This image comes from Quentin’s entertaining spoof about Apple jewellery. It pointed me towards Blender, an astonishing Open Source modelling package. The only problem is that, being a slow learner, I need to take six weeks off to learn how to use it. Quentin seems to have mastered it in a few hours. Sigh.
From Good Morning, Silicon Valley…
On Friday, [Massachussetts] state officials approved a proposal to standardize desktop applications on the OpenDocument format — a move that will strip some 50,000 state computers of Microsoft’s Office and effectively eliminate Microsoft, which has chosen not to support Open Document, from the state’s procurement process. Microsoft, it should be noted, could add native support for Open Document to Office, but won’t, no doubt because doing so could encourage the spread of non-Microsoft formats. In an interview with DesktopLinux.com, Massachusetts’ chief information officer, Peter Quinn, said the shift to open formats was inevitable. The state runs a “vast majority” of its office and system computers on Windows — “only a very small percentage of them run Linux and other open source software at this time,” Quinn said. “This is in tune with the general market in the U.S. But we like to ‘eat our own cooking,’ in that we are using OpenOffice.org and Linux more and more as time goes along, because it produces open format documents. Microsoft has remade the desktop world. But if you’ve watched history, there’s a slag heap of proprietary companies who have fallen by the wayside because they were stuck in their ways. Just look at the minicomputer business, for example. The world is about open standards and open source. I can’t understand why anybody would want to continue making closed-format documents anymore.”
Good stuff. Lots more coming in the same vein.
Incredible, but true. A Microsoft recruiter offered Eric S. Raymond a job. The approach read, in part:
Microsoft is seeking world class engineers to help create products that help people and businesses throughout the world realize their full potential.
Your name and contact info was brought to my attention as someone who could potentially be a contributor at Microsoft. I would love an opportunity to speak with you in detail about your interest in a career at Microsoft, along with your experience, background and qualifications.
I would be happy to answer any questions that you may have and can also provide you with any information I have available in regard to the positions and work life at Microsoft.
At first Eric assumed it must be a joke, but apparently the approach was serious. His reply is worth quoting in full!
To: v -mikewa@microsoft.com
From: esr@thyrsus.com
I’d thank you for your offer of employment at Microsoft, except that it indicates that either you or your research team (or both) couldn’t get a clue if it were pounded into you with baseball bats. What were you going to do with the rest of your afternoon, offer jobs to Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds? Or were you going to stick to something easier, like talking Pope Benedict into presiding at a Satanist orgy?
If you had bothered to do five seconds of background checking, you might have discovered that I am the guy who responded to Craig Mundie’s “Who are you?” with “I’m your worst nightmare”, and that I’ve in fact been something pretty close to your company’s worst nightmare since about 1997. You’ve maybe heard about this “open source” thing?
You get one guess who wrote most of the theory and propaganda for it and talked IBM and Wall Street and the Fortune 500 into buying in.
But don’t think I’m trying to destroy your company. Oh, no; I’d be just as determined to do in any other proprietary-software monopoly, and the community I helped found is well on its way to accomplishing that goal.
On the day *I* go to work for Microsoft, faint oinking sounds will be heard from far overhead, the moon will not merely turn blue but develop polkadots, and hell will freeze over so solid the brimstone will go superconductive.
But I must thank you for dropping a good joke on my afternoon. On that hopefully not too far distant day that I piss on Microsoft’s grave, I sincerely hope none of it will splash on you.
Cordially yours,
Eric S. Raymond
Don’t you just love that guff about “helping people and businesses throughout the world realize their full potential”! Interestingly, there are lots of critical comments on ESR’s Blog, accusing him of being childish and giving the Open Source movement a bad name. Which makes one wonder if any of the critics have even seen Steve Ballmer in action.
Thanks to Quentin for pointing me at this lovely essay by Paul Graham, “What Business Can Learn from Open Source”.
Avast, ye scurvy dogs! From Good Morning, Silicon Valley…
Microsoft on Tuesday officially launched Windows Genuine Advantage, a program designed to temper the widespread counterfeiting of the company’s software by requiring Windows users to verify their operating system’s authenticity. From now on, you must prove you paid Microsoft before downloading updates through Windows Update, Microsoft Update for Windows content, and the Microsoft Download Center (critical security updates will be available to users with or without WGA validation). Customers who discover they have a counterfeit copy of Windows are eligible for a legitimate copy of the OS at no charge, assuming they’re able to provide Microsoft with a proof of purchase.
Why is this good news? Simply because piracy of the Windows operating system has been one of the factors serving to obscure the real (and exhorbitant) cost of Microsoft-based computing. In most of the poorer parts of the world (and virtually the whole of Asia), people run Windows-based systems on pirated software — which is why they have not yet thought seriously about Open Source (i.e. free) software. After all, Windows has been — to them — ‘free’ software. But all this is going to change as Redmond seeks to claw back its rightful royalties. So at Ndiyo we are delighted by this turn of events. More power to Mr Gates’s anti-piracy elbow.
Update:: it was cracked within 24 hours. Sigh. Thanks to Bill T for the news, though.
Richard Stallman has always emphasised the distinction that free software is “free as in open rather than as in ‘free beer'” when trying to communicate the spirit of the free software movement. Now comes an intriguing twist.
Students from the Information Technology University in Copenhagen is trying to help by releasing what they are calling the world’s first open source beer recipe.
It is called Vores Oel, or Our Beer, and the recipe is proving to be a worldwide hit.
The idea behind the beer comes from open source software. This is software whose code is made publicly available for anyone to change and improve, provided that those changes and improvements are then shared in turn.
Mark Shuttleworth and a colleague at the Edubuntu Summit in London on July 1. Great event. Great project.
Mark Shuttleworth came to see us at Ndiyo yesterday. He was like a breath of fresh air — smart, informed, insightful and (unusual in very rich people) a very good listener. He gave a terrific lecture the previous evening at the Judge Institute. We were keen to talk to him about some of the stuff funded by his Foundation — including the Ubuntu Linux distribution we’re using for Ndiyo, and the amazing tuxLab project. I came away with several good ideas arising from our conversation. And we never even got around to discussing his third career as an astronaut! The photograph shows him talking to Quentin (on the right) over an Ndiyo ‘Internet cafe in a box’ we had set up in the Ndiyo house as a demo.
Nice column by Cory on why the BBC is doing so many things right just now.
The BECTA report is out. Its findings are what one would expect: significant savings and improved performance from dropping Microsoft. At last, the penny begins to drop. Yippee!