Bill Gates, which we disagree with

As but one more piece of testamentary evidence that the old guard at Microsoft needs to be shown the door, Bill Gates has demonstrated conclusively that he has exactly zero understanding of open source, or at least zero desire to have an intelligent discussion about it. Speaking to a pharmaceutical industry group, Bill Gates took time out to utter irrelevancies and inaccuracies about the GNU General Public License:

There's free software and then there's open source," he suggested, noting that Microsoft gives away its software in developing countries [largely in response to open source, I might add]. With open source software, on the other hand, "there is this thing called the GPL, which we disagree with." Open source, he said, creates a license "so that nobody can ever improve the software," he claimed, bemoaning the squandered opportunity for jobs and business.

Ahem. It's the exact opposite, Mr. Gates. 100% the exact opposite.

Open source insists upon leaving software open to further improvement. And if you were to read the European Union's report on open source, you'd see that it's actually a massive opportunity for improved GDP growth.

What open source does is ensure that customers share equally in the economic benefits of software, rather than having profits hoarded by one company (i.e., Microsoft's model). The GPL does this perhaps best of all. In another age, Mr. Gates would have found the GPL to be a dear friend to his better capitalist instincts. It's actually a close cousin to a proprietary license in some ways, except that it protects through openness, not closed source.

Clearly, one cannot teach an old dog new tricks. Time to let Mr. Gates get to his charity work. I suspect that he'll discover at some point that open source actually will afford his charitable work far more reach and value than going about it in his old, proprietary ways.

Just give him a few decades to unlearn all of his bad habits.

[jezmosmith]

I love it when you get people who seem to think that Bill Gates became immensely rich by worrying about open source software, or indeed worrying about what anyone thought of him and his business practices.The fact of the matter is that he became immensely rich by ignoring what anyone thought of him and he is not going to start worrying about it now.

[pcwatcher]

For some reason there are three camps when it comes to OSS. Microsoft bigots, OSS bigots and a huge portion that are sitting on the fence. I am still baffled why this has to be a black and white decision. There is no doubt OSS and big software vendors can live side by side. There is so much room for both and either one will have an advantage over the other in certain situations.

The fact is OSS is misunderstood or under-supported in some cases, while proprietary software lacks some fluidity in others. The list of strengths and weakness for each goes on and on but neither wins all the time.

If customers want to break it down to cost then they have it all wrong in all but a very few instances and there are at least as many scenarios where Microsoft wins on TCO as there are scenarios that work for OSS. OSS is rarely cheaper than proprietary software when the TCO is taken into account but the purchase cost can be enticing.

The first thing they teach you when learning to sell is not to start knocking the competition, just concentrate on the strengths of your product. The OSS communities and proprietary software companies need to keep this front of mind at all times as some of these discussions look more like Clinton/Obama than a reasonable business discussion.

In business it should be a business decision and in the home it should be about consumer choice. Frankly I am pro-choice and both OSS and propretary software have a major part to play in the future of the IT industry but in reality it will all come down to the service provided by the software so customers and ISVs alike should concentrate more on delivering value than trying to pick a side.

[Simplicius]

It appears that the two previous posters missed the point entirely. The point is:

Either Bill Gates blatantly lied about Open Source OR he is completely ignorant about it.

Gates said something that is very nearly the exact opposite of the truth. This has no relation whatsoever to whether/when OSS is better or worse than proprietary software. It just means that Gates, knowingly or not, spoke a complete falsehood.

[amadensor]

Ok, since no one can improve Linux, could someone improve Vista? Please?!?

[argraff]

LOL - just about snarfed my drink on that one! :)

[pcwatcher]

i saw the point in the article but I was commenting on the passion that OSS has created and how that has turned to emotion instead of logic and reason. Frankly I think Bill Gate's comments can be viewed as falsehoods by the OSS camp and truisms by the MS camp. It all depends which side you are on. And that is what I posted about - too many of the OSS and MS bigots refuse to see the other's point of view simply because they refuse to listen.

[pcwatcher]

imagine if we bought a new TV and it gave us a blue screen every few weeks for the first 12mths and some times just switched off for no reason. Could you imagine the uproar? For some reason we take this with PCs but any other electronic or consumer device would never survive. I guess the reason is we get some much from these things that we can accept some bad with the good. The bad is better than nothing at all. That being said it would be nice if our PCs did all the things they were supposed to do without breaking half the time. Maybe when we old and grey they will all be working well and our grandkids will wonder what we were talking about...