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____/ Homer on Saturday 19 July 2008 17:01 : \____
> Verily I say unto thee, that nessuno@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx spake thusly:
>
>> <Quote>
>> RM: 'I can’t end without asking you about the Steve Ballmer quote.
>> You know the one where he said 'Linux is a cancer that attaches
>> itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches.'
>> What do you think he meant by this?'
>>
>> LT: 'I have a hard time really seeing what the heck Ballmer is doing.
>> First the monkey dance, then the chair throwing. At some point he
>> called Linux 'un-American', apparently because he doesn't like the
>> competition. Then the cancer thing. And now this fixation with Yahoo!
>> When will it end?
>>
>> So what can I say? I think he tried to say that open source grows
>> very aggressively and takes over (which is good - if you're into that
>> whole expanding markets thing), but he wanted to put it in terms of
>> something that grows out of control and is bad for what it is growing
>> in. Thus: cancer.
>>
>> So I can certainly see the logic of choosing that word. '
>>
>> RM: 'Do you think it makes any sense?'
>>
>> LT: 'Do I think it makes sense? No. Of course open source grows
>> aggressively: what's not to like? Low cost, great quality, and a lack
>> of being shackled to some commercial company that you can't really
>> trust further than the fact that they'll happily continue to take
>> your money. Sure, it grows.
>>
>> And yes, it does grow at the cost of Microsoft, but that's called
>> ’competition’. It doesn't make it 'cancer' any more than it ever made
>> it 'un-American'.
>> </Quote>
>>
>>
http://www.simple-talk.com/opinion/geek-of-the-week/linus-torvalds,-geek-of-the-week/
>
> I thought it was pretty clear that Ballmer was actually referring to the
> GPL, which promotes Freedom (his nemesis which he derides as "cancer"),
> in contrast to the slavery of Intellectual Monopoly, which is pretty
> much all that keeps Microsoft in business. However, the spread of one is
> no more pervasive than the other, it's simply two opposing sides of the
> same battle. It could equally be argued that Microsoft's destruction and
> assimilation of other companies and standards, and their agenda of
> spreading the disease of Intellectual Monopoly, is also a "cancer".
Watch the bit in this interview about Intellectual Monopolies. He slams
patents. PJ chose not to quote this.
- --
~~ Best of wishes
Surely, Microsoft has given up on altruism in the IT industry
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