From Slashdot, Karl and Tectonic: The South African minister of public service and administration, Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi, said that software patents pose a considerable threat to the growth of the African software sector at the Idlelo 3 conference in Dakar, Senegal. She also said that it is “unfortunate” that the leading office suite provider (which would imply Microsoft by market share) have not adopted the ODF standard.
Paulo Ferreira, platform strategy manager for Microsoft South Africa, then spread ignorance on the matter by saying “There is no such thing as free software. Nobody develops software for charity“. He also said “For innovation to continue, there needs to be value - and even open-source applications have some form of market model, which incentivises them to continue innovating”. You would expect that someone who works for Microsoft would at least do a bit of research on the subject before attending a large FOSS conference such as Idlelo. I think that the average staff at Microsoft simply do not understand free software, or the economics behind it.
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March 26th, 2008 at 2:44 pm
I’ve heard lot’s of declarations of Microsoft employees in the same vein, last one from Pajitnov (the Tetris creator, who works in Microsoft Games Division) and I believe it does not come just from raw ignorance, they are entitled to spread the FUD.
Mostly like indie artist who benefits from piracy but have label orders to slam it.
March 27th, 2008 at 8:28 am
microsoft is a criminal organization, a tolerated Mafia. we must not fund them in any way, be it software, hardware, or services. never buy another microsoft product again. deface any advertisements you see in magazines or in public for microsoft, put ubuntu stickers over them, don’t buy xboxes or any other microsoft product! encourage others to not fund them, print out documents, stickers, and clothing to educate others on the convicted monopoly.
if microsoft has millions to spend in marketing, we can do our part in grassroots efforts to counter them, together we will win.