In an interview with Network World, Microsoft's general manager of their interoperability strategy team said: "We love open source [...] We have worked with open source for a long time now."
That was quickly reversed.
Brazil's Folha.com ran an article last week in which president of Microsoft Latin America, Hernán Rincón, was quoted saying:
"When you can not compete, you are declaring open. This masks incompetence. [...] When convenient, the companies say they are open. They use it for their own benefit." [translation]
Oops. Seems like this guy didn't get the memo.
I could turn this statement on its head:
ReplyDelete"When you cannot compete, you declare your product proprietary. This masks incompetence [(e.g. Haystack, Windows ME)]. [...] When convenient, the companies say their products are proprietary [(e.g. Microsoft's past noncompliance with the GPL)]. They use it for their own benefit."
How does that sound for a business model?
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a Linux Mint user since 2009 May 1
Hi PV. Glad to see you back!
ReplyDeleteYes, that's pretty much the implication I was going for. If you want to hide incompetence, then putting it out there, for everyone to see, isn't the way you do it. Rather, you'd make your code closed, so that only you [Microsoft] can see what you've done.
JH