“There’s free software and then there’s open source”, he suggested, noting that the company gives away its software in developing countries. 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 improve the software”.
He is Bill Gates, reported by Wired.
If open source software doesn’t improve, then I would like to understand why the beta of IE8 emulates the behaviour of Firefox, and not vice versa.
For the Italian law I am a freelance journalist, as I am a member of the Italian association and I have also subscribed for 2008.
For a small percentage of the community - in the area of marketing communications - I am a blogger, without ambitions but with a small group of followers.
For Microsoft I am neither one, or even worse - as this is really worse - I am a blogger only when I wite something that they do not like.
Otherwise, I am a “business”, as you can see from the badge I got today at the MIX event in Milan, which did not allow me neither to assist to Steve Ballmer’s press conference nor to attend the following cocktail lunch.
I was with a group of friends - journalists and bloggers - with whom I shared some Web 2.0 laughs… I suspect that Microsoft should reconsider its concept of “conversation”, otherwise monologues will - at the end - turn into a soliloquy.
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microsoft, social media, conversation, blogger
Ray Ozzie, Microsoft’s Chief Software Architect, while speaking today at the annual conference of the company Most Valuable Professional, has given some perspective about the relationship between Microsoft and open source, as reported by Todd Bishop. What I see as a dangerous problem, especially when you look at interoperability between applications and file formats (especially ODF and OOXML), is the fact that Microsoft ignores the open source community.
If we look at OpenOffice.org, the three markets where the open source office suite is competing most successfully with Microsoft Office are probably Germany, France and Italy, followed by other European markets like Spain and the Netherlands. In Italy, where I have the updated numbers, we are hitting today - maybe while I’m writing this post - one million downloads since January 1st, 2008 (over 350.000 since the announcement of OOo 2.4 in late March). Although we don’t have Microsoft figures for Office 2007, we estimate a maximum of 1.8 million licenses sold in 2008.
I already know the reply: “You can’t compare licenses with downloads…”. Of course, gentlemen, but do you really think that one million downloads in slightly over one hundred days (at an average of over 9,200 downloads per day) still equals to a few thousands users? Do you really think that a small bunch of people, just the same small bunch of people, can get all these downloads? Come on, we’ve other stuff to do. Please, be realistic. We’re eating your pie, quickly. We’re hungry.
I don’t know the figures for Germany and France, but I’m quite sure that they are even better than those for Italy. The results in these markets are mainly due to the daily activity of the local community, while Microsoft - with the exception of Italy, where Associazione PLIO is recognized and respected - apparently ignores the reality. I am sure, for instance, that Microsoft’s Document Interoperability Initiative would greatly benefit from the involvement of the open source community.
Technorati Tags:
ooxml, open source, openoffice, microsoft, odf
It looks like at Sun they enjoy April Fool’s day, starting from the CEO Jonathan Schwartz.
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open source
