Bill Gates. Top, Top Man

[assettt]

Like most of you I have this irrational dislike(no hatred) for microsoft, but in this case I applaud Bill Gates, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/lif...cle7007734.ece. I would like to see some more billionaires follow suit, especially the one from the Pharma backgound whose businesses cannot be bothered spending money on R&D on diseases that will not profit them. Afterall, how many billions do you need to live an obcenely wealthy lifestyle.

[GreyGeek]

Re: Bill Gates. Top, Top Man

Unless those "gifts" come with strings attached, as they have in the past, when several of them were used to counter the growth on Linux:

Donations to public libraries came with strings attached concerning which kind of computers and software they could buy. All such acceptable machines came with "Gates Public Access" software which controlled what software could be run on the system. A web page has sprung up where folks communicate with each other trying to work around problems such restrictions cause when the hardware has problems: http://www.webjunction.org/pacomputi...urces/overview

Then, there are other direct and indirect examples:
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6452
http://www.businessweek.com/technolo...2912_tc121.htm
http://www.genetic-programming.com/p...rbits0696.html

[Goeroeboeroe]

Re: Bill Gates. Top, Top Man

I don't believe someone so unethical as Bill Gates suddenly changes into a saint. I've read some articles about United Nations officials criticizing him about his malaria efforts. There's something about it in this article:
http://www.developments.org.uk/artic...y-good-or-bad/

[GreyGeek]

Re: Bill Gates. Top, Top Man

Interesting article.

It reminds me of one of Chicago's most famous wealthy people, Al Capone. When the depression first hit he set up several free food kitchens around the southern part of the city, gave money to charities, folks standing in line with their hand out, etc..., and made sure that the newspapers kept constant coverage of his "charities". Meanwhile, he was paying off corrupt police, judges and politicians to look the other way while he spread gambling, prostitution, numbers running, booze joints and any other crooked scheme he could think of, all the while machine-gunning anyone who got in the way. To read the news papers stories about his "charities" Capone was a "nice guy". The people who got the free food and other hand-outs looked the other way too.

[assettt]

Re: Bill Gates. Top, Top Man

Interesting articles. I can see why the UN are miffed being sidelined and not holding the purse-strings as such, but then they have had decades to tackle the diseases and do not seem to be making much headway. Gates presence maybe just the kick up the backside they need to get their finger out and stop the politicking while millions are dying.
Wonder where Ubuntu (and Linux generally) would be if not for the generosity of Mark Shuttleworth.

[GreyGeek]

Re: Bill Gates. Top, Top Man

.....
Wonder where Ubuntu (and Linux generally) would be if not for the generosity of Mark Shuttleworth.

I think the jury is still out on that one. He has handed the CEO position over to Jane Silber, the former COO:

Who is Jane?

JS: I wear, and have worn, many hats at Canonical. I am currently Chief Operating Officer and Director of Online Services. I joined Canonical in 2004, and since then have been closely involved in the establishment and management of most Canonical functions including Ubuntu One, OEM Services, Corporate Services, Marketing, Finance, Legal and others. I have a technical background and started my career as a software developer, and have since held engineering and senior management positions at companies as diverse as a health and wellness promotion start up, a large technology and manufacturing company in Japan, and the US defence contractor General Dynamics. I am American, and came to the UK in 2002 to complete an MBA at Oxford. I learned about Canonical and Mark’s vision for Ubuntu while deciding whether to remain in England or return to the US, and haven’t looked back!

What will Mark do?

I will focus on my passions of product design and development. I want Ubuntu to succeed as the open platform of choice for almost all use types whether on netbook, notebook, desktop, server, embedded device or wherever people compute. That is a large undertaking and being able to focus on that, thanks to Jane, is a great privilege. I will also spend more time talking to and visiting partners and customers about what they demand from an open platform and feeding that back into the product through the community and Canonical.

Four years ago Shuttlesworth felt that "Microsoft is not the real threat" and thought that

within a few years, Microsoft themselves will be strong advocates against software patents.

It has not turned out that way. If anything, the patent threat by Microsoft is worse now than ever before. Microsoft has already used its legal arm to bully several weak companies into licensing technology which has a shaky provenance. TomTom and others found that they could survive if they paid the extortion fees (a.k.a "licenses") for "IP" of doubtful validity, while fighting the dubious claims could have bankrupted them. The license fee was chump change for Microsoft. Their real purpose is to establish a collection of small fry licensee agreements which would provide "evidence" for what they can't really prove in court were they challenged -- that their IP is not bogus.

Now, the Ubuntu Technical Board has decreed that MONO is "safe" and plans to make all future Ubuntu desktop remixes DEPENDENT on MONO. de Icaza has plans to give C#/MONO/MoonLight the capability to call libc6 and the kernel DIRECTLY, thus making MONO (hence .NET) the DEFAULT Ubuntu desktop API. If that happens I have only to point you to my sig.

Shuttlesworth is seeking to monetize Ubuntu and stop the drain on his fortune, which I've read to be over $10 US Million per year. No doubt the current economic situation has reduced that fortune by a considerable amount, probably making Canonical susceptible to "IP negotiations" by Microsoft. By making the Ubuntu desktop friendly to 3rd party software vendors who write their products using .NET, they can use their .NET source and compile on Linux without significant changes to the source, and have a proprietary binary for purchase on their website. That is the purpose of the "Software Center", which is in the development phase but will open for business later this year. Instead of free KDE plasmoids and applications, Ubuntu users will be shelling out cash for licenses to download and run .NET applets and applications on their GNOME/MONO desktops. When GNOME gets rewritten using the "new and improved" MONO API, instead of GTK+, it will remain to be seen what role will be left for GPL software on a proprietary desktop. One thing is for sure, however, and that is that Microsoft is less likely to want to "negotiate" if Ubuntu turns into a .NET platform. In fact, it wouldn't suprise me that if such were to become reality Microsoft could release a version of Office written in .NET that could run on the Ubuntu desktop as a MONO proprietary binary. Maybe that will be "Win 8"?