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Bill Gates On the GPL — "We Disagree"
Dionysius, God of Wine, writes with a link to an Ars Technica story, quoting Bill Gates: "'There's free software and then there's open source' he suggested, noting that Microsoft gives away its software in developing countries. With open source software, on the other hand, 'there is this thing called the GPL, which we disagree with.' Open source, he said, creates a license 'so that nobody can ever improve the software,' he claimed, bemoaning the squandered opportunity for jobs and business. (Yes, Linux fans, we're aware of how distorted this definition is.) He went back to the analogy of pharmaceuticals: 'I think if you invent drugs, you should be able to charge for them,' he said, adding with a shrug: 'That may seem radical."
Mod Gates -1: Troll.
Also note that he re-defined Free Software, confusing it wizh Freeware. He's either dumb or malicious, and considering his track record, I'm inclined to say that doesn't have to be an xor.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
That's incorrect.
You can take my GPL program, improve it, fork it, and make money off it. What do you think Red Hat is doing? Do you think they wrote every line of code in the Linux distro they sell support contracts for?
You can make money off my GPL code, but you can't take my code and include it in a closed-source project.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Wrong, wrong, wrong! There is nothing in the GPL that forces anyone to give anything away for free (money). It explicitly says you may charge a fee for the distribution of the software. And as far as your analogy goes, it doesn't put a burden on the users (owners who use the building) except if they decide to go and build another building based on the first for someone else, they would have to release all the specs of the building.
Anyway, this analogy is ridiculous. Just to put it simply, GPL affects you if you distribute and/or modify the code. Go read the GPL, you can charge a billion dollars for your software, if no one buys it than it's just the market rejecting that price. I'm sick of people who want to spread misinformation because their business model is becoming harder to sustain.
Linux and GNU did not invent OSS. They were, in fact, a counter-revolution (OSS v2), in response to the revolution of proprietary software that overthrew OSS v1 in the early 1980s. Proprietary licensing took off with the rise of personal workstations and PCs and the subsequent rise in the portability of software. The GNU philosophy is that the old way of doing things was better, and cleverly co-opted the software licensing model to try and turn the ship around. Unix arose in the OSS v1 world, but right around the time that proprietary software was getting a foothold. As a consequence, it got caught up in the heart of the OSS/proprietary schism, and became embroiled in intellectual property lawsuits, which is why a Linux became necessary. But Linux didn't invent this approach to Unix; it simply capitalized on the fact that BSD was locked down in court battles for years. TCP/IP arose much earlier, before proprietary licensing was a significant force at all, so it is very much a creature of the OSS v1 world. If it wasn't, we either would not be using it today, or we'd be paying a hell of a lot more for it.
Open source, by contrast has massive repositories of information on forums all across the internet. A bit of Googling will get you a long way. Barring that, a reputable IRC channel will answer any other questions you have.
If you really want to pay for support, there's always Red Hat. stability that the people making the "free" won't get bored and move on to something else Open source software is maintained for far longer than commercial software, because MS and other commercial software makers are constantly trying to sell you the latest upgrades. stability from knowing that it's not a one-man project According to Wikipedia, Red Hat employs about 2,200 people. Novell picks up another 5k. The actual Linux kernel has many more. knowing a problem can be fixed without requiring an armada of high paid consultants Until recently, my father was a consultant for one of the companies that MS outsourced their support contracts to. He made an awful lot of money, and it wasn't really MS paying him, it was the end-users.
"The cup is in turn designed for holding hot or cold liquids, and has an open rim and closed base." --US Patent #5425497
It wasn't called either OSS or Free Software yet, but early efforts on UNIX and the Internet fit into the modern definitions of the terms. All the critical bits of Internet infrastructure software (bind, sendmail, the BSD TCP/IP stack, etc.) were developed in an open source fashion. UNIX was given away by AT&T for the cost of the media, and was improved on by many others (most notably BSD), who often gave away their own changes, too.
FOSS is a lot more than just Linux and GNU.
Not a typewriter
Are you stupid or something?
...the protocols of which were non-proprietary and declassified so educational and research institutions could participate in its development and growth.
No, he's actually more informed than you are.
The Internet came from ARPANET, a project of the Department of Defense
and UNIX was invented by AT&T
UNIX was NOT invented by AT&T. It was invented by a team of computer scientists led by Ken Thompson and Dennis Richie at Bell Labs. Bell Labs was not wholly owned by AT&T until the 1980s, long after UNIX was invented. The "official" UNIX was not truly owned by AT&T until then, when Bell Labe became a wholly owned unit of AT&T.
Neither had anything to do with OSS.
The internet, and ESPECIALLY UNIX, had EVERYTHING to do with OSS. UNIX was indeed open source (but it wasn't fully Free)--when you got good ol' UNIX for your PDP-11 or whatever you got full access to the source. Also, most drivers and apps were distributed in source form back in the day.
Stallman really got the Free (libre) software movement going when vendors started removing the source code from their distributions, and he and others became frustrated when buggy software would crash their systems and they had lost the ability to patch and recompile their software to work with their specific setups. So, UNIX is in fact a very major reason open source exists today, because a one quite open ecosystem was becoming increasingly closed, and GNU was established to create open source software that would be protected from a similar fate.
Err, what?
FOSS does some of the most innovative stuff on the planet, as compared with MS.
Who had a 3d desktop extension system first? Hmmm... was it compiz?
Who had 64 bit support for x86 way ahead of the game? I think it was Linux.
Bittorrent took off under the auspices of open source. Firefox.
The list is endless.