unlimitedNet: The Empire Strikes Back

[ Thanks to Jason
Greenwood for this link. ]

“The concept of communally-developed (or open source) software
is not one that generally sits well with the world’s richest man.
At the April 2002 Government Leaders conference in Seattle,
Microsoft chairman Bill Gates even went as far as saying that low-
and no-cost software, such as Linux was–horrors–a threat to
capitalism itself. With no commercial software, a country could
always rely on farmers who spent their evenings working on open
source code, he mused to his audience (which included a New Zealand
government delegation).

“But Michael Dell did not, of course, put Linux on Dell servers
because he supports a move to agrarian communism. Dell, the world’s
largest PC maker, is Mr Safe. He won’t sell a product unless it’s
gained bland corporate acceptance. By straying (a little) from
Microsoft’s Windows, Dell is saying that like hardware before it,
software is becoming a commodity. Like milk powder, in other words,
to return to Gates’ rural analogy…”

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