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

[SteveC]

* ae (ae at anthonye.plus.com) wrote:
> From SeattleTimes: "Gates said there's a role for free software alongside
> commercial software, but the open-source movement taken to its extreme would
> mean no software jobs or taxes paid by software companies, and it would mean

This is simply FUD, billg isn't that stupid.

> companies such as Microsoft would not risk investing in advanced products.
> 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."

Now this bit has an acorn of truth. I wasn't there in the early 80's like
most people on this list :-) but from what I have read Microsofts attempts 
to go beyond IBM hardware when Compaq came up and then on with other 
manufacturers was crucial to having an open market in hardware, bringing 
standard in and costs down etc.

Now it may have been inevitible that another company *could* have done 
this, but they didn't. Lets look at the closest second - the mac. Not 
exactly open was it?

OPenSource may have started in the dungeons of MIT on PDP-11's or 
whatever, but to get a truely collaborative effort you need a few billion 
pieces of compatible machinery and then a tiny fraction of the owners to 
start collaborating. This wouldn't have happened without the standards 
that MS used to fight tooth and nail for, so they could sell more 
software.

Quite a few of the responses to this I've seen around just seem to scare 
people away from the fanatical opensource mentalists, which is exactly 
what MS is trying to acheive.

have fun,

SteveC steve at fractalus.com fractalus.com/steve

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