Re: [MLUG - DISCUSSION] .NET on the Mac and BSD

[Mike Miller <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

> http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/28063.html
>
> Gates gives $100m to fight HIV, $421m to fight Linux
> By Thomas C Greene in Washington
> Posted: 13/11/2002 at 04:22 GMT
>
> We do hate to rain on a high-profile corporate love-fest, but we have to
> point out that in addition to the much trumpeted $100 million Billg has
> donated to India's fight against HIV, he's funding the Microsoft jihad
> against Linux to the far more impressive tune of $421 million.


I hired a programmer from India.  He's a PhD student in comp sci here at U
Minnesota.  I asked him about this.  He was very aware of what is going
on.  I can report two facts that may be important:

(1) It is true that Linux is widely used in India.  Most average people
use Windows, but many college students, especially in comp sci, use Linux
and Linux is widely used at universities.

(2) Microsoft wants to hire Indian programmers to do their work.  They are
already doing this on a large scale.

My programmer's opinion is that Microsoft is *not* doing this work in
India because they want to destroy Linux.  They are doing it because they
want cheap Indian labor -- programmers who will pump out the code at very
low cost.  The brains back here in the US will plan/design/organize
projects, but the coding will be done on the cheap with Indian workers.
This is already largely how things are working, or so says my programmer.

That makes sense to me.  It would be hard to cause much damage to Linux by
promoting Microsoft OSs anyway.  They've been doing it here all along and
Linux has grown very happily in recent years.

Regards,

Mike

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