[Gllug] Gates, self proclaimed father of open-source

[Paul Nasrat]

On Fri, Nov 09, 2001 at 09:24:53AM -0000, ae wrote:
> Don't know if anyone has read this yet but it's amusing to say the least.
> What worries me is that he may even genuinly believe the rubbish he comes
> out with.
> 
> Gates also took some credit for the genesis of open-source software. He said
> Microsoft made it possible by standardizing computers: "Really, the reason
> you see open source there at all is because we came in and said there should
> be a platform that's identical with millions and millions of machines," he
> said."

Neal Stephenson, makes a similar point in In the beginning there was the
command line.  Certainly the availability of low cost, standard
architecture machines made computing available to a larger base, and
certainly that availability has done stuff.

Maybe without the PC market, development of alternative OSen would have
been restricted to a smaller developer base.

However, Mr Gates seems to ignore other "contributions" such as IBM (and
everyones favourite clone explosion), etc.  

Paul

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