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

[David Irvine]

On Fri, 2001-11-09 at 12:52, Xander D Harkness wrote:
> On Fri, 2001-11-09 at 13:40, Simon Stewart wrote:
> > On Fri, Nov 09, 2001 at 01:23:10PM +0100, Xander D Harkness wrote:
> > > 
> > > > > 
> > > > > I vote for Linus Torvalds to play Luke Skywalker 
> > > > > (in the original Star Wars part III)
> > > > 
> > > > By extension:
> > > > 
> > > > Obi Wan Kenobi == RMS 
> > > > Darth Vader    == Billy Gates
> > > I think here you may want to consider that in the last episode Darth
> > > Vader was shown to have some good in him - I am not sure that this is
> > > entirely appropriate ;-)
> > 
> > Don't forget that BG does a lot of work for chariddy. He just doesn't
> > like to talk about it....
> > 
> > Cheers,
> > 
> > Simon
> > 
> I know that many of the millions of pounds that he donates are tax
> write-offs.  
> 
> He donated a figure in excess of 20 million to libraries in the US. 
> What he actually donated was Windows licences, not cash.  This I do not
> see as a gift - just reinforcing his monopoly.  It was just the spin
> that was put on it.  

Yes, 'gifts' of this sort work very well (to any company) first you give
away 10000 licenses that theoretically cost the punter $100 you then go
to  the tax  man  and say that you gave away $1,000,000 of stock as a
gift to charities (Falls  under whatever catagory y ou like) which  of
course is tax deductable therefore they pay  less tax as they claim that
money  which never existed as an expense.  Then those people become
'locked' into the product and it becomes harder for them not to upgrade
to the next version, ms get more money from upgrades etc.  They put a
nice spin on  it such as 'ms give millions to help little kids in
deprived areas' and  its big smiles all round in the press.

 
> 
> I would not be surprised if other sponsorships were similar.
> 
> Cheers
> Xander
> 
> 
> 
> 
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