[kwlug-disc] yeah, yeah, it's always *our* fault

[Paul Nijjar]

On Wed, Aug 05, 2009 at 08:08:48AM -0400, Charles M wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 4, 2009 at 9:01 PM, Kyle spaans<3lucid at gmail.com> wrote:
> > license-based software model. These firms do not bear the full costs
> > of research and development for the software. Some of these
> 
> I could be very wrong but don't many commercial companies draw some of
> their research from universities? AFAIK Microsoft rarely does research
> they just buy someone/something. If there's a strong surge of research
> it's usually market research/legal research.

That's actually not true. Microsoft has a pretty substantive research
department. When I was in grad school several people in my research
group did internships there. Furthermore people at Microsoft research
will publish in academic conferences. 

It is also true that commercial companies including Microsoft draw on
research from universities, and big companies also depend on
acquisitions for new ideas. In this sense I would agree with Kyle that
companies do not bear the full cost of R&D. But some companies
(including Microsoft) do fund research -- in fact, they fund research
that does not necessarily end up in their products. 

- Paul