Brij’s One More Idea

During the recent trip to India, Bill Gates was asked to comment on the growing phenomena of open source.

Giving his usual answer that it’s not going to be at the same quality level as proprietary software he dropped in a carefully worded hint to the government officials, it basically meant that “Open source is not good for the governement tax collection”.

He is a smart fellow and knows what works with the government officials. I heard similar concerns in Bay Area where people expressed concerns on putting big dollars on open source projects to avoid running into any accounting/taxation issues (Sarbanes phenomena !).

It’s BS most of the time but in some cases where company is deriving significant revenue and business advantage then they will be expected to put value on their assets.

Some form of open source asset accounting will be required at that time.