Ballmer: On the Linux Hot Seat (Again)

Found on Microsoft Watch on Thursday, 18 November 2004
Browse Software

What, exactly, did Microsoft's CEO say about Linux and patents? Here's the transcript.

Let me talk a little bit about that. First, I think the most important -- if I was to leave you with one sort of top level, most important suggestion, is we recommend to all governments that they not get emotionally involved in preferring either software that comes from commercial companies or open source software.

We do license our source code to governments. Governments can look at that source code, see that source code. We actually think our software is far more secure than open source software. It is more secure because we stand behind it, because we fix it, because you actually know who builds it. Nobody ever knows who builds a piece of open source software, where it comes from, who did it.

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.

First of all, it looks like Linux is the sympathy winner; there's no other reason why Steve thinks that governments should not rely on emotions. Next thing: I don't know open source developers or MS developers. Knowing them doesn't really make a source code safer, so I'd still have to check it. So it doesn't really matter who wrote it. And last but not least: according to him, every solution, no matter if it's OS or MS, costs money. Fair enough. But if the costs for licensing MS products are 10%, I still can save that. Governments usually invest millions in software; 10% is quite an amount. Nice try, Steve, but I think you supported Linux with that speech!