Gates argues for "creative capitalism" while Microsoft neglects it
While Bill Gates rightly argues for "creative capitalism" that will "most effectively spread the benefits of capitalism and the huge improvements in quality of life it can provide to people who have been left out," his old company, Microsoft, continues to ignore one of the best ways to drive value into and from those developing economies:
Open source.
Proprietary software treats developing economies as "vassals" to Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, SAP, etc. Open-source software, on the other hand, gives developing economies the raw materials to build up their own IT ecosystems. Instead of shipping rubles back to the US to pay for US-developed software, Russia and the developing IT economies of the world can keep their currency local, and then start inviting others' currencies in.
Some criticize Gates' proposals as misplaced. I tend to agree, but not for the reasons these critics highlight. No, I think Gates simply isn't "creative" enough in his capitalism. He suggests:
...[T]he improvements [for developing nations] will happen faster and last longer if we can channel market forces, including innovation that's tailored to the needs of the poorest, to complement what governments and nonprofits do. We need a system that draws in innovators and businesses in a far better way than we do today.
I couldn't agree more. But Gates' recommendations and his suggestions of solutions that Microsoft has innovated (easier to use PCs, etc.) miss the mark. The developing economies of the world don't need our products shipped to them faster and more cheaply. They need to build their own products. Microsoft's licensing will not help with this. It actually does the inverse.
What the developing world needs is raw materials to develop their own software economies, and not merely a cheaper way to get hooked on the software that the US and Europe write for them. Open source provides the answer. Is Gates' Microsoft willing to get that creative?
Matt Asay is general manager of the Americas and vice president of business development at Alfresco, and has nearly a decade of operational experience with commercial open source and regularly speaks and publishes on open-source business strategy. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.
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Want middle-east peace? Open source can do it.
Want to catch OBL? Open source is the answer.
Yes, the list can go on...
I just think it's inelegant to point and shout at the proprietary competition when what we're competing with is in fact broadly superior technically and strategically, not to mention (I should stop saying this altogether) cheaper - TCO studies be damned, it's just common sense.
I used to work in development: the poor people kind, though it was also with open source. And frankly, I think developing nations need good fundamentals a hell of a lot more than they need a new kind of computer (looking at you, Negroponte) or fancy economic theories.
A SSL certificate, in and of itself, does not imply it is secure.
That is just a variation on the nonsense: "It is secure because it is encrypted".
Since when did any company care about anything other than making money for its investors? If MS did what you suggested it would be sued by them.
Matt, where did you take economics and is it too late to gey your money back?
If the basis for suing a company was that they did something that didn't directly make money for their shareholders there would not be a single corporate giving program in the US.
To suggest otherwise is to fly in the face of trillions of dollars in assets under management. See http://www.unpri.org/signatories/.
Keep it up Matt!
When BillG talks about creative capitalism he's talking about solving hunger and disease in the third world -- most of these diseases already have cures but the people dying of them have no governmental representation, and no money (so no market power). He's talking about a type of capitalism where these people will get a voice, so that it responds to their needs.
In short, this has nothing to do with Open Source vs. Closed Source. Computers and software are very far from related to these people's problems. And BillG himself stated, that capitalism is what creates the incentive to solve problems. So for example, if a company spends millions of dollars creating modeling or protein folding s/w or some such thing that goes towards creating vaccines, they need to be able to recoup that investment. If they chose to develop in the traditional closed source method, and license this s/w to the pharmaceutical companies, that gets them the money to go on and solve the next problem on their list.
Nobody's claiming that Open Source doesn't work. But it's pretty dumb to say that closed source doesn't -- if anything, it's business model is much more established, proven, simpler, more direct, etc.
Anyway -- let me just end by saying that you equated BillG's "creative capitalism" with Microsoft's "closed source" licensing -- these are completely unrelated concepts. In the article, you also seem to generally associate Microsoft with closed source -- where in fact they are just one such instance in an entire industry of closed source companies -- so why pick on them? Ultimately, you're not helping any cause with an article like this. The Open Source guys don't need help like this, and there's no reason why open and closed source business models can't co-exist in this world -- as long as silly articles like this don't polarize people.
They can thrive, the fact that open source software is a multi-billion dollar industry proves it.
Poor nations have been historically seen as something to rape and plunder. It is no different today. They will never move up the socio-economic ladder when corporations are doing the raping and plundering instead of armies and clergy.
In theory and often in practise, yes. In many ways though, LDCs are where they are and poor people are poor due to a failure of the market. Microfinance for example can be defined as a response to the failure of traditional financial institutions to scale down.