Beyond Markets
'How does Microsoft beat Linux? The same way "you beat any other competitor: You offer good value
He makes some sense here. This is how markets are supposed to work, when competition exists. The existence of FOSS does happen to provide competition to the "marketplace". Imagine the shitball we'd be rolling in without FOSS competition (or Mac OS, which has been taking pages out of the MS playbook).
But the scope Ballmer and his company operate in (as does Apple) is limited. Software isn't just something that "offers value", to be "traded" in a "marketplace". It's something that works better with collaboration than competition. It's there to serve users. The marketplace can only go so far to produce useful tools, especially when so many people can contribute to their own utility.
Sure, they might "beat" GNU, by their own lights, by "offering value". All they are is a profit-seeking enterprise. But as a user, and not a "consumer", of software, I don't care about that. They can monopolize the entire software "marketplace" for all I care. I'll still be using software that grants user freedom, because, unlike Microsoft "products", it exists outside the marketplace as well as in it. From the narrow parochial market perspective, openly-licensed code is undead. You can take away its marketshare, but you can't kill it.
You can't buy - or sell - freedom, despite its well-established value. You have to demand it; to fight for it. And mere market "value" is no substitute for freedom.
