Harish Pillay wrote: > I don't think people hate Bill, it is the > business practises of his company that people > are upset about.
That's true, MS' business tactics before really alienated a lot of people. I actually believe that the Linux/Open Source phenomenon gobsmacked them into acknowledging just how this potent this alternative development model to commercial closed software is. They had a brief moment of denial with the release of their Halloween Documents, but I do believe the Microsoft of today has finally realized that having at least some open-sourced components in one's ecosystem is not merely healthy but *critical to survival*. Regardless of Ballmer's posturing wrt licenses, MS' actions today does indicate that their eyes are open regarding the benefits of open soruce. Well, they better, because I sincerely doubt they will last long if they don't do at least some embracing of open-source. By the way, I don't think too many people are aware that Google's Chrome makes use of one important piece of open-source software from Microsoft: The Windows Template Library now hosted at http://wtl.sourceforge.net > It can be construed that his charity is to > gain brownie points for bad deeds! Actually when I hear him talk, I'm convinced his sincere in his philantrophy. I just think he was OVER-competitive before when he was donning the businessman hat. But also, if one goes back to some of the things that MS was being accused of before such as bundling - you could see that at least _some_ of the arguments were bogus - do you hear anyone complaining about Apple bundling Safari in OS X as hurting consumers? The EU is forcing MS to release Windows without the media features, why aren't they forcing Apple to do the same thing to OS X (e.g. iTunes)? If there's anything the MS of today is guilty of, it's *crappy* marketing. Google and Apple get away with the same things and get applauded even... heck Google's potential to invade privacy is far MORE sinister than anything MS is even capable of, but very few people talk about that. Google pushes autoupdates left and right to its Google toolbar and other stuff, but you don't hear much whining about it unlike what you heard before with Windows. ================================ http://www.webmechs.com/webpress The Webmechs Blog _________________________________________________ Philippine Linux Users' Group (PLUG) Mailing List http://lists.linux.org.ph/mailman/listinfo/plug Searchable Archives: http://archives.free.net.ph
