enigma# Posted January 30, 2012 Share Posted January 30, 2012 From: http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/01/meet-bill-gates It was the summer of 2008, and for years, the open source community had viewed Microsoft as public enemy number one. Seven years earlier, CEO Steve Ballmer had referred to Linux as a “malignant cancer,†and as recently as the previous summer, Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith and licensing chief Horacio Gutierrez had told Fortune Magazine that Linux violated 235 of its patents, implying that it would soon demand royalties from any big business using the open source OS. But at the same time, Microsoft realized how powerful the free software movement could be, and the company was exploring ways it could make nice with the ever-growing community of developers who used open source. For two years, Sam Ramji had served as head of open source strategy at Microsoft, and every three months, he met with Bill Gates and other execs to show off various open source technologies put together by a small team of Microsoft engineers. But that afternoon was different. At the invitation of the company’s chief legal minds  Smith and Gutierrez  Ramji sat down with Gates, chief software architect Ray Ozzie, and a few others to discuss whether Microsoft could actually start using open source software. Ramji and Ozzie were on one side of the argument, insisting that Microsoft embrace open source, and Gutierrez offered a legal framework that could make that possible. But other top executives strongly challenged the idea. Then Bill Gates stood up. He walked to the whiteboard and drew a diagram of how the system could work, from copyrights to code contribution to patents, and he said  in no uncertain terms  that the company had to make the move. For Ramji  who would spend more than three and a half years as the company’s chief open source strategist  the moment Bill Gates stood up was the moment Microsoft turned the corner on its approach to free software. “He was given little to no credit by the open source community  or anyone in the tech industry  for really understanding open source and why it can be important, how it can be a competitive advantage, and why when your competitors start to use it, you have to too. He really got it, and in that moment, he taught us all.†It's an interesting read on Microsoft's stance on open source software. It's well worth the read if you're Linux or Microsoft fanboy . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wingless Posted January 30, 2012 Share Posted January 30, 2012 I have to laugh every time I hear M$ or Apple use the word "stole" with any seriousness. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
--------- Posted January 30, 2012 Share Posted January 30, 2012 I have to laugh every time I hear M$ or Apple use the word "stole" with any seriousness. This. haha Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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