Michael Dolan Dot Com

Monday, August 27th, 2007

Software donations or competition? Blurring lines…

Interesting move by Microsoft in India. I’m not usually one to downplay charitable donations, but I wonder about the impetus behind such a move… why not donate computers, power infrastructure, servers…? Is the timing of this a bit odd…?

http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/08/27/ap4056758.html

Microsoft Corp. will distribute free software to nonprofit groups to boost charity in India, a company official said Monday.

Assuming Microsoft is not distributing GNU/Linux, “free software” should probably be written as “software for free”. I would appreciate it if someone calculated the cost this “free” software will impose on India in the future.

I would also appreciate if someone (say Canonical) could donate $1 TRILLION DOLLARS (with a pinky hold to the cheek) worth of truly free software called Ubuntu.

People of India, here’s 4 quadrillion licenses for Ubuntu available for free. Oh, and it won’t cost you anything in the long run either (unless you want support).