PRESS RELEASE from UKUUG |
26 January 2004
|
Microsoft's Bill Gates is apparently to receive an honorary knighthood. It is understood that the honour was recommended by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown.
UKUUG has serious reservations about such an award.
Microsoft's use of unfair business practices to damage its competitors and to extend its de facto monopolies in desktop and consumer computing has been before the courts many times.
Microsoft's software has been written with scant regard for security, pushing the enormous cost of counteracting viruses/spam, and for repairing their damage, onto its own customers. Other operating systems rarely suffer such problems, having been designed with security and robustness as goals rather than as afterthoughts.
Most PC users are unaware of this situation: the media typically fail to provide a proper explanation of computer security issues, leaving the public with the impression that such problems are either inevitable or purely the fault of malevolent saboteurs.
The Foreign Office states:
'The honorary KBE is in recognition of his outstanding contribution to enterprise, employment, education and the voluntary sector in the United Kingdom'.
Given the enormous sums paid to Microsoft as licence fees by the British public and private sectors every year, it is doubtful that he even makes a net contribution, still less an 'outstanding' one.
It is particularly unfortunate that this honour should be given at a time when government and business finally have real alternatives to Microsoft on PCs. The UKUUG believes that the government, as a matter of urgency, should get serious about using alternatives like Linux to reduce the costs of UK enterprise, employment, education, and voluntary sectors.
The UKUUG -- the Unix and open systems User Group -- is a non-profit organization and technical forum for the advocacy of Unix and Unix-like operating systems, the promotion of open-source software, and the advancement of open programming standards and networking protocols.
--Charles Curran, 2004-01-26, 18:30