[ILUG] Way OT - Bill Gates Invented Open Source?!

[Niall O Broin]

On Tue, Nov 20, 2001 at 12:58:09AM -0000, cybersean3000 at yahoo.com wrote:

> Has anyone seen this?  Is it remotely true?
> 
> http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/22749.html

The Register's take on the whole thing is pretty accurate, to the best of my
recollection, including the points where it points out Bill's little 'lapses
of memory'. An in fairness, it's also accurate to say that the open source
movement wouldn't have the reach it has if a cheap platform wasn't
available, but in fact AMD, Cyrix and others have more to do with that than
Bill Gates, by driving down the CPU cost. When a PC cost $4000 a copy of
Word for $550 didn't sound so bad. Now vendors sell a $1000 PC which
includes licenses for 'doze and Word - obviously MS's margin has been cut.
Mind you, its unit sales have gone up, so . . .

And it's completely true that Bill Gates likes the idea of free software
which he can steal, hence he hates the commie GPL :-)



Niall