Microsoft's Mundie slams Liberty at WCIT

Speaking at the 2002 World Congress on Information Technology (WCIT), currently running in Adelaide Australia, Microsoft's chief technical officer Craig Mundie reaffirmed the importance of the protection of intellectual property and copyright within the software industry.

"The problem with general public licence advocates is that they don't understand that people need the opportunity to commercialise software," Mundie said, attacking the notion of open-source software.

"If there is not commercialisation there, a company can only exist based on ancillary manufacturing or services. If commercialisation was cut down, investors would not support research and development in the IT sector, less projects would be developed, less taxes paid and the government would have less money to run universities, and all the other things that governments do," said Mundie.

Microsoft's apocalyptic vision of a world where IT IP were not enforceable was a key element of Mundie's presentation to the WCIT 2002. Microsoft's chief technology officer also took the time to criticise Web services advocates and the Liberty Alliance.

"Rather than form a federation with Microsoft and work with what we had already created, there was this notion that the world should be offered an alternative," Mundie said.

Mundie also took the opportunity to trail out a series of emerging wireless devices, including Tablet PCs and other small-scale wireless devices.

"What we have done with PCs so far is not natural. In the future we will be moving towards technologies which allow us to capture the things we do in our lives," Mundie said, forecasting a wider dissemination of stylus-based computing equipment.

"Increasingly we will be writing on our computers like we write on paper," he said.

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