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Stallman Feeds Gates His Own Words
soloport writes "C|Net has published an article, written by RMS, in which Stallman points out that Gates is merely calling the kettle communist. Toward the end of the article, Stallman strengthens his point by feeding Bill his own words. Back in 1991, Bill said, in an internal memo: 'If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today...A future start-up with no patents of its own will be forced to pay whatever price the giants choose to impose.' Now, if only Bill were as clear-minded on the subjects of Innovation and Interoperability."
Idealism dies when you actually get put in the big chair.
If Apple (or Xerox) had patented the GUI, we would still be stuck with DOS!
So, if M$ patents everything it can get its hands on, what innovations would it stop?
Technically, Mr. Gates is right. The whole Open Source idea is a communist idea, not in terms of Soviet Russia (where software owns you) but in terms of a community of workers all banding together to produce their own labor, instead of selling themselves to the capitalists.
Seriously, folks, the current situation of Linux v. Microsoft is exactly what Marx and Engels were talking about.
What the Open Source community has is what all communist countries thus far have lacked, which is the admission of only like-minded people. For a commune to work, the citizens must all have similar ideas with respect to how to interact with the outside world. In a nation, where all citizens just become communists, this simply isn't possible.
fsh
Many of the news /. posts, are based on the work of RMS.
Many don't agree with him, i respect that. But even when you don't agree with many things he says, most of you are using an operating system that exists because of Richard's Work. You are also using thousands of lines of code that he wrote by himself. He has proved in the past to have been right, and the fact that he continued with his fight, even against what most others told him, has benefited the whole community.
So, don't agree with him if you don't want to, but at least hear what he has to say, you will learn a lot, and it's the least we can do to thank him for everything he has given us.
ALMAFUERTE
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
"he only ever seems to garner attention from those who are already on his side"
That's true, it's our work to reach other people. Richard is out there to remind us what Free Software is all about, our task, is to understand it, and help develop and spread it. And do it the way it should be done, which is, by showing the real ethical reasons to use this system, and not just technical advantages.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
You say that like it's a bad thing. In reality, there's a huge amount of research done by universities that would never be done by private industry, simply because there's no short-term profit in it. I'm not defending Stallman in particular, but to criticize "living off academic endowments" is to spit on many of our best scientists. Nearly every famous chemist was a university professor. Many never worked in private industry. Linus Pauling comes immediately to mind.
"Seriously, folks, the current situation of Linux v. Microsoft is exactly what Marx and Engels were talking about."
Of course it is. Marx and Engels talked about man tools, and how, a man , in orther to be truly free, should have access to the tools he needs. If the tools he needs to work, are owned by the rich, they become their masters, and can have him dominated.
It's the same argument that Stallmans points out, about software, and, IMHO, it's a fundamental issue.
There is a serious misguided idea that most USA citizens have, which is that communism = URSS, and that's an utter bullshit. The URSS was a corrupt dictatorship fighting for world domination (And we had 2 corrupt dictatorships fighting for world domination in that years, now there is only one left). Communism is an economic and social system, that (just like Capitalism) can work ok if implemented by honest people, or be a terrible weapon if implemented by a corrupt government. This is true for both systems. The issue is in the society, not on the system.
ALMAFUERTE
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
Very few patent disputes with big companies ever become lawsuits, and it takes a while for lawsuits over patents to be filed (in fact, it can be in the interest of companies to wait a while). Microsoft has only started getting on the patent bandwagon fairly recently and they have already been throwing their weight around with patent-related threats.
Furthermore, the notion of "defensive patents" is nonsense. In order to defend an idea against a patent claim, all you need to do is publish it (you still need the lawyers to actually win in court, but you need those also if you have a patent).
The term "defensive patent" is really a euphemism for becoming a member of a patent cartel: the "giants" that Gates talks about, companies like IBM, Apple, Xerox, etc., have amassed huge patent portfolios that they are cross licensing. As a result, they can operate almost completely free of worries over patent infringement, while small companies that don't have cross licensing agreements are at constant risk of being put out of business by any member of that club. Well, Gates's solution to the problem has been to become a member of the cartel.
> entirely to defend against litigation, as against "submarine" patents like those used in Eolas v. Microsoft.
The problem is that Eolas wasn't a competitor of MicroSoft, they are simply a patent portfolio company. If Sun came after MS and sued for patent infringement, then MS would be able to retaliate with its own patents. But what can you do to a portfolio company? They don't actually make anything, so they aren't violating any patents.
Further, if MS justs wants "defense", then why are they pushing so hard for software patents in Europe. Why aren't *they* leading the fight to abolish software patents entirely? If their only concern was defense, wouldn't they be in a better situation if everyone were disarmed? Wouldn't they save a lot of money if they didn't have to patent everything?
Oh, and if the VFAT patent licensure wasn't a submarine patent, I don't know what is.
-- Don't Tase me, bro!