Counterpunch: License to Bill

“But all this was besides the real point. The AIDS donation was
a mere quarter of the moolah Microsoft was lobbing at the
Indian computer market and astute journalists noted the contrast
between the Bill-g fan club in Delhi and Cyberabad (as the Andhra
capital of Hyderabad was nicknamed) and the media neglect of
Richard Stallman, President of the Free Software Foundation, who
was in India at the same time. Stripped of the AIDS hoopla, Gates’
visit was actually a major skirmish in Microsoft’s ongoing jihad
against the free software, Linux, which Stallings [sic]
was promoting and which is broadly popular with governments all
over the world, especially in developing countries.

“And no wonder. While Microsoft has a perpetual and costly
license and its proprietary system is closed to innovation, Linux
is free and open to technical development. As a matter of fact, the
Indian government had just then issued a directive to move from
Windows to open source. The Gates donation was nothing more than a
fat bribe to the government to drop Linux and let Microsoft lock
itself into the mammoth profits ripening for harvest down the
road…”

Complete
Story