My friend DD's (http://ddspace.blogspot.com) Dad is sick...my wishes and prayers go out to him. Here's to hoping that Uncle will get better real soon.

Let me get this clear. My problem is not with Bil Gates and Microsoft. A lot of people think i hate them both....i used to..i dont now :)

I however am against their way of doing business. They are trying to create a monopoly and a kind of dependency on their product that is,to me, completely unacceptable
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A few years back, in court, Bill Gates argued that Internet Explorer was an integral part of windows ad that removing it was not possible. An expert programmer in that very court went to work and unbundled the program in about twenty minutes.

Then again, Microsoft is trying to create dependencies for their products. They sponsor a lot of projects to computerise the schools in developing countries. By computerising them with computers running their own software. That is commendable. What is not however is their reasons for doing so.And then you have kids growing up using windows which is SO user firendly, that they will not so much as look at other operating systems that are not half as pointer friendly, but offer a much better option in terms of power and flexibility, if only they would think a little bit.

To me the worst part is that i spend a lot of money on the operating system or any other commercial software that i buy and then I am told that it is a license. I can use it, and it ends there. Not so with open source products. The very idea of an open source product is that if you pay for it, you OWN that copy. And you can modify it any which way you want. And distribute that modified software.

A while back, an Asian government asked one of the majors to provide computers to its people at a low cost. They were. It turned out that a large part of the cost was reduced by providing Linux as the operating system instead of Windows :)

Think about it. In India, the Microsoft Office Package costs almost Rs. 10,000. The same functionality can be got from the Open Office.Org package for FREE. The only drawback is the Open Office has a very small learning curve and is not as user friendly as MS Office.

The future is Open Source. That is the only path that i can see :)



Quote for the Day:

History repeats itself and thats one of the things that is wrong with history.

- Clarence Darrow.