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Pay Microsoft for what?

2007-10-09 17:33:05

Pay you for what?

(Score:5, Insightful)

by mysticgoat (582871) on Tuesday October 09, @09:53AM (#20910749)

(Last Journal: Wednesday September 26, @10:43PM)

I use Linux, in part because I didn't want to give you any money anymore, so could you please explain to me why you think I owe you money?

This quote from Ballmer [groklaw.net] that is posted on Groklaw under the section "[Update 2]", appears to be the Microsoft explanation:

Because our battle is not sort of business model to business model. Our battle is product to product, Windows versus Linux, Office versus OpenOffice.

But he doesn't stop there. He immediately continues by directly contradicting himself, and talking about the differences in the FOSS and Microsoft business models:

The only other thing I would say that is probably germane is, we spend a lot of money, the rest of the commercial industry spends a lot of money on R & D. We've spent a lot of money licensing patents, when people come to us and say, "Hey, this commercial piece of software violates our patent, our intellectual propery, we'll either get a court judgment or we'll pay a big check. And we are going to -- I think it is important that the Open Source products also have an obligation to participate in the same way in the intellectual property regime.

In other words, FOSS should be required to use the same wastefully expensive business model that Microsoft uses.

I don't think he gets FOSS. I am beginning to wonder if his commitment to the traditional corporate culture of 1982 is so great that he truly cannot see that FOSS is based on an entirely different cultural platform. FOSS is a kind of gift economy where those involved are saying "Hey, since it doesn't cost me to share what I'm doing, I'll gladly share it with everyone, and I expect others to give something back to all of us, too." Where traditional capitalist cultures like Ballmer's see product improvement as a way of getting a bigger slice of the pie, FOSS focuses on making the entire pie bigger so everyone gets a larger slice.

To those who are less culturally advanced, the clear successes of FOSS must seem to be magic. Apache, Blender, Firefox, and the others must all seem to have been created out of empty aether, and to be without any solid foundations. Clark's observation about advanced technology seemingly also applies to business models: if they are significantly advanced, their mechanisms of operation will seem to be magic to the businessmen of twenty-five years ago who haven't bothered to keep up.

Posted: 2007770@835.17

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stranger

Stage three

(Score:5, Insightful)

by Dexter77 (442723) on Tuesday October 09, @08:48AM (#20910019)

"First they ignore you,

then they laugh at you,

then they fight you,

then you win." - Mahatma Gandhi

I see we're on stage three now.