Being fully-aware of all the criticism I shall receive from the so-called “Open Source and Free Software” grounds, I am taking my individiual liberty to say the following: I think the biggest contribution to Open Source and Free Software comes from the Microsoft itself!
A “hard-to-digest” commentary on Open Source and Free Software and Microsoft…
Yes, in Turkey I personally had the liberty to copy and freely distribute copies of expensive Microsoft products in the past; how? Well, IPR and copyright has not been legally protected since a few years and also even though we now have legal framework to do so in practice it still does not work…Up to my knowledge there are hardly any specialised lawyers and judges in the country to take on such lawsuits. Even the activities of BSA (Business Software Alliance) still have a questionable legal validity and as far as I know, in very little cases where they kind of arrest and publicise in newspapers and etc. are just for show-off.
Also it is interesting to note that the situation is similar in many developing or under-developed countries…And as far as I know of, when you do a search in e-mule or Ares or any other P-P file sharing utility, you can get full copies of such products and use them…Everybody knows that.
Well, as a person against software patents and so on, I find Microsoft (and some others) in a position to culturally change the World and that some Internet technology and many other great innovations in ICT resulted from their work; whether we like it or not. And also I know that Microsoft is considering to go Open Source (or maybe already did with some of their products) soon. This move is now unpreventable…I would also get your attention to some of the well-known Open Source SW Portals; such as SourceForge.Net which I have now 5 projects (I am not going to self-advertise in this post;so not giving any URI sorry), if you go to who is behind the scenes, it is not a surprise that the SW giant enterprises are there…Maybe not formally but through the board of directors…
So what is the catch? We should all be grateful to Microsoft for all its contributions to mankind and now encourage Bill Gates (and et. al of course) to transform into the biggest Open Source and Free Software organisation…Current business model is dying and I am sure they are all aware of that. In the post-information era, the currency is not $€ but the very knowledge.
There is a very cool black-humor here about Mr. BBBB GGGGG with his personal life: So he ends up in a family therapist and the secretary accidentally records in the registration desk
for the “Reason for Encounter”: Microsoft because he works for Microsoft!…[deleted by the editor for inappropriate content]
Also, one last comment why I still prefer to use M$ Windoz in my desktop: There is a well-known concept in business: Total Cost of Ownership…I claim Microsoft products are still among the “chepaest” when you apply this paradigm. So, it takes for me just 10 min to install and get going with XP (that comes with a recovery CD with my laptop), so why should I bother any other solution? Well, you will automatically say: “Hey, that’s the point. Why there is no recovery CD for Linux?”….Yes, that is my question to you: Why?
Best regards,
Dr. Koray Atalag