{"id":76,"date":"2004-03-23T05:00:54","date_gmt":"2004-03-23T10:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=76"},"modified":"2004-03-23T05:00:54","modified_gmt":"2004-03-23T10:00:54","slug":"is-butt-on-crack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/archives\/2004\/03\/23\/is-butt-on-crack","title":{"rendered":"Is Butt on crack?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cynthia Peterson has a fairly well-written article titled: “Is Open Source Worth It?<\/a>“, but what caught me as surprising is what Butt Wai Choon, the managing director of Microsoft Malaysia had to say about open source’s place in this world: “…There is always a place for OSS, and it’s within the academia.”<\/em><\/p>\n

Is that why Microsoft is ramping its campaign so hard in academia to make sure that students stay far away from Linux? Is that why for USD$5 you can buy Windows XP in American universities? Or at Monash Australia, get XP and the .NET developer tools for free?<\/p>\n

While the product of knowledge and talent isn’t free (it seems to be the case in the open source world to some degree), what talent is Microsoft Malaysia contributing to the betterment of Microsoft products? And while the government is supposed to remain neutral on platforms of choice, and this should be left to the people, do we have election campaigns which tell us which party is interested in software? No.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sure, there are people that like what Microsoft do, but thats because they’re forced into it. Buy a PC, it comes with Windows preloaded. Wow. Do you have a choice but to like it, as an average end-user?<\/p>\n

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