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An open letter to Steve Ballmer


ilia_kr
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Dear Steve,

 

Hi, this is François, from Mandriva.

 

I’m sure we’re way too small for you to know me. You know, we’re one of these tiny Linux company working hard for our place on the market. We produce a Linux Distro, Mandriva Linux. The last edition, Mandriva 2008 was seen as a pretty good version and we’re proud of it. You should give it a spin, I’m sure you’d like it. We also happen to be one of the Linux companies that did not sign an agreement with your company (nobody’s perfect)...

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Tip for Mandriva: Find some people to check your grammar/spelling/etc (preferably ones that speak english natively). Reading through the letter, there are quite a few mistakes, especially for a business correspondence. I realize this is his personal blog (it IS an open letter, though), but seriously, it looks bad when you criticize someone but can't use proper English (especially when the receiving party is English-speaking - I would say the same if it was in any other language).

 

I say this partially because of this open letter, but also because I've seen Mandriva make such mistakes in more official forms before. I know French is their native language, and for all I care they could do everything in French, but if you are going to write in another language...

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Find some people to check your grammar/spelling/etc

 

and the next word is . . .

 

Find some people to check your grammar/spelling/etc (preferrably ones that speak english natively)

 

:lol2: sorry, I couldn't resist :P

Edited by esulcer
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Tip for Mandriva: Find some people to check your grammar/spelling/etc (preferrably ones that speak english natively). Reading through the letter, there are quite a few mistakes, especially for a business correspondence. I realize this is his personal blog (it IS an open letter, though), but seriously, it looks bad when you criticize someone but can't use proper English (especially when the receiving party is English-speaking - I would say the same if it was in any other language).

 

I say this partially because of this open letter, but also because I've seen Mandriva make such mistakes in more official forms before. I know French is their native language, and for all I care they could do everything in French, but if you are going to write in another language...

 

I was thinking the same, but couldn't think of a constructive way to say it (work tired me out ;))

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A CEO's job is too make as much money as he / she possibly can for his / her shareholders, within the limits of the law. Stop blaming major corporations for trying to make money and start blaming the governments that do not have policies in place to prevent dirty business!

 

I don't like Ballmer, not even one little bit - and I've told the powers that be at Microsoft as much (I went out for drinks last week with Iain MacDonald - the crazy Aussie who heads up Microsoft's Server BU and was project lead on XP and told him the same). But at the end of the day, and as annoying as he is, Ballmer is just doing his job - same as me, same as you, same as Francois at Mandriva.

 

If spray painting walls was legal, would you blame kids for doing it, or would you get government to make it illegal? Stop wasting time complaining to / about Microsoft, your complaints are falling on deaf ears. Instead, get involved in policy reform and make dirty business impossible within the framework of the law.

 

Take the SA government for example - it has a firm policy in place for the adoption of open source. The policy prevents government departments from using any solution that is not open source, unless they can prove that a particular proprietary solution has no known OSS alternative that offers better value. The policy isn't perfect, but it comes from the top and makes things happen - and MS has no leg to stand on.

 

Of course, that's not to say I agree with said policy - and, of course, Microsoft are increasingly becomming vendors of open source, but that is another story (www.microsoft.com/opensource)

 

I have just finished an article on the topic, which I will post to the board once it is out of embargo.

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I agree with SoulSe and Ilia.

For me, the great thing about Gnu/Linux is the freedom of choice, and it gives me the freedom of choice to say I'd like to use Mandriva and not use Microsoft stuff.

If someone else decides to use Microsoft instead, and they do so having been informed of the pros and cons of each, then good luck to them - I might regret their decision but whining about it isn't going to help anybody. And yes, getting English spelling and grammar right on a letter like that would have been good too :/

Maybe this should have stayed as a personal blog entry rather than being blown up into a so-called "open letter".

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If spray painting walls was legal, would you blame kids for doing it, or would you get government to make it illegal? Stop wasting time complaining to / about Microsoft, your complaints are falling on deaf ears. Instead, get involved in policy reform and make dirty business impossible within the framework of the law.

With all due respect to my European friends, you are not licensed to practice law in the US. Since 1977, when our Congress passed the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act(FCPA) it has been a crime for any US enterprise to engage in bribery of foreign officials in order to obtain business. Sanctions include heavy fines and jail time:

 

http://www.lectlaw.com/files/bur21.htm

 

Most non-US countries do not have similar laws, unfortunately. Our companies have been complaining for thirty years that this puts them at a competitive disadvantage in many countries where bribery of public officials is a fact of business life.

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Noone has any evidence of bribery, it's only the author of the letter who's speculating that that might have happened.

 

What actually happened is that Mandriva offered a deal, and the deal was accepted. Microsoft offered a different deal, and the customer changed their mind and went with the second deal. Where's the crime, as far as I know (and please let's not get into a debate on national laws and regulations) it's still legal everywhere for businesses to negotiate. During negotiations, prices and conditions can change. That's business, not bribery and not (necessarily) corruption, unless anyone can come up with anything more definite than the vague and desperate-sounding allegations in François' post.

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neddie: no, it's really not that simple.

 

we offered a deal, it was accepted, and carried out: they bought 17,000 classmates, pre-loaded with Mandriva, from us. this was hardly a spur of the moment deal: it has been in the works for months (it was initially agreed back in the summer), and for much of the process, we were in competition with Microsoft for the deal. But we won: they chose our offer. This was a carefully considered decision, with a lot of work done in detail on exactly how the systems should be configured, deployed and used. almost immediately after the deal was closed and the shipment and delivery of machines had started, we were told that they would take delivery of the systems, pay for them, but then immediately wipe Mandriva from them and install Windows.

 

this is hardly the scenario you paint, and it really makes very little sense. Why would you painstakingly arrange a project with one supplier, carefully customizing the product to be used, and then with almost no notice, turn around and say you'd replace part of that product with that of a competitor? there clearly hasn't been enough time for them to actually collaborate with Microsoft on creating a carefully considered plan to deploy Windows in a meaningful way, the same as was originally planned for Mandriva. If they'd been working on such a plan for months, why would they have closed the deal with us - and paid us for the systems - instead of simply deciding to do the deal directly with Microsoft instead? Microsoft is a reseller of the CMPC just as we are. If they'd made a carefully considered decision to go with Windows rather than Mandriva they'd simply have done the deal directly through Microsoft. the fact that they did the deal with us, then suddenly turned around and said they'd use Windows after all, is what makes us complain about the situation.

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and the next word is . . .

:lol2: sorry, I couldn't resist :P

 

If you check with openoffice, it accepts both preferably and preferrably. However:

 

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/preferrably

 

only has preferably, so I would say it's correct and not preferrably ;)

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Well, I cannot say if there is anyone to blame, to point fingers to. Nonetheless this is a huge disappointment - not only for Mandriva but the whole Linux community. You think that you make finally make big progress and then, all of a sudden, a great opportunity for making Linux more popular and mainstream is gone.

 

Sad, sad, sad. But I guess other parties/countries will not take the path Nigeria has taken.

 

pmpatrick, while you are right, laws can only do so much for stopping bribery. Especially in a country that is well known for bribery as a normals means to conduct business/politics (=Nigeria). Murder is prohibited by the law. Still, people commit murder.

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There doesn't need to be bribery involved here. There is a strong argument (as much as I hate to say it) for the Nigerians to adopt Windows, is the fact that the majority of the westernised world "depends" on Windows and compatible software, Microsoft will have driven that message to the Nigerians, that will have some part to play in the U-turn. It's a dire situation to which progress is being made, but not of benefit to Mandriva in this situation.

Edited by Reiver_Fluffi
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