here is a paragraph from the microsoft 2004 annual report

D. Joe kclug at etrumeus.com
Tue Oct 26 12:42:26 CDT 2004


On Tue, Oct 26, 2004 at 12:26:08PM -0500, David Nicol wrote:
> http://www.davidnicol.com/October2004/microsoft_challenged.htm

   We believe the commercial software model has had substantial
   benefits for users of software, allowing them to rely on our
   expertise and the expertise of other software developers that
   have powerful incentives to develop innovative software that is
   useful, reliable, and compatible with other software and
   hardware.

Haha "compatible"

Also, they screw-up (whether intentionally, or out of negligent
ignorance) the difference between non-proprietary and
non-commercial; as well as calling Linux an "operating system"
rather than a kernel.  And, they don't acknowledge at all that
there are many programmers who are *paid* to work on open source
software.  Perhaps they correct these glaring errors elsewhere
in the report.  

This last error I mentioned, about paying programmers, they may
have some stake in perpetuating, as it cuts too close to their
own modus operandi otherwise.  IBM or Red Hat or SuSE paying
open source programmers as part of the <*cough*> "value add" to
their product and service offerings might look to a
discriminating observer not much different from Microsoft
bundling, say, a web browser or media player with their software
at no additional charge.  The difference, of course, being that
customers using the open source offerings will never be
locked-in the way customers of these proprietary systems will
be.

-- 
Joe



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