Linked by Thom Holwerda on Sat 12th May 2007 21:40 UTC, submitted by dylansmrjones
"The Free Software movement is dead. Linux doesn't exist in 2007. Even Linus has got a job today." Controversial statements from the head of Microsoft's Linux Labs, Bill Hilf. Speaking on the last leg of a tour of Singapore, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand, Bill Hilf, more formally known as Microsoft's platform strategy director, was in the region to 'be descriptive and intelligent in giving people an understanding of open source and debunk a lot of the mythology around open source'.
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Member since:
2006-07-23
He obviously hasn't understood anything about open source. Who ever said open source is about not making money with software?
In essence, open source is about making your code public, and that's exactly what the name says. The "free" in FOSS should be taken as requiring open standards, so everyone is free to write code which makes use of them. Then you get all your interoperability for free, you genious of a "strategy director"!
Those who advocate FOSS software don't advocate it because it doesn't cost money, but because they are convinced it's the more effective and secure development model (as demonstrated by open OSes), and that no individual or company should gain a market monopole by making their standards non-free (like MS) and applying an EEE stragtegy (like MS).
How one makes money with software is completely independent of the development process. And all the companies that guy names are proofs that one can make money with FOSS. Linux exists in 2007 BECAUSE all these developers earn their money with it!
They should really step back and think... RedHat and others make money with open and (despite its complexity) rock-solid software which is released on time, they never get into trouble with the EU commission over market domination issues, etc. And they (at MS) are struggling with an unmanageable bloat of an OS, with ridiculously delayed releases, security issues which in theory they all have to discover and fix themselves, with legal troubles, etc.
Although "MS still exists in 2007", their development and business models definitely come from 1980.