesn't view it so simplistically.
Roy Schestowitz
2008-12-16 18:23:55
http://www.linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2008-12-15-027-35-NW-BZ-MS-0000
"It is interesting that the article does not mention Martin Taylor when discussing the history of Microsoft's attempts to co-opt Linux:"
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2002237511_msftlinux11.html
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-6086044.html
More in:
http://www.linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2008-12-15-027-35-NW-BZ-MS-0001 http://www.linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2008-12-15-027-35-NW-BZ-MS-0002