Thank you, Microsoft, but no thanks!
| In remarks at a Microsoft stockholders' meeting, Bill Gates recently claimed that Microsoft was responsible for the success of open source. |
"Really," he said "the reason you see open source there at all is because we came in and said there should be a platform that's identical with millions and millions of machines."
As an exercise in retroactive imperialism, this is little short of breathtaking. It ignores the fact that though the open-source culture wouldn't get public visibility until after 1993, or a name for itself until 1998, it already existed well before the foundation of Microsoft in 1975. Many of today's most active hackers can readily remember a time when the typical response to the word "Microsoft" was "Who are they?" -- and some of our most important work (such as the Berkeley TCP/IP stack that Microsoft itself copied and used) was written years before the computing landscape flattened into PCs as far as the eye can see.
But there is one smidgen of truth in this; yes, Mr. Gates, recently you have helped open source succeed -- in much the same way Osama bin Laden has helped beef up airport security lately.
Microsoft's monopolistic, price-gouging, bullying behavior is making open source more attractive every day. We'd thank you, except that you're only accelerating a process that would have happened anyway. You're a serviceable villain, but not a necessary one; the dedication to excellence and the sense of worldwide community that are behind the open-source movement were here long before Microsoft, and will still be here long after Microsoft is gone.
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