____/ [H]omer on Friday 29 June 2007 08:34 : \____
> Verily I say unto thee, that jim spake thusly:
>
> [snip mission statement]
>
>> In short...never speak ill of your competition.
>
> Please be sure to forward this memo to Ballmer.
He has. Ballmer is in fact reading it as we speak.
http://schestowitz.com/Amusement/images/ballmer-office.png
Add to these all these 'secret' reports about Linux, such as the Halloween
Memos that talk about ways of eliminating a rival which is Free software
(software the way it used to be). Frankly, I find it hard to ignore Microsoft
in the news only because there is usually something subtle that they do in
order to sabotage and cut the rival's umbilical cord.
They don't compete by making good products. They compete by outmuscling the
competition and thinking about strategies that suffocate rivals like VMWare
and Google. Prebundling is their weapon of choice and corruption of
interoperability/standards is another. They always make it seem like
an 'accident', but it's very much deliberate.
Ballmer's Anti-Linux rants.
,----[ Quote ]
| # There's no company called Linux, there's barely a Linux road map.
| Yet Linux sort of springs organically from the earth. And it had,
| you know, the characteristics of communism that people love so very,
| very much about it. That is, it's free. - in 2000
|
| # We do not anticipate offering software on Linux. Nobody pays
| for software on Linux. - in 2002
|
| [...]
|
| # The way the license is written, if you use any open-source
| software, you have to make the rest of your software open source.
| If the government wants to put something in the public domain, its
| hould. Linux is not in the public domain. Linux is a cancer that
| attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything
| it touches. - in 2001
|
| # "We believe every Linux customer basically has an undisclosed
| balance-sheet liability." - in 2006
`----
http://boycott-suse.blogspot.com/2006/11/ballmers-anti-linux-rants.html
Jim, I agree with you that where rivals are mentioned in a negative context and
Linux is neither directly nor indirectly involved, then posting that is
redundant. I'll try to avoid this. I'll try to show /why/ Linux is relevant
where it fits into the story. Even anti-piracy efforts (or lack thereof) by
Microsoft are usually driven by the existence of Free software.
--
~~ Best of wishes
Within reason, consider Free software. The best things in life are also free.
http://Schestowitz.com | Free as in Free Beer | PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
Cpu(s): 26.2%us, 4.5%sy, 0.9%ni, 64.2%id, 3.7%wa, 0.3%hi, 0.2%si, 0.0%st
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