Microsoft: Africans do not understand Open Source

Microsoft Corporate Standards Director Jason Matusow, after a business trip to South Africa, expressed his skepticism on the blog about how the South African government is promoting open source software in the country. As you know, one of the most advanced technological countries in the continent recommends installing open source software everywhere, and Matusov considers such “compulsory” methods to be fundamentally wrong. He says that OSS has no advantages over Microsoft’s development, and South African programmers in general are unlikely to ever take an active part in serious Open Source projects.

John Matusow believes that South African students lack programming skills to participate in the development of Linux, and indeed any innovation in this project “is immediately intercepted by Red Hat or Novell and transferred to commercial rails on a global scale without any noticeable economic benefits for Of Africa. " Statistics show that over 95% of the total global volume of venture capital financing for OSS goes to less than 20 of the largest projects that have, in fact, already become commercial.

Of course, the statements of Microsoft's top manager immediately drew reasoned criticism from the OSS camp. The piquancy of this story comes from the fact that many of the key Open Source projects have South African roots. For example, Ubuntu founder Michael Shuttleworth is from South Africa, as well as Theo de Raadt, author of OpenBSD and OpenSSH.