FOSS documentary on BBC World

Zoxed writes ""A two-part documentary, 'The Code Breakers' will be aired on BBC World TV starting on 10 May 2006. Code Breakers investigates how poor countries are using FOSS applications for development, and includes stories and interviews from around the world." The first part is screening tonight on BBC World."

Re:Great Microsoft quote FTA

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

"According to Jonathan Murray of Microsoft "The Open Source community stimulates innovation in software, it's something that frankly we feel very good about and it's something that we absolutely see as being a partnership with Microsoft."

Must have had his fingers crossed behind his back at the time. Still, it made me laugh.

There's nothing to laugh about, everything he said is true:

- The open source community is very active

- They feel good about it, since they "leverage" a lot of open source code (read: they legally steal the work of others) to make Windows better, like with the TCP/IP stack for example.

- They see it as a partnership with Microsoft, i.e. they'd love people to keep producing good code for free that they can reuse, turn around and sell.

They said what?

[NoUse]

FTA:

"Intel, IBM, Sun and Microsoft all seem to agree that FOSS is a welcome presence in computer software."

Shared Source maybe, but FOSS?

So which one is it?

[loconet]

And yet, a few years ago they saw it as a cancer..

And yet this is the shaky basis on which Ballmer dismisses open source as anathema to all commercial software companies. It can't be used at all, he reasons, because even a tiny germ of it, like a metastasizing cancer, contaminates the entire body. Thus Microsoft 'has a problem' with government funding of open-source.

Unbelievable. actually.. not.

Re:Until now?

[MarkByers]

The continual adoption of Open Source software by developing countries is starting to give me hope that we might actually have a chance of escaping the Monocrosoft empire.

You can escape already now, as long as you are willing to make some sacrifices like having to explain to family members why the you haven't played the fantastic game that they emailed to you as an .exe file.

that title is awful!

[AlgorithMan]

man, this title is horrible!
The Code Breakers

I could scream in agony! this sounds like it was about crackers, thieves, reverse software engineers that break the law and infringe patents!

lets say tv-magazines write this title and the word "FOSS" - then people who read this, but don't watch the ducumentary will think FOSS was something criminal!

thank you very much for this FUD, BBC a.k.a. broadcasters of copyrighted media

Re:UK don't get BBC World?...

[quincunx55555]

Last I knew, we (Amerikuns) don't get CNNi (International), or MTV International (if it still exists). When I was in Norway, during the summer of 1991, I was shocked at the amount of near real news comming out of CNNi. It was "info-rich" compared to the fluff they broadcast domestically. The CNNi Headline News actually spent the whole half hour talking about world events. The domestic version would spend 5-10 minutes on world events, 10-15 minutes on domestic "news", then spend the last 5 minutes or so with a useless story like how some people have pot bellied pigs as pets (interviewing owners, footage of the pigs, etc).

Back then MTV played music videos (I know, I'm dating myself); but even the international version was waaaaaaay better than what we received in the US. By 1991, Beavis and Butthead were the only source of non-pop music videos (Zombie owes his successful exposure to them) on MTV; everything else was so tightly controlled by the RIAA (I think), that there was no creativity or diversification. However, MTV International played a broad range of music videos, mostly from popular bands around the world; but I had never seen The Gypsy Kings, or KLF on "domestic" MTV.

It started to make me wonder if people outside the USA have a better picture of what's going on (even in our own country) since we are so "sheltered" from information. How many more networks/info-outlets perform this "double broadcasting"?