You don’t need me to tell you about how Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer hates, hates, hates Linux. His company’s actions, it could be said, speak louder than words. But that doesn’t stop François Bancilhon of Mandriva from laying it all on the table.
It seems that after Mandriva completed a complex deal to deliver Linux PCs to school kids in Nigeria, MS went behind their backs and convinced the goverment to install Windows on the machines over the Mandriva Linux distro.
François Bancilhon is angry at Steve Ballmer for Microsoft’s tactics. MS has never been one to play softball, but François Bancilhon is taking it public in this open letter that’s worth a read by everyone.
An open letter to Steve Ballmer [Mandriva's blog]
What a whiner! That Francois guy obviously is not aware of how business works in the REAL world. He should be glad he is still getting paid for his Mandriva boxes and that Nigeria didn’t pull the whole deal out from under his feet completely! Also, they could have just done it without telling him, the boxes are their property and they can install whatever they want, Windows, Ubuntu, or some patched Mac OS X Leopard!
Competition and business like this is not unusual and MOST CERTAINLY not limited to companies such as Microsoft. Sure, it’s easy to always blame the big guy, especially with people from the Linux community who love to hate Microsoft and who read this story and drink the Koolaid and feel bad for poor little Francois who got his 17,000 Mandriva boxes reformatted with Windows. Boohoo.
Wow, you’re heartless. Uncaring. And yet you’re right, that’s how the business world is. Good job for Steve? No, fuck Steve. And, no offense, but fuck you for defending these age old business practices that stem from greed and pity competition.