Open Source Kills Jobs, says Gates...
Open source kills jobs, says Gates
Jorina Choy, Jul 12 2004
Putrajaya: In muted tones, Microsoft’s chairman warned
governments and companies that open source software is
not the way to go if they are in the business of
creating jobs and intellectual property.
Bill Gates was on the Malaysian leg of a whirlwind
Asian tour, which included a speech on his vision of
“seamless computing”, when he voiced his concerns over
the growing goodwill towards open source, especially in
Asia.
It is one of the top two challenges facing Microsoft
today, the other being software piracy, which is making
governments lose tax revenue, Gates outlined on Jun 29
at a roundtable for key Southeast Asian press.
His packed Malaysian itinerary included a speech to
over 3,000 IT professionals on seamless computing, and
an MOU-signing for a Partners in Learning initiative
for Malaysia.
At the roundtable, Gates, also Microsoft’s chief
software architect, emphasised how damaging open source
software can be.
“If you don’t want to create jobs or intellectual
property, then there is a tendency to develop open
source. It is not something you do as a day job. If you
want to give it away, you work on it at night,” he said.
“[Open source] doesn’t guarantee upward compatibility
or do that kind of integration [for seamless computing
to work].
“We certainly will have open-source apps that compete
with and that run on Windows. But when it comes to a
guarantee or having someone who stands behind your
software, [open source] is typically not something done
in a capital approach.”
Earlier, Gates talked about the contributions Windows
has made to the Asian economy.
“Windows has opened up opportunities for computers and
chips to be built in Asia. This will continue to be
true for [such] software in providing high-paying
jobs,” he said.
In the case of software piracy, Gates said Microsoft is
having “good dialogues” with Asian governments, one
area being their loss of tax revenue “when people don’t
pay for software”.
Generally, software piracy is “a picture that has been
improving” in Asia, with piracy rates in Hong Kong,
Thailand, Malaysia and South Korea going down, he said.
He added: “I probably wish it’d go away in China! It’s
the second largest PC market after all.”
However, Gates stopped short at saying that Windows XP
Starter Edition—available in Malaysia and Thailand in
September—is Microsoft’s attempt to stop the spread of
Linux software and software piracy in the region.
“We thought that for government projects, we will come
up with something between Windows CE and Windows Home,”
he said.
“We have no precise plan where it makes sense. We
always believe in developing products for moving a
particular market towards pervasive computing.”
A bigger initiative, according to Gates, is Partners In
Learning. Microsoft will invest US$20 million in cash
grants to deliver education in its technologies to the
Asia-Pacific countries over five years.
“We’re more aggressive in educating markets in the
developing countries,” he said.
In Malaysia, Microsoft also demoed its next-generation
Windows OS, Longhorn, publicly for the first time.
Colin Png, director for Developer and Platform
Evangelism, Microsoft Asia Pacific, highlighted the
“SuperFetch” technology which searches and retrieves
files quickly based on relationship schemas such as
author and not physical locations.
In addition, he showed how Web services or XML-based
application icons, like a clock, search bar, and
Amazon.com purchase tracker, can be dragged and dropped
as easily-accessible “tiles” on the software interface.
Longhorn is supposed to be released in 2007. But Gates
would not confirm the release date because “there’s
still a lot of work to be done.”
check out:
http://www.asiacomputerweekly.com/acw_ViewArt.cfm?Magid=1&Artid=24328&Catid=2&subcat=19
/arin
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