[Sussex] Steve Ballmer using Linux in public

[Geoffrey Teale]

On Fri, 2005-04-22 at 15:45 +0100, Paul Tansom wrote:
> Is it? Where would you stand on the motives/benefits of a Microsoft
> produced Linux distribution?

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An interesting post.  If Microsoft did produce a part proprietary distro
they would just be one of many - step up Novell / SuSE and Sun for
example.  Ignoring their past and the marketing weight of the products
they could bring to the platform the problems are still the same.

I posted a couple of weeks ago about there only being one "free" distro
within the definition of "free" defined by the Free Software Foundation.
It's an important point that many parties are too willing to ignore.
Sure practicality means that many of us spend a lot of time working in a
compromised environment, but we should be pushing towards freedom (and I
mean actively campaigning for it) if we value any of the things that
GNU/Linux brings us that we can't get from Microsoft.  Indeed it is that
freedom that has made GNU/Linux a success so far where so many others
have failed.  If we were just tearing down one closed monopoly with
another we would have achieved nothing.

To quote the Who:

"meet the new boss, same as the old boss"

Those who discount the importance of "Free Software" as opposed to
"Open" or "Shared" source would do well to meditate in those words.  
-- 
Geoffrey Teale <tealeg at member.fsf.org>
Free Software Foundation