[Fsf-friends] A shut Gates on open source

[V. Sasi Kumar]

This is a report from the Australian press.

V. Sasi Kumar


A shut Gates on open
source
James Riley
OCTOBER 23, 2003 





MICROSOFT founder and
chairman Bill Gates has
slammed moves by
political parties in
Australia and elsewhere
to legislate the
adoption of open source
software.





In an interview with The
Australian at the
Microsoft Office System
launch in New York, Mr
Gates said any such
moves by government were
wrongheaded and would
result in a reduction in
public sector
productivity. 

Mr Gates claimed the
open source system was
"inferior" and said it
represented a false
economy in relation to
lost opportunities to
improve productivity. 

"Our position is that
organisations should
simply buy the best
software for their
situation," he said. 

"Forcing people to use
software that is
inefficient? Do you want
your Government to be
efficient? 

"Governments are very
information-driven. They
are not factories. It's
all just information,"
he said. 

In the past 10 months,
politicians at various
levels in Australia,
Brazil, China, South
Korea and Japan have
suggested that
government procurement
procedures should
mandate at least the
consideration of open
source alternatives to
reduce overall IT costs.

China, South Korea and
Japan have outlined
tentative plans to
design their own open
source operating system
to compete with
Microsoft Windows and
applications to compete
with Microsoft Office as
a means of reducing IT
pressures on the public
purse. 

"I think it's just
commonsense that people
won't choose to use
inferior software.
People want their tax
dollars to go as far as
possible, and in most
cases they will see more
value in the offerings
that we provide," Mr
Gates said. 

The Australian
Government, particularly
the Australian Taxation
Office, Centrelink and
various health agencies
had invested heavily in
XML-based technologies
and processes. 

Mr Gates said the
argument that its
software was too
expensive was simply
wrong. And despite
complaints from some
Third World governments
about Microsoft's global
pricing - where the
company's software
essentially carries the
same list price wherever
it is sold -- he
maintains the company
has been the primary
driver in pushing down
the cost of IT systems. 

"Our business model is
entirely oriented toward
high volume, low price,"
Mr Gates said. "In any
IT project, our software
is going to be just 1 or
2 per cent of (the
project cost)." 

Meanwhile, Mr Gates has
renewed Microsoft's
recent pledges to
radically improve its
security procedures in
conjunction with the
rest of the industry
following the
unprecedented levels of
virus and worm outbreaks
in recent months. 

"This is a case where
the industry and
Microsoft need to do
better, (although) the
vast majority of our
customers have not been
affected by these
problems," Mr Gates
said. 

"But we take
responsibility for the
fact that it was too
hard for people to know
whether they had their
firewalls up the right
way, and that it was too
hard for them to keep
their (security patch)
software up to date. 

"If we can make those
(functions) incredibly
easy, then we'll bring
down the scale of these
incidents and the
frequency very
dramatically." 

He said that improving
security on all
Microsoft functions had
been made a primary
focus of the company's
$US6 billion ($8.6
billion) research and
development budget.