December 30, 2005 · Lessig
At 12:30pm, an envelope from Redmond appeared at the Creative Commons office. Inside, a check for $25,000. From Microsoft.
We’ve made our target in the most (pleasantly) surprising of ways. Thanks to everyone who helped on this, and especially those who pulled so hard at the end. Of course, more will still help lots, so no reason to stop now. Support CC.
Comments
A modest payback for the “open source is a cancer” comments from Steve Ballmer
hush money
Hey, it’s still three months until the first of April…
Congratulations! I’m so glad you made it. What a wonderful start to a new year. Microsoft money can do good.
Unsuprising in a way as anyone who publishes under Creative Commons is key to search. Its a very modest pay off for the future returns, but nevertheless welcome. Well done to you all.
awesome, ms donates alot
It’s kinda cool that MS did this. GJ MS!
CC,
You’ve made the big time. Redmond is trying to gain influence with you – in doing so they acknowledge your influence with others.
Take the money, but stay true to your roots; M$ is still the enemy.
you should return the money stating that you don’t take money acquired by lying, cheating, and stealing.
I believe that Gates uses the Rockefellers as his model for charitable giving: Give lots of “karma” boosting donations to improve your public image, no matter what your business practices are.
The Rockefeller Foundation still does good works. But that doesn’t make its founder any less of an oil baron.
Go ahead and cash that check, though. You’ve earned it and then some.
Let me make a geeky analogy. I play a rogue character in the online game World of Warcraft and where I drop out of the shadows and kill other players. In the game, if they’re an enemy then that’s what’s expected of you. But every once in awhile I’ll wait till an enemy is really in trouble and about to be killed by a monster and then…. drop out of the shadows and bail them out by killing the monster and saving them. Then without killing them, I disappear and leave them scratching their head.
If I’m not mistaken, that’s what Microsoft did here.
Man, how is it always about “us vs. them?” Microsoft benefits plenty from open source – if it wasn’t for bsd they would have had to actually create their own network stack for windows 95. And don’t forget they kicked netscape’s ass to hell and back when Netscape got all belligerent and declared they basically dictated the standards of the web and they were going to make the operating system obsolete. Maybe one day the OS will become obsolete – we’re definitely working toward hat – but it will be “obsolete” because of standard interfaces and interoperability, which is NOT the future netscape had in its plans before MS reminded them where the real great and hairy ape lived.
Linux ws developed on cheap hardware that is STILL subsidized by software profits and those profits are made possible by a pervasive, if boring and insecure, “standard” operating system. No one is making you use windows – I’ve done without it for years now. But every time I go to order a new $100 hard drive that’s twice or three times the size of the last $100 hard drive I bought and every time I upgrade to a new $100 motherboard and cpu bundle that’s like five times faster than the last one I bought, I’m damn glad to be part of a culture that was, in large part, made possible by the technology bundled and marketed by MS.
It’s like dumpster diving: if the corproations don’t sell people houses ten times the size they need then no one tears down their old houses. And if no one tears down their old houses there’s no old fixtures, windows, doors and timbers for the recyclers to use. You can’t build a $1000 house out of empty tin cans and concrete if there’s no old tin cans and you can’t run your biodiesel benz on “free” french fry oil if there’s no corporate fast food joints to generate all that “waste” veggie oil.
Microsoft is a necessary part of our ecology, and you sell it short every time you play into that simple minded “us vs them” dogma.
How about a compromise: you cash the check, then return the envelope with a note stating that you will not “take envelopes acquired by lying, cheating, and stealing.”