MS Backs Off "Linux Costs More" Claim
from the yeah,-we-made-that-up dept
The Register has noticed that it appears Microsoft is quietly backing off their made up FUD claims that Linux actually costs more. They quote Steve Ballmer saying in an interview that Microsoft is struggling with a new way of thinking because they “haven’t figured out how to be lower-priced than Linux”. Also, the Register points out that a page on the Microsoft site that used to call claims of Linux costing less a “myth” have been removed.
Comments on “MS Backs Off "Linux Costs More" Claim”
To hear Microsoft say...
“An NVIDIA programmer, in the course of developing a driver for one of its products, used a portion of code from a freely available video driver. The developer failed to realize the code was licensed under the GPL and would therefore require NVIDIA to release the source code for its entire driver. Because NVIDIA did not want to release the source code to its commercial software, the company incurred substantial cost to develop a new driver that did not contain the GPL code.” — Microsoft’s “Why Windoze is better than LinUx” page.
It is funny reading Microsofts’ interpretation of the situation… According to Microsoft, because NVIDIA chose to use GPL code within their driver, and then not want to publish the source for the driver, they had to spend an awful lot of extra money rewriting the driver so it didn’t contain GPL, therefore Linux Sux and Windows is better.
Of course, had the developer not used the GPL code, NVIDIA would have still had to spend an awful lot of extra money writing the driver since they didn’t use the code…
Funny how that works…
Of course, what Microsoft wants you to believe is that it is perfectly ok to steal source code from someone else (because Microsoft does it all the time,) but GPL is bad because if you steal someone elses source code, implement it into yours, don’t release the source, and they find out and sue…that is a bad thing.
Funny how that works too…