Ballmer: Linux users owe Microsoft

[foxy123]

This is from the Ballmer's interview published in FT yesterday:

When somebody comes with a different business model, that's where you get… or a phenomenon comes with a different business model.

What was the number one different business model that our company has confronted in the last six years? It's Open Source. Open Source is not a technology phenomenon; it is a business model phenomenon. Frankly speaking, exactly what that business model is, is still unclear.

But that is a different business model and we had to ask ourselves: What do we do to compete? And we wound up saying it's all about value and total cost of ownership, and high performance computing is a good example. It's about 30 per cent of Linux share, and we are saying: Hey look, this is actually an area where we can take a lot of share with the right innovation, and the right total cost of ownership.

How do you deal with that business model? Do we embrace it? Do you compete with it? How does it affect the broad product line? That took a lot of energy and it will continue to take energy, but it was a primary focus for me and many of our senior people in the 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 time frame.

I guess it is extremely difficult for MS guys to understand what Open Source really is. They just cannot get that programming is not always about the money. So they are keep looking for the ultimate answer: how to make a big buck with Open Source.

[Brunellus]

This is from the Ballmer's interview published in FT yesterday:



I guess it is extremely difficult for MS guys to understand what Open Source really is. They just cannot get that programming is not always about the money. So they are keep looking for the ultimate answer: how to make a big buck with Open Source.

Everything is just about the money. Free Software is no different. It simply takes the view that rather than have people pay for air, you make the air free and then build your business around the needs that air-breathing customers will have.

And you know what? We *do* owe Microsoft something, as well as IBM. Without all those cheap x86 boxes running MS-DOS all those years, we would have never achieved the level of ubiquitous computing that turned the internet from isolated academic relay to a mass phenomenon. That mass phenomenon, in turn, generated Linux and kicked off perhaps the biggest explosion of development for Free Software. RMS and GNU.org had been working on their GNU OS for years, but despite having all the userspace, never had a kernel to show for it. Enter Linus and the internet, and now there's a totally free OS.

[Sepp1]

Intelectual property??

They hire "Chairs - Monkeyboy" and actually wants us to belive the own anything of intelectual value.

Sepp

[Oki]

“We are at the tipping point now and Linux must take its chance to push against Vista.”
Indeed: http://desktoplinux.com/articles/AT3453502692.html

Red Hat is doing fine http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759...119TX1K0000594

“They are suggesting we're using their "innovations"; these can be patented (and those patents are BS).” Perhaps in the US, but not in the rest of the world. They cant stop Linux.

[xhaan]

I just had a thought.
Let's say there are patent violations in Linux. Maybe Microsoft doesn't want to say what they are because they don't want to give developers a chance to get by the patents because it would make it harder to hurt Linux distros.

If there were patent violations, I think MS would want them to stay there so they have something to fight against, telling what the patents are so they can be avoided would be like letting Linux off the hook.

[foxy123]

Everything is just about the money. Free Software is no different. It simply takes the view that rather than have people pay for air, you make the air free and then build your business around the needs that air-breathing customers will have.

And you know what? We *do* owe Microsoft something, as well as IBM. Without all those cheap x86 boxes running MS-DOS all those years, we would have never achieved the level of ubiquitous computing that turned the internet from isolated academic relay to a mass phenomenon. That mass phenomenon, in turn, generated Linux and kicked off perhaps the biggest explosion of development for Free Software. RMS and GNU.org had been working on their GNU OS for years, but despite having all the userspace, never had a kernel to show for it. Enter Linus and the internet, and now there's a totally free OS.

I do not think that we owe Microsoft anything. We paid for these cheap PCs with MS-DOS and Microsoft was and still is a very profitable business.

[Brunellus]

I do not think that we owe Microsoft anything. We paid for these cheap PCs with MS-DOS and Microsoft was and still is a very profitable business.

without that installed base, Linux simply wouldn't exist. It's churlish to suggest otherwise. What makes the modern free software system possible--and what makes it sustainable--is an overabundance of commodity hardware and ubiquitous internet access. Microsoft, Intel, and IBM brought about the first.

Imagine the consequences for progress if Apple had won: closed specifications and even more vendor lock-in.

[manmower]

What he said. ^^

Wise words.