Steve Ballmer's Thoughts On Free Software

An anonymous reader writes, "Steve Ballmer during a 3-day visit to India was asked about whether Free software is the future of India. And he effectively circumvented the question and answered that in the future, software businesses can look at a number of revenue streams such as subscription fees, lower cost hardware, advertising and of course traditional transaction. What is amusing is that in answering the question, he refuses to use the word 'free' or anything close to it."

Re:Ballmer's Free Software

[Anonymous Coward]

whatever MS's "Photoshop Killer" is

Wait wait, lemme guess. Is it Paint?

Re:Ballmer's Free Software

[Anonymous Coward]

whatever MS's "Photoshop Killer" is

Wait wait, lemme guess. Is it Paint?

No, it's Expression [microsoft.com].

Re:India and free don't go well together

[LeninZhiv]

Subscribers can see the stories before the riff-raff (but posting is only possible after the official publication). This actually works out well for everyone, since it increases the chances that some of the early comments might be actually be on-topic and thought through rather than endless 'first post' mispellings. And subscribers can visit sites before they're slashdotted.

Re:India and free don't go well together

[LostMyPassword]

I work for one of the main players of the Indian IT world, and I'm currently in my 4th month of living here out of 6. I can definitely say confirm two thins about the parent: people are very driven by the entrepreneurial spirit, and they could care less about ads. Ever since the socialist veil was lifted it's been incredibly easy for anyone to get a business up and running. It's actually creating problems of it's own. The tailor I go to says that they have a high turnover rate after they train their tailors because many will go out immediately to start their own shop. A few will steal his business, but he says most fail, fall into alcoholism, play the lottery, and become beggars. Land of Karma. Additionally, you can go down the street and the exact same type and style of shops and stands will just litter a block or two all right next to each other and all seem to do business fine. As far as ads go, a large portion of the cellphone plans here just text you ads all the time. Many times text messaging won't work, but you can sure receive the telco's ads! Rickshaws, and cabs have stickers of movies, clothing brands, telcos, nike swooshes, etc... Even in Western Europe it's hard to tell sometimes who's cricket or soccer team is playing because the jersey's are just living ads. The English cricket team just has Vodafone written largely all over it. The soccer teams never have their name on them. It's a land of consumers here. The rising middle class seems to be buying whatever big companies are trying to sell them. Ever notice those stupid cellphone commercials where people are actually listening to their mp3's on their phones. It's the cool thing to do over here: walk with your group of friends playing music from your cellphone. With all this advertising power that some of the big players are able to push through here, I wouldn't be surprised at seeing any kind of product rolled through here subsidized by advertising.

Re:India and free don't go well together

[dada21]

A. I type very, very fast (learned to type in 1978 at the age of 4) on a Commodore PET.
B. I write for a living -- thousands of words a day, generally.
C. I take notice of Slashdot articles that are pertinent to my future, such as this one.
D. I can write long-winded and fairly accurate articles in minutes, a little longer if I need to add sources.

Not so difficult, really. I have a long history of +5 first posts only because of how I browse slashdot (RSS link to my subscriber account). Love this site because of the interesting replies, so why not get in early to get the best replies, right? Karma means nothing -- I've honestly thought of just posting anonymously (which I have done often enough when I am accused of karma whoring).

Re:India and free don't go well together

[Anonymous Coward]

That's all very good. However, even if you typed at 200 words a minute and assuming that the article was posted at 11:01:00 and you submitted at 11:02:59, that's still a maximum of 400 words whereas your post is 832.

Just for comparison, Barbara Blackburn [wikipedia.org], the fastest typist in the world according to Guinness, attains a peak speed of 212 wpm with a sustained speed of about 150-170 wpm depending on length.

Re:Ballmer's Free Software

[petrus4]

Laura Didio mentioned having been issued with death threats by Linux users. I might not be able to conclusively prove it, but I'd be willing to bet money that said threats would have come primarily from the FSF/GNU side of the ideological fence. I've noticed that people who identify themselves (or are identified by others) as being on the "open source" side of said line don't tend to feel as though theirs is the only perspective with the right to exist, or that anyone who voices opposing beliefs must be silenced or shouted down at all costs.

The FSF and its' followers, on the other hand, do feel like that. I see it demonstrated on a near daily basis online. You can also read about this attitude being displayed in an interview with Bradley Kuhn that was conducted here [slashdot.org] on Slashdot. I mentioned it in a post a few days ago.

In that interview, Kuhn says that he feels that programmers/developers should not have the write to license their work via any license other than the GPL...whether it is commercial, or simply a non-GPL FOSS license.

The FSF are seeking, IMHO, to create a scenario which is just as repressive in its' own right as anything Microsoft are trying to establish.

Microsoft want to use DRM to ensure that you can't use a computer in any way other than ways in which they specify.

The FSF, on the other hand, wants to use the GPL and their activism to ensure that you can't use, write, or license software in any way other than ways in which they specify.

To achieve their ends, Microsoft use their marketing power, threats of patent lawsuits, hostile market acquisitions, economic and legal warfare, and their position as an incumbent monopoly.

To achieve their ends, the FSF uses a cult of personality centred around Richard Stallman, (and to a lesser extent, Eben Moglen and Bradley Kuhn) namecalling and vilification of individuals, threats and various forms of intimidation and fearmongering, (such as creating hype about DRM) and a rather insidious form of decentralised, mutually-reinforcing thought reform along FSF-approved lines in which critical thought is not tolerated, and whereby individuals monitor each other and enforce ideological comformity, generally via reproduction of the above methods.

I'm assuming you'll find the similarities between the two cases to ultimately be reasonably clear.

Re:How much support do you need, honestly?

[Jesapoo]

Most people, when referring to the support needed, are talking about Companies, not Individuals.

If MegaWidgets, Inc. has its email and web servers crash and can't sell any Widgets, then that's when you need support.

You start losing money at a rapid, rapid rate when key services drop. In business, you can't afford to be out of the game for any length of time.

A lone vote for "legit"

[SteveFoerster]

Assuming he's a subscriber, and had twenty extra minutes, that's enough time to formulate a decent essay on a topic with which he is readily familiar. I say this is much ado about nothing.

Re:India and free don't go well together

[jdavidb]

I think he's equating "minarchism" with "libertarianism," and possibly conflating with "Libertarianism" (the party, which is pretty much expressly minarchist by definition). Others of us consider libertarianism to be a broader category which includes both minarchism and anarchism/anarcho-capitalism. Another thing that causes confusion is lots of anarcho-capitalists consider minarchism to be an invalid expression of libertarianism, believing you can only come to that conclusion if you compromise the non-aggression principle at some point.

Re:India and free don't go well together

[spathi-wa]

Black market? are you sure?

Was the doctor not a qualified/certified physician? There is no regulation over 'GP' medicine in India so long as the practitioner is qualified/certified by a govt. recognized university.

From my experience having lived in India all my life, having spent almost a full year in a hospital 1 year ago, I can say this with certainty.

Government run hospitals and clinics are essentially only used by the poor who cannot afford private clinics.

Overabundance of certified medical practitioners and heavily subsidized medicine means there are a lot of (reasonably) cheap, well run private clinics and hospitals in the country. Very few are 'black market', though.

The only kind that I'd label black market would be those run by quacks.