Boss of world's biggest company says:

...you shouldn't take a position on open source vs commercial any more than you would between "economic models" ie socialism and capitalism...

from Microsoft-watch
What, exactly, did Microsoft's CEO say about Linux and patents? Here's the transcript.
Thursday, November 18, 2004
Ballmer: On the Linux Hot Seat (Again)

By Mary Jo Foley

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("Ballmer: On the Linux Hot Seat (Again)" Page 2)
Number two, on licensing costs I would say two things. First of all, I don't know that it's clear to anybody what the licensing costs are for open source. Today, people say, well, isn't it just free, but we don't know in the long run. Open source software does not today respect the intellectual property rights of any intellectual property holder. There was a report out this summer by an open source group that highlighted that Linux violates over 228 patents. Some day, for all countries that are entering WTO (World Trade Organization), somebody will come and look for money to pay for the patent rights for that intellectual property. So the licensing costs are less clear than people think today.

Second, for any piece of software, the overall cost of having it, the acquisition costs of the license is generally a very small percentage. You have to buy the software, you've got to install it, you've got to deploy it, you've got to develop for it, you've got to manage it, you've got to create and buy applications from it, and all of those costs are probably about 90 percent of the total cost, the acquisition price is probably about 10 percent of the overall cost. And on an overall cost basis, I think our products that compete with open source offer a lower total cost of ownership and I think the same is true of other commercial products versus their open source equivalents. Oracle has an open source equivalent competitor. Adobe has open source competitors. And I think that if you think of the total cost, it's often much cheaper to go ahead and pay the license cost because of all of the additional benefits in total cost of ownership that come with that.

So I think people get carried away on the issue that says, oh, it's free, free is wonderful. Certainly we have to offer you a good value. If we try to push our prices too high or we're not delivering enough innovation, our value equation won't look good.

But I think the government policy we'd recommend is to be neutral and if, I don't know, Linux works best sometimes you should use it, if Windows or Office works best sometimes you should use it. Our sales people will be happy to tell you why we think most of the time Windows is a better solution but I think you ought to let there be — you shouldn't take — taking a position open source versus commercial software is almost like taking a position on which economic model for society is better. I don't think you want to do that. I don't think this issue is worth it. I think what you really want to do is run your government efficiently and effectively, you ought to be neutral and then take a look at the products from all communities on their merits.

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