Microsoft is giving away free software to nonprofits<\/b>, and critics<\/p>\n
charge that this is a deliberate plot to undermine open-source alternatives<\/p>\n
that were gaining ground in the nonprofit sector. I’ll have to leave it<\/p>\n
to economists to decide whether Microsoft’s strategy is good or bad for<\/p>\n
nonprofit organizations in strictly economic terms. (Economists might<\/p>\n
also ask whether it is a good deal for taxpayers to let Microsoft take<\/p>\n
a tax deduction for donating Windows, each copy of which actually costs<\/p>\n
the company nothing). Likewise, I’ll have to defer to antitrust lawyers<\/p>\n
about whether this strategy violates laws against anti-competitive pricing.<\/p>\n
My concern is different from either of these. It may be that open-source<\/p>\n
software is good for civil society because it promotes cooperation<\/p>\n
<\/i>in the writing and improving of the code; diversity<\/i> (since<\/p>\n
open-source products can be tailored for various purposes and produced<\/p>\n
by many actors); and creativity <\/i> by a wide range of individuals<\/p>\n
and groups. Whether open-source products such as Linux actually have these<\/p>\n
effects is an empirical matter than needs to be assessed. I suspect, however,<\/p>\n
that nonprofits like to use open-source products for these reasons and<\/p>\n
not merely to save money. If that is true, then Microsoft’s donation is<\/p>\n
insidious.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Microsoft is giving away free software to nonprofits, and critics charge that this is a deliberate plot to undermine open-source alternatives that were gaining ground in the nonprofit sector. I’ll have to leave it to economists to decide whether Microsoft’s strategy is good or bad for nonprofit organizations in strictly economic terms. (Economists might also […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-internet-and-public-issues"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4208"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4208\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}