Comments on: Could Microsoft kill open source with its $3 software offering?

By: David Blomstrom

David Blomstrom — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 00:17:25 +0000

What’s the saying, “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts”? Today’s warning should be BEWARE OF GATES BEARING GIFTS.

Honestly, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that Bill Gates is little more than a con artist. He and his attorney father rank among the greatest gangsters in history.

Fortunately, people are beginning to see through the myth of Bill Gates’ “philanthropy.” The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is an INVESTMENT FIRM. End of story.

David Blomstrom
http://www.seattle-mafia.org

By: nunja

nunja — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 16:56:33 +0000

Uhhh, Speirs, FYI, Apple doesn’t have 90% of the market, therefore it doesn’t have the massively deep pockets M$ has to BUY markets. Apple puts a good deal of it’s margins into INNOVATION. Why not stop and think for just a little while and maybe, just maybe you’ll get an idea of what M$ could do if they would shift from “marketshare at any price” to “innovation at a reasonable price”.

Frankly, for any OS to have more than 40% marketshare cheats us from having the best possible solution at the lowest possible price.

By: Paul

Paul — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 13:25:44 +0000

Why doesn’t MS offer this for poor schools in the US and Europe as well?

By: chris

chris — Sun, 22 Apr 2007 22:22:00 +0000

“Offering $3 software suite to governments to give away takes away many of the benefits of open source software.”

‘Fraid I have to disagree with that to some extent. The central benefit of Freely licenced software is that it doesn’t damage people’s freedom to share and co-operate. The fact that Free/Open software need not cost anything is still an advantage too. OpenOffice ships at $0 per copy now, as do most GNU based operating systems. Free/Open software will still be available at the same low price in 15 years time. Will Microsoft’s proprietary offerings still ship at $3 a pop then?

Let’s get that GNU well and truly rammed back into all the software disussions. Its peoples freedom that really matters, not price.

By: Speirs

Speirs — Sun, 22 Apr 2007 22:07:26 +0000

For Christ sake they are charging next to nothing for legal (in schools gov buildings) software bundle..This will help them in many ways. So whats your problem with helping the poor? I dont see Steve Jobs and Apple selling OS 10 for 3dollars to the poor and as far as open source and the poor are concerned..The poor are a tool used by the open source community to attack that which they hate (Microsoft). The poor dont belong to you and the thing about hate is it gets under your skin and takes you over..and you dont even know it.

By: FractalZone

FractalZone — Sun, 22 Apr 2007 11:05:30 +0000

So, for $3 a crapload, Microsoft is going to try to hook poor people in various parts of the world on extra-crippled versions of its already buggy bloatware.

My guess is that if Microsoft manages to popularize its huge, sluggish, software (repleat with security holes) in developing nations, it will only cause instances of piracy of the un-crippled versions (the stuff that retails for hundreds of bucks in the States) to increase. I mean, has anyone been paying attention to where the major warez sites tend to be located?

Poor people may not have much money, but they ofen have plenty of time to crack things like XP, Vista, Office, etc. Why wou;ld they pay $3 for extra-crippled versions when they can snag full versions for free? I don’t think that even an asshat like Ballmer thinks he can produce good revenues prosuecuting 3rd World peasents for software piracy.