In an exclusive interview with USA TODAY reporters, Microsoft founder and chief software architect Bill Gates shares his thoughts on controlling spam, competition from Linux, how Windows will evolve, software for wristwatches, what’s worthwhile in life and whether Microsoft is boring.
Bill Gates’ Take on Subjects from Spam, Linux, Longhorn to Security
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSAlert.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Now I remember why I don’t read USA TODAY…
>>>>>>>>>>>
USA TODAY: Nobody used OS/2.
BG: Are you kidding? I mean, let’s be serious. That was IBM, a company 15 times our size. Name a bank that didn’t use OS/2.
>>>>>>>>>>>
…should have been, “What in your view will stop/slow Linux given that a good number of its coders just do what they enjoy without any particular financial interests behind and have in the recent past succeeded in *cough* taking *cough* some customers from MS?”
I’d loooove to hear what Bill would have to say to that.
Cb..
Exactly!
Linux isn’t quite there, but look at how far it’s come in just the last 2 years! It will be a viable desktop competitor within the next 3 years. All that’s stopping Linux on the desktop right now is really a UNIVERSAL installation system. No need to take away the ability to compile it your self, but what needs to be created is a system where developers release the source code in a universal format and then when you double click on it, it launches your system’s installer that then looks at the source code, gets all dependancies and then compiles and installs it for you. Kinda similar to the way the JAVA VM works. You just release the java files and then each machine’s java vm knows how to handle it. Each distor needs their own install program that knows how to handle these files.. add them to your program menu and put them into a list that you can search through and see all the programs that are installed and remove those programs if you wish.
IIRC, Steve Ballmer was always touting that while Linux was technically cheaper to purchase, the total cost of ownership would be much higher in the long run to deploy Windows.
Now however, Bill Gates has this to say “For any project, if you look at communications costs, hardware costs, personnel costs, all that, software licensing ranges — the highest you’d ever find is, like, 3% of any IT-type project. And so the question is can that 3% [compensate], in terms of how quickly you get the system set up?” essentially (in the context of the quotation) reneging their earlier claims of lower deployment costs and TCO, and instead offering that the actual percentage of an IT budge taken up by TCO is minimal. I personally find it odd that they make a selling point, and later downplay its importance. Did Linux get cheaper in the past couple months to deploy?
I mean, we’ve had to bet the company many times on big technological advances. We bet on the 16-bit PC. We bet on graphical user interface.
Umm, no they didn’t. Lots of companies had those advances before “the company”. There were successful “16-bit” home computers and OS’s before the PC AT (Apple Lisa); there were successful GUI’s on 16-bit system before Windows (Apple Macintosh, Amiga). To say they “bet the company” on those is rather stretching things…
Yawn .. hardly an interesting interview. Steve Ballmer seems to be a more interesting fella, interview-wise. But hey, you gotta give MS tons of credit. If anybody will survive anything, they will. Just look at how many things they are getting into. Very proactive company. Very competitive. Very hardworking. And willing to go the extra mile as needed. Microsoft must be one of the most competent and well-managed corporations in America.
http://real.usatoday-na-central.speedera.net/ramgen/real.usatoday-n…
“Astroturfing – whats that?” – “What’s Googled?”
The Association for Competitive Technology, a pro Microsoft lobby group spawned the group involved in the 1999 letters from the Dead campaign…
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/134332634_microlo…
There were successful “16-bit” home computers and OS’s before the PC AT (Apple Lisa)
The Apple Lisa is hardly a success story! If I remember correctly Apple actually had to landfill a bunch of them because they were unable to sell them. Case in point, ever see one of these babies out in the wild? The Lisa is probably Apples biggest albatross, even more so than the Newton, not a terrible machine, just ahead of its time.
I don’t think he actually said anything.
The only thing that will kill microsoft will be commoditization. When we can go pick out a pc like we can pick out a refrigerator, then microsoft will cease to exist.
Although Bill Gates is in the saddle of one of the most monopolostic conglomorates to ever exist in this world, I admire the work and money he has put into the Gates Foundation.
– j
Y’know we see an article in USA TODAY. Why can’t we just scribble a little note to say “Hey did you see this? What are we doing about this? Is this really correct?” and sending that off to the group of people who are interested in it. If that was really easy, it seems like a very clear thing. That’s the kind of risk we take.
It’s called e-mail, Bill. But you’d rather use a pen instead of a keyboard? Even if recognition were perfect, most proficient computer users can type faster than they write non-script characters, and many faster than they script. The tablet’s not a revolution. It’s hardly an evolution. But I’d rather you waste your time on that than any other of your software projects.
“Although Bill Gates is in the saddle of one of the most monopolostic conglomorates to ever exist in this world, I admire the work and money he has put into the Gates Foundation.”
One job of government is to collect taxes ansd spend the money on worthy causes (education, medical research, overseas aid) that are supported by the voters.
Here we have a big unelected organisation (Microsoft) which is collecting taxes and spending the money, but the people being taxed have no say. Would it not be better if an elected government put a tax on computers, rather than a company?
but what needs to be created is a system where developers release the source code in a universal format and then when you double click on it, it launches your system’s installer that then looks at the source code, gets all dependancies and then compiles and installs it for you.
Yes, yes, yes we do need one
? What government’s job is it to collect taxes and spend the money on causes supported by voters?
Not in the USA it’s not. Sure that is what they DO, but it’s NOT what they are supposed to be doing. Microsoft is pretty voluntary though and they don’t have the legal use of deadly force that the government does.
One job of government is to collect taxes ansd spend the money on worthy causes (education, medical research, overseas aid) that are supported by the voters.
Here we have a big unelected organisation (Microsoft) which is collecting taxes and spending the money, but the people being taxed have no say. Would it not be better if an elected government put a tax on computers, rather than a company?
That was called communism, and it failed miserably. As much as people dislike Microsoft, they obtained their leadership position through perfectly legal, if not opportunistic means. They also are not AS bad as everyone says they are. Consider IBM, HP, Sun, or *SHUDDERS* Apple in their position. They would be just as bad, if not WORSE!!!
Microsoft does not collect a “tax” on computers, they collect licensing fees…HUUUUGE difference, taxes you can’t opt out of, licensing fees you can. Nothing forces you to buy a PC with any Microsoft products installed on them and the MS Storm Troopers will not come blasting down your door. Examples would be the PCs sold with linux from Penguin Computing http://www.penguincomputing.com and Walmart.
However, if you decide to “opt out” of paying income tax, the government will come after you in a hurry.
Just a couple of thoughts.
Torrey:
You took the words out of my mouth, I do not know what country Don Cox is in, but it sure isnt the USA.
You took the words out of my mouth, I do not know what country Don Cox is in, but it sure isnt the USA.
Cuba maybe? :p
Nothing really “innovative” on the stopping spam front, just useless ideas which have already been hashed, rehashed, and consequently discarded.
Perhaps the most innovative idea I’ve heard in recent times for stopping spam is greylisting: http://projects.puremagic.com/greylisting/
Beyond that though, the entire Internet mail architecture needs to be revamped. Enter Dan Bernstein’s IM2000 architecture: http://cr.yp.to/im2000.html
Perhaps the most innovative change in Dan Bernstein’s architecture is that mail is stored on the sender’s side, not the receiver’s, meaning that if you want to send someone spam you will have to keep a system up long enough for the message to be fetched by those who you are sending spam to. This also greatly simplifies things like mailing lists.
“The only thing that will kill microsoft will be commoditization. When we can go pick out a pc like we can pick out a refrigerator, then microsoft will cease to exist.”
I don’t see how that would cause Microsoft to cease to exist. If anything, it would perpetuate the situation. No, they wouldn’t be making as much money as they are today, but if no one cared what software/OS/platform was on their computer, they’d stick with the default, and at current, that’s Windows. Do you buy your fridges based on what kind of compressor it runs? I doubt it. You’ll take whatever they have at Sears.
Further, a computer has a tremendously more complex interface than most appliance/commodities, and people who have computers spend far more (and will in the forseeable future) time in front of them then they do interacting with their fridge. Along those lines, by that I mean playing with the ice maker and setting the temperature control. Technically, we could get into a long and boring discussion about whether or not putting in and taking out food counts as interfacing the commodity in the sense that typing a document into a computer is, but we’ll skip the semantics. My point here is that if you’ve only got two levers, two slide switches and a dial to control your device (as a fridge does), there’s only a small number of ways that you can accomplish this and fulfill your functionality. That also holds for how many ways you can do-dad the interface up, as well. These are the kinds of things you have to think about when likening personal desktop computers to commodity household goods, and I don’t think they translate directly to “Microsoft would have no place in a commoditized future.”
bytes256, have you even read the Manifesto? Do you have any idea at all what Communism really means, or are you just one of those legions of simpletons that have no understanding of Communism, but equate it with everything evil because Reagan said so?
“Your information is all stored in a very encrypted way in the sky”
Oh, that statement really makes me feel like my data would be just extra super-duper-dillycious secure. ROFLMAO This guy needs handlers, you know those intelligent people that rich people hire to help them maintain their image by preventing them from saying anything REALLY stupid.
“I have a trivial set of software that I’ve written that understands the idea of whitelists and blacklists.”
Uh, very recently Mr. Gates explained that he hadn’t written code since Windows 3.X days, and was apparently amused by that fact.
I can’t believe he mentioned “The Road Ahead”. This book explained that the full realization of his great vision was Microsoft Bob and contains basic admission that OS/2 was more or less stolen from IBM and is the basis for NT (and one would assume, everything heaped on top of it since).
“From each according to their ability, to each according to their need”..
This isn’t the place to discuss this though. This is OS/NEWS not communism 101
I don’t think the taxation analogy works very well, as the argument becomes focussed on how the analogy isn’t quite right, rather than addressing the real issue.
However, I think the sentiment is correct. A monopoly charges monopoly rents for its products (eg. the MS 80% profit margin). It can do so, because there is little or no competition.
In a classic economic analysis, this leads to inefficient use of resources, as the monopolist does not need to innovate to compete (as there is no competition), and does not need to make its production efficient in order to compete on price. This is detrimental to the overall economy, as resources do not flow to their most efficient use.
So what you have is a monopolist collecting huge sums of money and then redistributing it to charities as it sees fit – these may, or may not be where the need actually is, and may be used to benefit the donor through marketing, and exploitation).
In my view, the better result for the economy, and those in need of charity, is to have healthy competition, where prices drop, and innovation thrives. Thus meaning that resources flow to their most efficient use, thus increasing the overall wealth for all, all the while increasing innovation for the betterment of all.
Monopoly == wasted resources == decreased wealth potential in society. MS can give away its billions, and in doing so, it masks the root of the problem, which gullible people like you lap up, thinking that MS is a good corporate citizen, while in the background, they suck the life out of the economy.
Thinking about simplicity of refrigators, suddenly the Xerox Star comes into my memory.
As photo’s on the internet show, these machines had no function keys, no, instead they had a row of buttons for making text bold/italic/underline, left/center/right/fill and such. Now that is ease of use.
For Joe User, the PC is waaaaaay to complicated. MS Office has menus with tens or hundreds of items. If the normal user who writes a letter uses them all? I doubt it.
For writing a letter, remap the function keys (b/u/i, align, copy/paste/cur), remove all filename limits, make a dial for the font size, et voila.
Additional software? Expansion slots? No way, Just a $100 machine, which is easy to use (with a 50 page handbook, not a 500 page one), which boots in seconds, is just black/white except pictures, cannot be expanded except for printers, scanners, SMB and USB storage. Otherwise it crashes so quickly. And no HD, just a ROM OS, you have that ZIP drive for saving files, right?
Hmmm. Might also add a MS Office export filter, built into the USB storage driver, which automagically converts own format to MS or vice-versa, depending on which version is newer.
– Would it not be better if an elected government put a tax on computers, rather than a company?
– That was called communism, and it failed miserably.
Uh, if collecting taxes on sold good equates communism, then the entire world is communist!
Seriously, folks, ever since minted money has existed, the state has collected some in order to pay for common infrastructures and collective endeavours (though the nature of those endeavours has varied greatly). The more civilized the society, the more taxes were used to provide for “peaceful” (i.e. social) projects. The way I hear some people talk, especially in the U.S., the only thing they’d want their tax dollars to finance would be national defense. Well, this system existed before: it was called feudalism (i.e. give me ten sacks of grain a year and I’ll “protect” you), and it wasn’t all that great!
And for those who think this has no business on OSAlert, just think that without taxes being collected to finance education and research (and, yes, defense), there probably wouldn’t be any computers to write OSes for at all…Remember, some of the biggest U.S. industries today (hi-tech, pharmaceutics, agriculture) are also the most subsidized…so much for a “free market” economy!
Excellent analysis! That’s one of the clearest argument I have ever read (on an internet message board, anyway) that demonstrates the ill effects of monopolies on the economy.
Univeral Installation System
I too would be interested in such as system. What we need to make it happen is to be organised and focussed. I’d appreciate if someone could set up a site where people who are interested could contribute ideas. This could be a simple little site, as long as it’s something to start off with. It need not be a “.org”, just some site that preferable you have control over (i.e. not your ISP, employer). This is so we can upgrade it at a later stage and handle input to the site directly. Anyone who could set up a site please reply telling us the site. Have a box for entering e-mail addresses which can be used for a mailing list. This is a bit off-topic for OSAlert.com, I know, but I want to start this project. I’m sick of the current systems and would like a more organised, compatible system that compiles from source, like you’ve described. Hope something will result from this comment!
Yea and see the way business and government are coming so close in a so called free-market “capitalist” society??
“Nothing forces you to buy a PC with any Microsoft products installed on them”
yeah, you can go on the internet and go to an obscure store like penguincomputing.com and buy a linux pc but you have to
1) have a computer in the first place to do that
2) know about linux
I can’t walk into curry’s or even pcworld and ask for a pc without windows preinstalled on it. If I buy from dell, I can get a pc without windows but I’ll still have to pay for windows.
http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/keyboard/ok_info.asp
Not exactly what you meant by remapping function keys but note that the above keyboard has labels on the keys corresponding to the MS Office keyboard shortcuts. There is also a company out there making keyboards with swappable physical key layouts (not just a template overlay) for many common programs (Office, Photoshop), though I think they only really go hog-wild (custom key shapes) with the gaming layouts.
I agree in spirit if not in details with your overall idea. these things we call computers can be made conceptually simple yet still retain thier power.
bytes256, have you even read the Manifesto? Do you have any idea at all what Communism really means, or are you just one of those legions of simpletons that have no understanding of Communism, but equate it with everything evil because Reagan said so?
Actually, yes I have read the Manifesto. I happen to be a Russian/Soviet history enthusiast. Basically, the comment that that was a response to, recommended the redistribution of capital evenly for the good of all. This is essentially the end-result of Communism. All 20th century attempts at this very activity failed miserably.
yeah, you can go on the internet and go to an obscure store like penguincomputing.com and buy a linux pc but you have to
1) have a computer in the first place to do that
2) know about linux
I can’t walk into curry’s or even pcworld and ask for a pc without windows preinstalled on it. If I buy from dell, I can get a pc without windows but I’ll still have to pay for windows.
Did you ever think that there is not enough demand for companies like curry’s or pcworld to sell Linux boxen?
And who doesn’t know someone that owns a computer or knows about Linux? Plus, I’m 99% sure Penguin Computing has a toll-free number.
Also, I can walk into Best Buy and walk right out with a Mac. No Microsoft “tax” from a mainstream store.
Just because you love alternative operating systems doesn’t mean the general populace does. Microsoft products are popular because they work reasonably well for their cost for average Joe sixpack.
Microsoft won in the browser wars because Netscape got lazy. Microsoft is losing the PDA wars because they’re not as good as Palm is. Microsoft is struggling in the server market, because they don’t provide a good value for many organizations.
Microsoft does not automatically dominate everything it touches. Computer manufacturers put Microsoft software on their boxes because they know it sells. Simple as that.
Just because you love alternative operating systems doesn’t mean the general populace does. Microsoft products are popular because they work reasonably well for their cost for average Joe sixpack.
Microsoft won in the browser wars because Netscape got lazy. Microsoft is losing the PDA wars because they’re not as good as Palm is. Microsoft is struggling in the server market, because they don’t provide a good value for many organizations.
Microsoft does not automatically dominate everything it touches. Computer manufacturers put Microsoft software on their boxes because they know it sells. Simple as that.
That’s the biggest bunch of garbage I’ve heard in a while. Mozilla is ten times better than IE. MS isn’t nearly as innovative as Open Source alternatives. Mozilla has tabbed browsing and pop-up blocking. Where are these basic features on IE? Palm is also a much better platform than MS. The problem is anti-competitive practices. MS was already found guilty of that with Netscape so your argument there goes out the window. The fact that MS won’t allow a PC to be sold without a Windows license is another anti-competitive practice common to the PC market (not everyone wants to buy a Mac just to avoid the MS tax). Their position is cleary one of unfairness not innovation.
And to Nicholas James who said this:
but what needs to be created is a system where developers release the source code in a universal format and then when you double click on it, it launches your system’s installer that then looks at the source code, gets all dependancies and then compiles and installs it for you.
Yes, yes, yes we do need one
Have you tried gentoo? It is very close to what you are describing. Just “emerge packagename” and you get that package and all its dependencies downloaded and compiled automatically.
Basically, the comment that that was a response to, recommended the redistribution of capital evenly for the good of all. This is essentially the end-result of Communism.
Actually, no. In classical Marx theory, Communism is not a means, but an end. Socialism is the means. I agree that all 20th century attempts have been failures (though some more than others – it would have been interesting to see where Cuba would be today if it had not been for the embargo). The reason is quite simple: nearly all Communist revolutions have taken place in agrarian societies, while Marx clearly had an industrialized nation in mind when he wrote the Capital (the UK, or as a second choice Germany).
Now, however, we are definitely too far away from OSes, and this will be my last word about this (sorry Eugenia – though, since we’re on the subject, I’d be interested to see what OSes, if any, have come out of Soviet Russia…)
I have two solutions to current problems in computing
that I would like to present here. They have to do with
Univeral Installation for Linux software and the current
war between GPLed Libraries and Software Patents.
First let’s deal with the Universal Installation problem.
My approach (and I am working on this with Borland
Kylix right now) is to install the software into a program
directory in the user’s HOME DIRECTORY in the same
way that Windows installers install software to the
Program Files directory. The installer would even include
a lib directory in the user’s home directory and an ability
to automatically build startup scripts needed for the
software to locate it without resorting to suid root
ldconfig calling.
This type of software installer would have another
goal in addition to universal installation. It would also
allow Linux newbies to install and uninstall software
without being ROOT as they should not be root until
they learn enough about Linux to not accedentaly
damage their system. I’ve even done this a couple of
times as an EXPERIENCED USER in root sessions ;-).
Now for the problem of the war between the GPL and
software patents. I am basically not political on this
issue unlike RMS and ESR except where software
patents are concerned. I feel that software patents
represent a far greater danger to free software and the future
of computing in general than the fact that some corporation
or “shareware” cottage industry in proprietary software may
use the the free library that I am going to make for console
programs in a proprietary one (This library will be a portable
conio.h library based on ncurses and Borland like function
calls that can use standard C/C++ input/output calls and
will be double licensed with the GNU GPL and the proposed
license I will be presenting below.)
In answer to this war I present a truce in the form
of the Coral Snake Initiative Conditional Proprietary
Use License. This license will basically allow the
use of GPLed software libraries that also come under
it in closed source proprietary software provided that
the certain anti software patenting conditions are kept
by the user. Here is the proposed license that I have in
mind for this purpose.
Part of the Coral Snake Intitiative
The Conditional Proprietary Use License for GPLed
Software Libraries
This library has been released under the GNU GPL
(General Public License) mainly for use in other free
software projects as defined by the Free Software
Foundation. However since we see the current practice
of software patenting to be more dangerous to the future
of free software and computing in general than closed
source proprietary software per se we are also releasing
the binaries and #include file based function calls to it
under this license to make the library available to closed
source proprietary software developers under the following
conditions:
1. The user of the library in proprietary closed source
software shall surrender all software patents that he
currently owns to the public domain or the same double
licensing system as the library.
2. If the user of the library in proprietary closed source
software does not as yet posses any software patents
he shall not attempt to gain or be a third party to the
enforcement or licensing of any such patents against another
software developer other than through the same double licensing
structure as the library.
3. If the user of the library in proprietary closed
source software should possess or try to gain, enforce
or license in any other way than than the double licensing
structure of the library any software patents this license is
revoked for that user of the library and he must either:
a. Distribute software using the library as full free
software as defined by the Free Software Foundation
under the GNU GPL (General Public License) alone, or
b. Cease and desist all distribution of software using
the library as called for in the GNU GPL (General Public License).
One might give the usual excuse that proprietary users of
libraries under this duo license model would not be giving
back to the community but this is NOT TRUE for two reasons.
The first is that only binary versions of the libraries and the use
of the #include file function calls needed to use the library would be
available for proprietary use. The SOURCE CODE and additions
to the #include files involved would remain pure GPL and
improvements to those would have to be given back to the community.
The second is that even if a proprietary user does not improve
the library and give code back they are STILL giving back to both
the community and the future of computing in general through
the voluntary forfiture of their software patenting priveleges.
Another early part of the Coral Snake Initiative will
be looking into placing all “end of lifed” or “abandonware”
software in the public domain by law. I believe we can do this
through the very name “Intellectual Property” having replaced
the true temporary monopoly basis for these priveleges.
It is my belief that if software under the “end of life” or
“abandonware” death penalty if intellectual property is
indeed property should qualify as abandoned property
under the law. This could be the basis for state seasure
and public domaining under many laws dealing with
abandoned bank accounts and other physical property
being interpreted as applying to intellectual property as
well.
Yes there is a new criitter coming to join the Linux Penguin,
the Free Software Foundation Gnu, The FreePascal Cheeta
and the BSDevil in the computing mascott managery
and he is HOT as in VENOMOUS for software and
computer dictators of ALL stripes, the Arron’s Rod
Network CORAL SNAKE.
“? What government’s job is it to collect taxes and spend the money on causes supported by voters?
Not in the USA it’s not. Sure that is what they DO, but it’s NOT what they are supposed to be doing.”
Every government in the civilised world collects taxes to spend on defense, long-distance highways, schools, health, etc. If the citizens don’t want their tax money spent on for example teaching children to read, they can vote against it. No taxation without representation is the cry.
Microsoft is pracrising taxation without representation. The people who buy computers with Windows installed have no say in how the money they are contributing to the Gates Foundation is spent.
Microsoft is pracrising taxation without representation. The people who buy computers with Windows installed have no say in how the money they are contributing to the Gates Foundation is spent.
This is what we in America call a charity. It is a privately run organization that does good for people. Because it is privately run, it can spend its money however it wants too.
Once and for all…repeat with me now…money spent on Microsoft products is <u>N O T</u> a tax!!! If you don’t want to contribute to the Gates Foundation, that is fine, because nobody…and I do mean NOBODY is forcing you to buy any Microsoft product whatsoever, thus it is a tax. If you buy a PC and you don’t want Windows on it, don’t buy a Dell, HP, or IBM computer, built your own from parts, nothing is stopping you.
Also in response to this:
Mozilla is ten times better than IE. MS isn’t nearly as innovative as Open Source alternatives. Mozilla has tabbed browsing and pop-up blocking. Where are these basic features on IE?
I was talking about Netscape, NOT Mozilla. At the time of the browser wars, Netscape was a steaming piece of crap in the eyes of many people, Netscape’s solution to beating Microsoft was to fill their browser with ridiculous amounts of bloat. Surprisingly enough, Microsoft offered a browser that was lean and mean and offered incredible startup times for those who were used to Netscape’s bloat. At one time I loved Netscape, but to be honest, their last good browser was Navigator 3.0 gold.
Mozilla is a different story. Netscape knew that they had been beat so they gave their crown jewel away to the community as a last dying stab at Microsoft.
Had Netscape Navigator 4.x been like Mozilla 1.4 or Firebird 0.6 the browser wars very well might have turned out differently.
Mozilla’s big problem is that few people beyond uber-geeks know about it, and it is still perceived as being too slow at start-up.
And one more open ended question, are Microsoft’s actions any worse than, say, the Japanese who put up ridiculous import tarriff’s to make it almost impossible for anybody but Nissan and Toyota to sell cars there? It’s business, you want to squash your competitors, business is war. Is the American government itself anti-competitive? Look what it did to Soviet Russia…one could argue that we were so anti-competitive to them that we assimilated them. Put it in context, MS isn’t any better or any worse than anyone else at the top. You have to fight to stay at the top, otherwise you become another DEC.
…and I do mean NOBODY is forcing you to buy any Microsoft product whatsoever, thus it is a tax.
Oops…. that should read…
…and I do mean NOBODY is forcing you to buy any Microsoft product whatsoever, thus it is NOT a tax.
Sorry about that
In response to your suggestions, you talked about the use of the GPL in relation to an installation system library. My idea would be a complete installation system. There wouldn’t actually be a whole lot of code, instead there would just be an interpreter which would interperet a plain text script determining all aspects of the installation from compilation to copying to linking to integration with graphical environments. As such, the “installer” file wouldn’t be an executable. It could work like: get the source code tar/bz2, get your Universal Installation System (or whatever we decide to call it) script and the interpreter software does the rest. This is to ensure portability and flexibility.
Now on the issue of the GPL I don’t think we should use it. This is becuase the distributions would hack it a little bit to make it work, and as a result it would not work universally. As we are working from source it might not be so important, but if we were to make a binary-install system it would be more so.
But this isn’t really the best place to discuss this. We should have a site as I proposed in a previous comment where we can get together and discuss it. If anyone can set up this site as described before, please post the address here.
“Yawn .. hardly an interesting interview. Steve Ballmer seems to be a more interesting fella, interview-wise. But hey, you gotta give MS tons of credit. If anybody will survive anything, they will. Just look at how many things they are getting into. Very proactive company. Very competitive. Very hardworking. And willing to go the extra mile as needed. Microsoft must be one of the most competent and well-managed corporations in America.”
Hardly…MS has had limited success in almost every venture it has ever tackled. It has essentially two profitable products XP (OS/2 and VMS derived) and Office (components copied or purchased from elsewhere).
MS is probably at very high risk of collapsing within 5-10 years. A significant uptake (>15-20%) of OSS will be potentially disasterous as MS will be forced to drastically reduce prices to maintain share. This will destroy profits and shake market confidence.
I suggest that people study history. Few corporations in world history have been significant players for more than 50 years.
In 1820 the biggest industry in the USA by capitilisation was whaling. Hemp was the biggest industry in the world in 1800. The Pullman Railroad Car Company was one of the largest corporations in the world in 1900. In 1950 Nokia was a small Finnish logging and rubbergoods company.
anonE9,
Start here.
http://sourceforge.net/people/
“This is what we in America call a charity. It is a privately run organization that does good for people. Because it is privately run, it can spend its money however it wants to.”
A charity is supported by voluntary contributions. This isn’t.
“Once and for all…repeat with me now…money spent on Microsoft products is <u>N O T</u> a tax!!! If you don’t want to contribute to the Gates Foundation, that is fine, because nobody…and I do mean NOBODY is forcing you to buy any Microsoft product whatsoever, thus it is a tax.”
But when you do buy Windows (which is practically compulsory if you want to work), you pay extra money which goes into the Gates Foundation. This is no different from a sales tax or VAT. You may well say that you can avoid a sales tax by never buying anything, but it isn’t practical.
A charity is supported by voluntary contributions. This isn’t.
FOR THE LAST $#$@#$ING TIME, PURCHASING MICROSOFT SOFTWARE IS COMPLETELY VOLUNTARY!!!
But when you do buy Windows (which is practically compulsory if you want to work), you pay extra money which goes into the Gates Foundation. This is no different from a sales tax or VAT. You may well say that you can avoid a sales tax by never buying anything, but it isn’t practical.
Get a different friggin job if you hate supporting MS so much. There are plenty of jobs out there in exclusive Linux or exclusive Apple shops. Go job hunting. MS NOT required!
Where do you buy gas from? Those are all part of the equivalent of a large cartel. Yet I don’t hear you bitching about a “Mobil tax”
Lay off it already. There are alternatives. It’s not Microsoft’s fault that the alternatives were unable to defend themselves anymore than it’s America’s fault that the Iraqis were unable to defend themselves.
Nothing is preventing you from building your own PC from components (dozens of books available to help you, probably for less than your so-called “Microsoft tax”), installing Red Hat Linux, and running KOffice/StarOffice/OpenOffice on your computer. You now have a perfectly useable, “Microsoft tax” free system. Where’s your problem?
Besides, Bill Gates is hardly alone in the corporate sponsored charities industry. Virtually all major corporations have a philanthropic arm to them. It’s a nice tax write-off, good publicity, gives them something to point to when people blame them for screwing over the world, and never contributing anything back to the people.
Your arguments are completely baseless and ridiculous. Microsoft is a company, they try to make money. Bill Gates is a business man. He doesn’t have to give a dime back to the world in any way shape or form if he doesn’t want to. But he choses to, which is a damn nice thing to do IMHO.
Is it better that he gives money away to causes he thinks are worthwhile, even if they differ from your own, or to simply not give money away to any causes whatsoever?
Be real.
anonE9,
Start here.
http://sourceforge.net/people/
Ho ho ho, no way. I object to the Microsoft ads on SourceForge and other OSDN (supposed to stand for “Open Source Development Network”) and won’t have any viewers – contributors or users – of the project have to view such ads. MS know developers are crucial to their future so are trying to persuade those in the open-source development community to move to their propreitary lock-in .NET takeover technology. So no, no MS-assisting SourceForge/VA Software for me, thanks. Meanwhile, it’s still open for someone out there to set up a site that we control.
BTW, in relation to the other post by “Coral Snake”, he suggested that software should be installed in a users home directory to bypass the root authentication problem for system level installation. I don’t think software should be installed by default in such an insecure location. (I don’t have an in-depth knowledge of permissions etc. in Linux, so I can be corrected on this.) If they are installed there it would have greater control over the users files, including important documents. The program could delete and modify the user’s files just as the user himself can. Also it would be a bad idea if integral systems like GNOME or KDE were installed in these locations. It wouldn’t be so hard to corrupt these systems if they were installed in an insecure location.
I would favour different levels of installation, i.e. system level (kernel patches, graphical environments, X, drivers), users level (shared by all users, multimedia apps, browsers like Galeon) and user level (for one user, calculator). (I should say here I would like a rearrangement of the /home directory. It needs to be changed for desktop systems with more definite, organised places for things). Generally I think the more the risk the further the “user” and “program” should be separated. There would need to be authentication.
I don’t have an in-depth knowledge and I will need someone who has to come up will a solid specification. Anyone who is interested if you can, please set up a site so we can be more organised about this.
anonE9, we can discuss that here:
http://nuppead.unifacs.br/twiki/bin/view/Computacao/UniversalInstal…
To post something you just need to click on “Edit”. But before you must register yourself (it’s pretty quick) at this link:
http://nuppead.unifacs.br/twiki/bin/view/TWiki/TWikiRegistration
Victor.
You must have read a different history than I have. Communism “failed” for one (and only one) very simple reason. Anti-communists disguised as communists came to power in the USSR. Then they started a campaign called “perestrojka” which was meant to fool soviet people into thinking that communism is bad and that capitalism will make all soviets very rich. They did it so that they could divide the people’s property among themselves. That was called privatisation.
We all know the result, which was to be expected, now most people are very poor, while a minority is very rich. Capitalism failed again as it always did.
Do I think that anyone here will beleive me? No of course not. I cannot compete with the huge power of capitalistic mass media. Freedom of speech means nothing without power.
I’m sure that most americans know nothing about real history of USSR, or marxism. People who know Linux don’t believe the FUD in the mass media but they beleive FUD about communism because they are clueless. Although it should be clear that mass media would never tell the truth about it.
Linux will ALLWAYS be 1-3 years behind. It’s not even a competitor. Quite the media hyping… Linux isn’t an option for the market as long as it’s bloat!!!
Rather ask, why would someone stick to MS when Apple is doing stuff a lot better and smoother =)
Don Cox, you are so right. It’s entirely objectionable that the “Microsoft tax” is diverted to the Gates Foundation which then donates it, against our will, to fund child vaccination, AIDS research, literacy programs and such. Much better that we pay real taxes to our governments so they can make more anthrax, land mines and stealth bombers.
“MS can give away its billions, and in doing so, it masks the root of the problem, which gullible people like you lap up, thinking that MS is a good corporate citizen, while in the background, they suck the life out of the economy.”
I am not going to dispute this point, but I would like to add something to it – corporations are probably the only true citizens in existence anywhere anymore, while the rest of us are merely economic “consumers” for them to exist on. US corporations have the full protection of the Bill of Rights, and are considered to be fully “natural persons” under the law. They have also recently won the full right of “free speech” in the US courts and are now legally allowed to lie to the public when it can be construed as merely just another “opinion” for them to do so. Even for news organizations (which was the crux of this precedent setting case). With the addition of the advantages that the concept of “limited liability” gives to corporations (only) under the law, they have superior citizenship rights to what humans have (in the US anyway), as perverse as that may seem.
Just my $0.02 and apologies if I am too far off topic (but the subject just happens to be BillG and MSFT for this item).
I would like to clear up some things with my previous post.
I did not intend to say all software should be installed to the users home directory when I said that I was in the process of building an Installer for linux that would install to the users home directory. This installer will be designed for binary end user applications and their spacific library “dependancies” ONLY and NOT any form of general system software. My programming environment of choice for this project Borland Kylix and the Proprietary form of Star Office by Sun Microsystems use such a system. Also this will NOT be under the GPL or any open source license. It will be PROPRIETARY software. (as I have said before I am apolitical in the open versus closed source software battle and develop BOTH types. I am also hoping to license this to Borland in return for software upgrades and maybe a few bucks on the side if they are interested ;-).
The GPL software that I am building is a portable version of the conio library based on ncurses for programmers who want to use standard C/C++ input/output and simpler Borland Turbo Pascal/C/C++ like function calls in console applications. I am also licensing this for proprietary developers however using the Conditional Proprietary Use License discribed in the original post in which they surrender their software patenting privelege in return for proprietary use of the library.
I would like to see other free software projects that allow pprorietary use of their libraries adopt this GPL/CPUL licensing model and dump the current LGPL license for doing so. I firmly believe that Software Patents present the greatest danger to both free software and computing in general at the current time and with Software Patents currently comming to Europe I believe that that the BEST weapon we now have against them is the privelige of using our programming libraries in proprietary software but with strict anti software patenting conditions attached. These conditions have already been posted in the CPUL proposal in the original post and will be posted again when these GPL
and Software Patent issues are somewhat “on topic”.
…as perverse as that may seem.
should read
…as perverse as that may be.
Of the 100 largest economies in the world, 51 are corporations. The economy of Ford is larger than the economy of Denmark. The economy of Mitsubishi is larger than the economy of Indonesia, one of the world’s most populous countries.
We are essentially living in an era of sophisticated corporation-state feudalism.
OK. I’ll shut up now.
I’ve registered at the TWiki site and will use it for further discussions. Anyone interested please follow the instructions given in the previous post.
FOR THE LAST $#$@#$ING TIME, PURCHASING MICROSOFT SOFTWARE IS COMPLETELY VOLUNTARY!!!
You are aware what the meaning of monopoly is, right? Few object to MS being a monopoly and thus it is not very voluntary.
You’re basicly making the same point as if someone chops of my arms I should be happy they didn’t kill me (provided I survive) instead of mad that they did what they did.
If I have to go out of my way not to support the tax it is not very voluntary.
Also, why would you hear me complain about another monopoly/oligopoly when we’re on an OS forum?
Finally, how is giving away something you have little use for (million of dollars) morally better than giving away something valuable to you ($100 if you’re poor)? Especially if you have gained in an unfair way (because of monopoly-inflated prices)?