The Financial Express: Close Encounter Of Bill & Dick

“In early November, New Delhi narrowly missed a mega explosion.
This wasn’t because of any foiled terrorist attack, but due to a
near collision of two celebrity visitors, Bill and Dick, or as
someone called them–an incendiary mix of matter and anti matter!
It was a unique circumstance which saw, for the first time, both
Bill Gates and Richard Stallman in the same city at the same time
in India.

“Bill is the founder of the Gates Foundation while Dick is the
founder of the Free Software Foundation. Bill dropped out of
Harvard to start an empire, and Dick dropped out of the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology to start a movement. Both are
icons in the world of software, but the similarity ends
there…

“Despite disclaimers to the contrary, one couldn’t help
wondering whether Bill Gates was in India not just for the cause of
HIV, but also to pre-empt gains being made in India by the free
software movement at the expense of Microsoft. Some have called
this his ‘jihad’ against Linux. And he did make some gains. During
this visit, Karnataka has apparently signed an MoU with Microsoft,
which commits the state to use Microsoft products for all future
computerisation effort…”

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