Today there is a similar debate going on about Microsoft. It is being portrayed as this giant evil corporation whose domination can never be shaken off by the world. And that government regulation is the best way to "protect" us from these anti-competitive measures of the the company.Perhaps, he hasn't read OSS guru/hacker Eric Raymond's articles. Perhaps, this is a good time to begin. He should start by reading this article by Raymond and critique it on his blog. The title of the article is "Why Libertarians should not love Bill Gates." [Btw, one of the authors of the Halloween documents mentioned in that article was Sepia Mutineer, Vinod.]
I don't think so. I believe Microsoft deserves its success, and that Anti-Trust laws are unfair, anti-merit and extremely Orwellian. I also believe that Microsoft will meet its match unless it keeps satisfying its customers
More essays by Raymond are here. "Why am I an anarchist" is a must-read.
Democratic governments can work. Not all democracy becomes fascism.
ReplyDeleteGary,
ReplyDeleteI agree with you. I do not believe in anarchy myself. However, the essay is a good one, even if one disagrees with it.
Btw, Gaurav is an email/blogger friend. The name-calling was tongue-in-cheek.
Long Live Revolution! ;)
ReplyDeletep.s - will read all that you've recommended.
To be fair to teh good Sabnis, he does predict M$ downfall in the last sentence. :-)
ReplyDeleteRead all that you recommended, and I stick by my guns. Will elaborate in another post. Anyway, will have to write a follow-up post considering all the mail that i'm getting.
ReplyDeleteGaurav is right quizman.
ReplyDeleteMicrosft is highly successful uptill now due to lack of equal match. Other companies simply failed to come up with products tht were user friendly, and in cases where they did they failed to promote them in a proper way.
Arun,
ReplyDeleteI'd sent you a mail - do contact me when you get a chance
But Arun, Gaurav was arguing against anti-trust laws, not for Microsoft. I've been annoyed too many times when people confuse defending the free market system with defending an individual participant in the free market.
ReplyDeleteRavi,
ReplyDeleteGaurav said that Microsoft deserves its success. He makes the point about its hard work (esp related to Marketing) in his latest post. That is defending the indefensible. Early bios of BG and articles put out there by old timers indicate the kind of background from which MS came into being and later succeeded. The reason for people's venom against BG is not due to his success, but to the means by which they claim, he achieved it. And no, it is not mere envy on their part. As a fair comparison, Oracle is a relative monopoly, and while people dislike LE, they do not question the antecedents of Oracle. He won the market share, fair and square.
Quizman, u r treading shaky territory here. U r not really aware of the history of computing. ESR is infamous in the hacker community. A little googling should show him up. He is a guru by no means. U r just being carried away by his libertarian claims. He is a right wing nut case by most definitions. He only claims to libertarian. And BillG won his ground fair n square. Most anti-MS stories are gross mischaracterizations. I have been in the computing field for 11 years. Trust me, this AC knows better
ReplyDelete