Microsoft on Open Source
p2pnet.net News:- Rumours that Bill and the Boyz might soon embrace open source have been quickly quashed.
Perish the very thought!
"We believe that Windows provides greater business value and lower long-term costs for customers than competing platforms, including Linux," NewsFactor has Microsoft’s general manager of platform strategy, Martin Taylor, saying.
Stuart Cohen, head of Open Source Development Labs (OSDL), "started rumors flying on Tuesday when he offered comments about upcoming cooperation with Microsoft," says the story. "Cohen made those remarks while speaking with attendees at the Commonwealth Technology Forum in London."
While Cohen’s comments "clearly fuel the speculation that the OSDL might be trying to broker a deal with Microsoft, the company officials remain adamant about not changing long-standing policies regarding open-source development," says NewFactor, adding:
" ‘With specific regards to speculation that Microsoft may begin developing applications to run on open source platforms, I do want to confirm that Microsoft does not have any plans to port applications to Linux,’ said Katherine Clouse, a spokesperson from the Waggener Edstrom Rapid Response Team for Microsoft."
Rapid Response Team.
heh
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See:-
NewsFactor – Microsoft Denies Special Deals with Open-Source Community, July 14, 2005
July 15th, 2005 at 6:40 pm
Martin Taylor, Microsoft’s general manager of platform strategy says, “We believe that Windows provides greater business value and lower long-term costs for customers than competing platforms, including Linux,”
Translation, “Who are you going to believe, your eyes, or me?”
Translation#2 “Once you’re out of business it won’t cost you a dime…”
July 15th, 2005 at 7:32 pm
Microsucks isn’t going to support Open Software in any forum without some sort of benefit for themselves. They are in it for the money and nothing else. They gotta keep the stockholders happy and they aren’t going to do that by making stuff free. In the stockmarket, it is what have you done today, not what you did.
Microsucks is making money from both ends. From the home user/corporate user, from the spyware and adware writers in the form of licenses (or you get that stupid unsigned software warning), and they are getting into the spyware remover part with the latest attempt to purchase Claria. Funny that they should do that as it is the purposeful weakness in the code that even makes it possible to install the spyware in the first place. Rather than fix the problem, they would rather sell you a “solution”. The solution is like the patches; nothing but a bandaid and temporary fix that will require yet another patch to fix the opening that malware took advantage of. Microsucks has advanced users that do nothing but hunt code problems and tell them of it. In spite of that, many times it is years before they address the issue, especially if it might interfear with some hole they are making money through.
Open source is the key to getting around that pothole filled road they call the internet superhighway. Linux patches when needed come out rather quickly and address the issue and they are effective. It is rare they need an additional patch to fix a previous fix. Microsucks can keep their overbloated high priced software that creates more problems than it takes care of. I am migrating to linux and have been for sometime. Eventually all my machines will run linux.
July 16th, 2005 at 2:27 pm
I’m downloading Suse Linux right now (5 CDs). I hope the RIAA and/or the MPAA don’t mistake it for music, or films! LoL!
July 17th, 2005 at 8:00 pm
They will support Open Source only when hell freezes over or we all burn up in the sun. Whatever comes first
July 17th, 2005 at 9:22 pm
Suse is the flavor of linux I am running at present. I tried the Knoppix live cd just to see what all the foo-fa-raa was all about with linux. I then tried Red Hat and Suse. Both RedHat and Suse are distributions, meaning that they aren’t free of cost. The Suse I have is a personal edition which means that it isn’t able to compile tarballs. Your 5 cd set will be able to. I will be shortly changing to Ubuntu when I receive the install cds in the mail. (Which are totally free I might add and that includes the postage too.)
I have discovered a new freedom with linux I never had with Microsucks products. Spyware? What’s that? Don’t need to run spyware removers anymore. Viruses? What’s that? Trojans? What’s that. There are a few viruses and trojans for linux but they are rare. There are also free removers to take care of those. Other than that, I find almost nothing of a problem with surfing the net and don’t need expensive additions to help my OS survive the surfing experience of the web.
July 24th, 2005 at 2:03 am
Back in 2000, I bought (for $19.95) Linux Mandrake 7.1 (seven CDs and a startup floppy, plus User’s Guide and Linux Reference pamphlet). Five years later, I am still trying to figure out how to install and use this promising OS.
I’m not really stupid (believe it or not), but to be completely candid, the only real problem with Linux diustributions, as I see it, is that none of them are truly “user friendly”. I believe MS would be completely out of business by now if it weren’t so difficult for the average PC user to understand Linux then be able to go through the steps.
I took a six month course in computers, back in 1989 (each month devoted to a different aspect: PCs in general, DOS, Word Processing, Spread sheets, databases, and miscellaneous softwar). That course was invaluable, mostly because of the month spent learning DOS.
But I have found nothing that teaches a person the commands used in Linux (except for hit-and-miss). What Linux needs is a program that mounts itself on your computer, without asking you dozens of questions for which you have no answers, because the questions are steeped in computerese never taught generally.
I’ll never forget the awe and amazement I felt when I first mounted Windows 3.1 on my first personal computer! Then when Windows 95 hit the market, I was a devoted convert to MS.
Such bliss did not last long (of course!!), but at least MS just went ahead and made generalized decisions FOR ME, instead of asking me to make decisions about things which were totally foreign to me.
So, I recently took an on-line course through Hewlett Packard, which detailed how to acquire and install Fedora — providing the answers which I shall still have to type at the proper moment. But So far, I have been unable to download the Fedora software according to their instructions.
But I am still incapable of partitioning my hard drive, even though I also have a bought-and-paid for Partition software app and a 160GBytes hard disk drive.
Of least importance, but nonetheless important, is the filing system. Linux asks the user to type it all out, with indecipherable dashes, etc. Whereas, they should simply supply the approriate buttons to click on, prompting the OS to assign attributes and file names accordngly.
God, what a mess! I would love to be totally emersed in Linux, with any MicroSoft or Windows programs totally estranged from my household!
Let him listen who has the ability to act upon this constructive suggestion: MAKE LINUX DISTRIBUTIONS User-Friendly — to the point that the user doesn’t even have to think!!
How do you think Billy and the Boyz did it?