An Open Letter to Steve Ballmer
http://www.linuxvoodoo.com/news/article.php?sid=3074
An Open Letter to Steve Ballmer
By agentorange on: Friday 19 November 2004 @ 01:04:27
The banner headline hit the web with a loud crack: "Steve Ballmer, Chief Executive of Microsoft, has warned users who do not use his company's software, that they would someday be sued." I was amazed that a company as rich as Microsoft seemingly cannot fathom ideas such as freedom, free trade and competition. It seems that a nascent operating system such as Linux, which you have alternately labelled "a cancer", "viral" and other defamatory terms at various points of its evolution, is truly something you fear. The comment, as reported, simply serves to underscore and highlight that fear.
Threats, no matter how veiled, when spoken in front of such a large audience by such an important man, are meant to cause fear, uncertainty and doubt. Some reporters have claimed that you have claimed it was not meant as a threat, and that you were misquoted. Well, no matter how you couch it - the quote comes across as a threat. Threats from a company such as Microsoft come across to the public as being the behavior of a bully.
If, as the pro-Microsoft zealots who go out of their way to spew nasty comments at us on a daily basis (and if you want examples - I will be glad to give you thousands of them) love to say, Linux only has a two percent (2%) share of the market, then why do you feel the need to tell people that (and this is from the Reuters News Agency) story which is found here:
http://yahoo.reuters.com/finan...11-18_19-35-06_sp157582_newsml
"Someday, for all countries that are entering the WTO (World Trade Organization), somebody will come and look for money owing to the rights for that intellectual property," he added.
I am sorry, but I find that remark totally offensive. Did your Public Relations Department totally blow your speech, or are they just incompetent? It sounds like something I would expect a mobster to say. I could just hear the Godfather saying to a room full of businessmen:
"You know, if you want to join our trade association, then you should know that if you choose to use some other union, well, something bad might happen to your business, and we wouldn't want that, now would we?"
True, you didn't say you were going to sue, but it was implied quite clearly. Such isn't the act of a respected businessman, it comes across as the act of a thug. I am not calling you a thug and I don't think you are. I would like to ask you to elaborate on your remarks. I would like to ask you why you cannot allow any competition, and why you fear anyone else's innovations. I would like to ask you why you won't simply face the fact that not everyone agrees with your world view, and be done with it. You have enough money for a thousand lifetimes.
There is more than enough money and opportunity to go around in this world, and hoarding it from others through threats and intimidation won't get you a bigger seat in heaven in the end. In the end, we are flesh and blood, and we will all face our maker in our own time. There is no contest that says that you or I must die with the most toys.
Mr. Ballmer, I would like to ask you why, you, as one of the world's richest men, feel it necessary to threaten anyone who might want to do their own thing. Why are you so fearful of anyone else having an idea? What is it that makes you panic when someone says that they want to use Linux? What is it that makes it necessary to threaten (and that is honestly all I can call it in light of the quote above) users of alternatives to your products?
If you really want to know what this comes down to, it is this: Imagine if tomorrow Coca Cola said it would start suing all Pepsi drinkers, or perhaps Ford were to announce litigation against anyone driving a different make of car. Maybe Maytag would announce litigation against anyone using Kenmore applicances, or Hoover would sue Oreck Vacuum users.
What you are promoting through your qoute makes no sense. It is nothing more than an attempt to build brand loyalty by the threat of litigation. I would ask you to look closely at the SCO Group experience. I would ask you truthfully now, do you really think that they have a hope in hell of building brand loyalty even if they somehow managed to win in court? They have burned their bridges at both ends and are defending the middle with artillery pounding them from all sides. In short, it's a recipe for total implosion and self-destruction. I think you are a much smarter man than that.
I predict this now, because I think you possess a great deal of reasoning ability: the first customer that Microsoft sues for patent infringement, intellectual property violation, or any other such nonsense because they chose a different brand, may not be the end, but it will be the end of the beginning, and set a course from which there can be no middle ground, no stable growth, no future. People revile bullies, and they will act accordingly. I don't think that is a wise path, for trying to build a brand by building up hatred and revulsion is not a smart play. In the end, people grow weary of the hatred. In the end, those who engage in such total attacks will lose.
I may be but one voice, but I am an honest man. Ask some of your own employees about that, they know who I am. I do not hate Microsoft, but I do detest some of the behavior that I see from the company. I think the company has taken great unneccasary risks in investing in the SCO Group and in arranging the Baystar deal through Mike Anderer of S2 and possibly Kimble L. Jenkins of Morgan Keegan (both under contract to SCO Group), and I think that the persons involved from within the company should be hauled before the Justice Department to see if they have violated the Consent Decree.
Further, whoever authorized their actions, should be terminated. I cannot buy the excuse that they acted "on their own", because such actions are too great a financial and legal risk to your company as a whole. Rogue actors would be terminated on the spot for putting Microsoft at such risk of violating the company's compliance with the Consent Decree, unless someone is protecting them from within the company. Experience teaches me that when a person acts on behalf of someone under orders, they are often hidden away safely from the deserved punishment - because of that political protection.
By the way, I notice that the Microsoft Compliance Officer is a totally quiet person who has never once spoken out about this entire affair. Is that position a sham, a wookie, a job that is all title and no responsibility or authority? In the absence of evidence to the contrary, it certainly appears that way from the outside observing the company. I tell you this as a person who is giving you an honest opinion, a critic indeed, but one who shoots straight.
I would like to think that Microsoft would learn to change its ways. I would like to think that the company could learn to be a better player in the market and mend its image by taking the lessons from its trials. I would like to think that somehow, these words and questions would not simply be ignored. I don't hold out much hope for a response though. One absolute truth I have found is that tough questions are rarely answered; people tend to duck them.
If you did answer, I would publish that response. I won't be holding my breath, because I have yet to see the tough questions answered by any company. I usually just find silence on the end of that line.
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