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Good Bill, Bad Bill, and The Art of Philanthropy
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Comments (9)
What does actually "$3 billion in software" mean? Certainly not the production cost, because the cost of copying information is close to zero and not worth counting. So it must be a license "cost". License is a completely abstract idea - in other words: nothing. Quite a lot of cash for nothing. Hmmm...
It's not nothing. You might as well say that all the talent and hard work that went into creating FOSS code equals nothing.
As far as Chairman Bill, Philanthropist Supreme goes- [many expletives deleted]. $37 billion dollars of polish on a rapacious thieving scoundrel only makes him shiny. It doesn't make him a good person.
As far as Chairman Bill, Philanthropist Supreme goes- [many expletives deleted]. $37 billion dollars of polish on a rapacious thieving scoundrel only makes him shiny. It doesn't make him a good person.
I'm feeling rather depressed today. One of our clients sent through a document in OfficeOpenXML format .docx. It was unreadable on my machine I have MS Office 2003 and OpenOffice.org 2.3 installed. It will also be unreadable by the majority of our Client's clients.
What makes me feel depressed is the fact that in spite of the fact that ODF is THE ISO standard, it's highly likely that the majority of people in the world will be forced to upgrade to MS Office 2007, and then to MS Office 2008 or 9 or whatever the next change of document format is going to be.
What makes me feel depressed is the fact that in spite of the fact that ODF is THE ISO standard, it's highly likely that the majority of people in the world will be forced to upgrade to MS Office 2007, and then to MS Office 2008 or 9 or whatever the next change of document format is going to be.
The majority of people in the world wouldn't know ODF or OOXML from their belly button. They will "upgrade" to Office 2007 because they don't know there is a choice.
We're making progress, but there is still much to be done.
We're making progress, but there is still much to be done.
Quoting:It's not nothing. You might as well say that all the talent and hard work that went into creating FOSS code equals nothing.I think jezuch is talking about purchasing "permission". In this case, the GPL's being what they are, vis-a-vis Windows Vista, the statement is spot-on.
BillG's intention is to make the world pay for permission to use something that they can't truly own, can't study in any depth, can't fix when it breaks... and then make the world pay for the next crappier version. This is NOT what developing economies need. We don't just need people skilled with word processors and spreadsheets; we also need people who design and build the platforms that run those word processors and spreadsheets. When everyone is reduced to "cubicle drone" status, who will be left to take OS design to the next level?
No wonder Satan takes such offense at this pretender. ;-)
gus3, I don't think so. It sounds to me like the same old "free as in freeloader" mantra, "Information wants to be free." Which usually means "I want it and I don't want to pay for it." Sure, $3 billion of Microsoft's crapware is largely a fictional value- what it really equals is overpriced lockin to junk. But the cost of creating the software in the first place was not zero, which the freebeer crowd always overlooks when they're complaining how the cost of copying and distribution is trivial, therefore they should not have to pay money for software. Which isn't true, either- even a download-only service costs money for bandwidth, hardware, and administration. Then there are costs associated with software maintenance, and funding future development.
> But the cost of creating the software in the first place was not zero...
True. Which is why things like good quality shareware games (which have a much larger creative requirement than say, a word processor) cost around $30 or so.
True. Which is why things like good quality shareware games (which have a much larger creative requirement than say, a word processor) cost around $30 or so.
Quoting:It sounds to me like the same old "free as in freeloader" mantra,
No, I'm not a freeloader. Yes, I'm well aware of the costs of producing software - I'm a software engineer, after all. I just have a gripe with this one particular expression. I don't really know why, it just sounds fundamentally wrong to me. Like those "losses" due to piracy calculated by record companies. Or "creative accounting". I think my attempt to rationalise it failed miserably ;) Anyway, everyone - if you have given a Linux CD to anyone, you can start calculating how many millions of dollars of aid in software you have dispensed :)
There's a difference in "$3billion worth of software" and "$3billion worth of Microsoft software".
The first could be custom built, and sold to only one customer, in which case the customer might have become the one and only copyrightholder to the source-code concerned. Or it might be 'shrinkwrapped' pre-packadeg software like Windows XP. I've once read that only 15-30% of the license costs a customer like you or me pays for Windows XP goes to 'compensate' Microsofts R&D costs for Windows XP, and copying / burninhg on CD and distribution costs.
However, for some reason, Microsoft advertisements are also part of their R&D, which is why they seem to spend so much money (billions) on R&D. However, the amount of R&D for Windows XP is rather 'static'. After SP2, almost no development is being done anymore apart from some bugfixing, let alone research. What does this mean? Well, after a certain amount of WinXP licenses is sold, the R&D costs are recovered. After that amount of time, normally a new OS comes. However, since Vista was delayed, there are a number of months where even that 15-30% wasn't a compensation for the R&D anymore, because the advertisements were stopped also.
So, at that moment, only costs were burning the bits to the plastic and distribute the software. Probably, this didn't cost much more than €2 per Windows CD.
However, when estimating the amount of money for which Microsoft had given away software, it must sure have used the amount of money users like you and me (assuming we're not in developing Windows-'dump'-countries) would have had to pay for it. In my country, that's about €40 per license (average of XP Home/Pro OEM).
Back to the question. What does $3 billion worth of software mean? I guess, from my example, we should divide it by a factor 20. Than it would be $150million worth of CD-plastic and fossil fuel for the distribution of the CD's, and additional overhead costs.
That's about fourhundred times less than the amount of money which 'Microsoft gave to' Bill Gates, and also fourhundred times less than the amount of money they want to give to the stakeholders of slowly sinking ship called Yahoo!. So gues who the real winner in this "Microsoft philantropy game" is. A hint: If I bought Yahoo! shares three days ago, I would be one of the winners.
The first could be custom built, and sold to only one customer, in which case the customer might have become the one and only copyrightholder to the source-code concerned. Or it might be 'shrinkwrapped' pre-packadeg software like Windows XP. I've once read that only 15-30% of the license costs a customer like you or me pays for Windows XP goes to 'compensate' Microsofts R&D costs for Windows XP, and copying / burninhg on CD and distribution costs.
However, for some reason, Microsoft advertisements are also part of their R&D, which is why they seem to spend so much money (billions) on R&D. However, the amount of R&D for Windows XP is rather 'static'. After SP2, almost no development is being done anymore apart from some bugfixing, let alone research. What does this mean? Well, after a certain amount of WinXP licenses is sold, the R&D costs are recovered. After that amount of time, normally a new OS comes. However, since Vista was delayed, there are a number of months where even that 15-30% wasn't a compensation for the R&D anymore, because the advertisements were stopped also.
So, at that moment, only costs were burning the bits to the plastic and distribute the software. Probably, this didn't cost much more than €2 per Windows CD.
However, when estimating the amount of money for which Microsoft had given away software, it must sure have used the amount of money users like you and me (assuming we're not in developing Windows-'dump'-countries) would have had to pay for it. In my country, that's about €40 per license (average of XP Home/Pro OEM).
Back to the question. What does $3 billion worth of software mean? I guess, from my example, we should divide it by a factor 20. Than it would be $150million worth of CD-plastic and fossil fuel for the distribution of the CD's, and additional overhead costs.
That's about fourhundred times less than the amount of money which 'Microsoft gave to' Bill Gates, and also fourhundred times less than the amount of money they want to give to the stakeholders of slowly sinking ship called Yahoo!. So gues who the real winner in this "Microsoft philantropy game" is. A hint: If I bought Yahoo! shares three days ago, I would be one of the winners.
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