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Stallman Attacks Gates, Microsoft, & Charity Foundation
An anonymous reader writes "Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation, has an article in the BBC in which he maintains that Gates' departure from Microsoft doesn't mean the end of proprietary software and that the free software community needs to stand strong to undo the damages Bill Gates, Microsoft, and other proprietary software vendors (explicitly naming Apple & Adobe amongst them) have done. And he slips in a claim that the Bill and Melinda Gates charity foundation doesn't really help the poor; it just pretends to while actually subjecting them to greater harm."
Who wants to bet it was Twitter?
I'm one of the biggest GPL zealots around here, and RMS is high on my list of respected people, but come on. There are whole medical labs dedicated to fighting TB and AIDS in southern Africa that wouldn't exist without the Bill&Melinda foundation. How is that hurting anything?
Free the Quark 3 from asymptotic confinement! Bring your charm! Don't get down! All colours and flavours welcome!
nice
My mind is screwed. It immediatly thought of RMS wielding a big a big katana running like a madman towards Gates and a legion of MS employees.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
Is Stallman so desperate to make Mr. Gates out to be the bad guy that heâ(TM)d sink this low?
I don't see any "low sinking" about it. First of all, the money Gates is so charitably donating, is money he acquired from an illegal monopoly, so it is reasonable to follow where it is going.
Second, there is a good argument to be made that foundations like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation are harmful and are mainly entertainment vehicles and tax shelters for the rich.
Third, why shouldn't Stallman comment on this stuff? He started the Free Software Foundation out of social consciousness and civic concern; of course, he would comment on other social issues and may well take action, even if they have nothing to do with software.
And why should Stallman be "desparate"? Free software is doing better than ever before, while Microsoft just keeps failing in everything they do.
The rest of the NeoSmart files contains more bullshit. For example:
Stallman somehow neglects to mention that â" regardless of whether morally acceptable or not â" Microsoft had the legal right to demand payment in exchange for their software.
There is no "neglect" about it. It is not at all clear that Gates had that legal right at the time; in a sense, Gates helped establish that right, to the deteriment of us all, according to Stallman's reading.
I don't agree with what Stallman says, but he is at least consistent and logical. NeoSmart is a bunch of bullshit and FUD.
Is Microsoft getting so desperate that they have to step up their bullshit and FUD machine another notch? I guess it's a good sign.
Way to insure that people continue to believe (in numbers greater than anyone wants to admit) that the whole FOSS thang is nothing but an expression of Socialism.
Do us all a favor, Stallman? The next time you want to go off half-cocked like that, you stuff your favorite Che Guevera t-shirt in your mouth and bite down until the thought goes away?
Bitch!
Gates' legacy is that you don't have control of the PC (whether hardware or software) you paid for.
fucking commie bastard
capitalism forever!
Yeah!! Because lowering barriers-to-entry into the market and encouraging businesses to be competitive are so communistic.
Oh wait...
http://outcampaign.org/
Wow, he really comes across bitter. One may dislike Bill and MS, but the foundation Bill started has really done some great things. At least he is doing something with his money AND has made other extremely rich people start to do similar charity activities.
I think while MS has done some awful things, the industry has still moved forward as a whole. Bill saw a business model and moved to make it successful. Stallman's idea has caught on too, just not as well YET as the Microsoft one.
Instead of focusing on criticizing Microsoft how about focus on making open source software that is not "as good" but rather "MUCH BETTER" than closed sourced equivalents? How about make OpenOffice or Koffice not "good enough for most users" to be so awesome that it surpasses MS Office? That's why Firefox caught on, it was significantly better than IE 6 in terms of functionality and SECURITY that it was able to become a contender.
deserves to be modded -1 Troll.
Stallman did not claim that the foundation doesn't really help the poor. He simply referenced some well known LA Times articles critical of the foundation.
That's all, nothing to get upset about.
Unless of course god awful sides like neosmart try to take it out of context and sensationalize it. And as usual, /. editors think it's worthwhile to lend them a hand in this endeavor.
Well done!
YHBT. YHL. HAND.
To suggest that "Microsoft is failing at everything they do" is just ridiculous. Microsoft is concerned about the generation of DOLLARS. Their rules are about making MONEY. In that sense, they are spectacularly successful at what they do, whether you or I agree with their motivation, ethics or whatever.
Its like trying to say that China sucks because they are not a Democracy. Sure, they may suck indeed to you and me, but to China, they are doing just fine.
Stallman is a horrible spokesperson, in the sense that he allows himself through his own words to be defined as a kook, allowing his goals to be written of as the rantings of a madman.
would atleast dictate that he refers to Bill Gates as Mr Gates rather than "Gates", I find it offensive and I'm not the one even being attacked.
I once read something along the lines that presentation is90% of the arugument or something along those lines.
As someone who doesn't really follow the free software movement, I think he should have focused on promoting the advantages of open-source, rather than bashing those that are free to license their software whichever way they choose.
Gates didn't invent proprietary software, and thousands of other companies do the same thing. It's wrong, no matter who does it.
Utter nonsense - and it reflects badly on the FSF. How exactly are you going to persuade these companies to become more open-source friendly, if all you do is bash them?
That's your opinion and I don't agree with it.
No, it doesn't. As a matter of fact, if all of my computers were to vanish right now, my life wouldn't change that much. It might even be better. You want to talk about power over people? Have a look at the banking industry.
The system will change. That's just the nature of things. Whether or not it needs to be changed is irrelevant.
I disagree with most of what this guy has to say. If anyone creates a piece of software or anything else, it's their right to do as they please with their creation.
Here's an incredibly intelligent person who has the emotional development of a 15 year old.
Ugh I know this is flame bait but I have to say it as it's on topic.
I still don't see the harm that Gates brought to the computing industry with Microsoft. They brought a unification to the desktop and IT that simply didn't exist before, and pushed for standards that made it easier.
And even now there are still problems with all of this. Look at the browser market. Even if IE were not involved, you still have the problem that Firefox, Opera, and Safari render pages differently. Their performance is also very different. So say, a website that you write for one may be great on performance but when launched in another browser be completely and utterly poor.
Even setting "standards" for rendering don't resolve that, as exactly "how" those standards are implemented are left up to the developers. Then you still have the issue that Safari is the most common browser used on Macs, and that's certainly going to heat up as Safari 4 makes its rounds.
Either way, Microsoft tried to reduce this as much as possible. And they succeeded. Despite the fact that millions of people don't know how to use the computers they use every day, they still use them and have access to them. You can still get an education with them.
There are points where IT nerds don't want to learn anything new anymore--it's just at a much higher point than the average person, but still exists...
When I first read rms' potification, it made a certain sort of sense. If you've ever been threatened by the BSA, as I have - twice - you begin to recognise that many software vendors use EULAs to give themselves ridiculously expansive rights, far beyond the government's constitutional limits (at least in the USA). Enter my house to audit my computers? In your dreams.
After a great deal of thought, however, I realize that his view on free software and society actually do make a lot of sense. Free-as-in-liberty software is worth supporting IMHO. So this former Microsoft enthusiast does. Still use a Microsoft mouse, though - they make great hardware. :-)
I have no opinion on the Gates' foundation - I favour charity, obviously, but I'm not up to speed on the details of their goals & policies.
--
Written on the best-selling N800 GNU and Linux tablet.
The only reason he wants healthy people in Africa is so that he can make money locking them into paying for Windows.
Invest a few million to ensure the good health of the population, reap a few billion in licensing fees. It's no more difficult than that.
If that's his plan then someone should tell him that it's very, very flawed.
Regardless of how much money is thrown into the dark continent, it will be two or three generations at least before it's up to the standards of a first world economy. And by then Billy-Boy will be dead and as such likely unable to reap the untold billions in licensing fees that you assume he's after.
Unless of course you think Gates is an immortal demon intent on stealing all men's souls, which frankly is a belief that wouldn't surprise me on slashdot.
Free software is ironically both communist-ic (yay collective good) and free-market-istic (the price of the software is the marginal cost of production of one copy, or, um, zero!) It's rather fun. Not too many markets work out that way.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
I still don't understand why he wants everyone to be naked. Isn't the right of author of program to choose either let the product to be open source or not? BTW, I think donating money and writing software is two different things, I can't see any reason to mix them up.
The B&M foundation is a brilliant and incomparable gesture of philanthropy by someone with nothing to gain and everything to lose by such actions; whatever you say about him here i have no doubt bill g would have been a slashdot reading lovable geek had he been born 10 years later. The ridiculous assertions thus far made are a stupid "everyone is either good or evil" step too far. Those who say otherwise ignore every historical example and basic economics to make a point at the expense of a fundamental social cause. Like every social leader stallmann finds himself in a position where he essentially has (bizarrely) to lie in order to maintain his media integrity, we saw in with mandela, we are seeing now with obama on fisa, now it seems we are seeing it with stallman. But there is a fundamental difference here, a the issues that the B&G foundation are addressing are some of THE most important that humanity has ever faced, in those examples, the war had been won and we were conceding minor points, here we are conceding the war for the sake of a battle, ( and fsf is undoubtedly a battle not a war, see lessig). We cannot afford this ridiculous and vindictive charade and it we continue it i fear it will tear us apart just as creationism is tearing apart the christians
Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, and the rest, offer you software that gives them power over you. A change in executives or companies is not important. What we need to change is this system. That's what the free software movement is all about. "Free" refers to freedom: we write and publish software that users are free to share and modify.
In other words, "Do as I tell you, or you are a dumb slave"
Don't get me wrong, I love free software, but more than that I enjoy software that just works. If its free, I'll use that first, but Stallman has always seemed to say that, "Freedom is what I say freedom is, and if you don't do what I tell you to do, then you are not free" Give me a break.....
Monstar L
From the article: "To pay so much attention to Bill Gates' retirement is missing the point. What really matters is not Gates, nor Microsoft, but the unethical system of restrictions that Microsoft, like many other software companies, imposes on its customers."
and no, getting rid of proprietary software won't magically fix disease, starvation, etc
Oh be creative! Free software is, as far as the whole of society is concerned, much cheaper than proprietary software, because society only has to pay to solve (the software portion of) a particular problem once. Therefore, if problems are solved using free software instead of proprietary software, society will have a lot of money left over to spend on fixing disease, starvation, etc.
But we don't even have to argue about free vs. proprietary software in general. This discussion is about free software versus Microsoft software, and it's fairly well-established that Microsoft software has a much higher TCO than best-of-breed free software.
When you consider how much money Microsoft drains from various countries' economies, it's easy to see how the money could be put to better use.
http://outcampaign.org/
The Bill & Melinda Gates foundation is one of the largest charitable organizations in the world, and manages those assets earmarked for charitable contribution by Gates as well as Warren Buffett.
The foundation currently donates hundreds of millions of dollars per year across a portfolio of (I think) worthy causes -- HIV research, education, feeding the poor.
For RMS to insinuate that these contributions are "merely pretending to help" and that they "do more harm" than good is ridiculous.
What then, should the foundation do? Should the foundation -- and by extension, all of us -- simply stop making donations to disease research, the building of libraries, feeding the poor, and improving universities? Does RMS believe that there will be some sort of grassroots "open source" movement to research vaccines and build libraries? Of course that won't happen, and if this is what he believes, then he's flipped his lid. The world doesn't work this way, and the B&M Gates foundation looks like it's doing its best in an imperfect world.
stallman's problem is that he has seveere diarrhea of the mouth.
RMS' Free Software Foundation develops GPL and LGP covered ***FREE*** software.
Quote from the BBC article: ""Free" refers to freedom: we write and publish software that users are free to share and modify."
I have two questions about GPL free software:
1. Does "software" in the quote refer to GPL and LGP covered ***FREE*** software?
2. Do I have the ***Freedom*** to copy parts of GPL/LGPL free software into BSD-covered open-source software of FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD projects?
3. "users are free to share and modify" means users are free to share or not to share. Its the user's choice. If I distribute GPL/LGPL binaries, so do I have the ***Freedom*** to not to share the changes?
There's also this story: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-gatesx07jan07,0,4205044,full.story
Andrew Carnegie gave the money to build libraries all over the continent. He got the money by being a ruthless capitalist. Nobody remembers how he treated his workers, they just see the library building and think he must have been a good guy.
The motivation for Bill Gates' charitable activities is known only to him but there is a good chance that he wants to leave a legacy that will make future generations think he is a good guy. Anybody involved with a business that was screwed by Microsoft knows better.
Gimme a fucking break, Taco.
It was you and JonP, not some "all-American football type".
Maybe if you stopped sucking your own cock every now and then, you'd have a better self-image.
Its one thing to be passionate about free software, but you can go too far. In the real world, If he held any position of importance at all, Stallman would have to resign his position after a comment like that. Stallman obviously thinks software is more important than people. He is dead wrong. Something wholly good is coming out of the software that he is criticises. Is free software going to feed people and cure disease?
Stallman would also be wrong if he thought that all the money that the Gates foundation plays with is sourced from Microsoft. Warren Buffett has given most of his fortune to the foundation also. To even imply that such philanthropy is harming the thirld world is nothing less than criminal.
RMS pointed out that the bulk of the Gates Foundation's money is parked in investments (so the philanthropy can live off the interest). This is a true statement. However, it's a bit silly to imply that a philanthropy is disingenuous for not spending its entire balance sheet in a single year... because if philanthropies did that, they mostly wouldn't be around longer than a year. Pretty much EVERY philanthropy keeps most of its money in investments, and does it philanthropic work with the annual proceeds.
Stallman's second criticism is that some of the particular investments the Foundation keeps its money in are not socially-conscious companies. I don't know the details of the Gates Foundation's portfolio, but that's a fair criticism of a philanthropy in general. If you donate money to a gun control policy foundation, you expect that they won't invest it in gun manufacturers, etc. A foundation that works with disease and living conditions in third-world countries probably shouldn't invest in companies with poor track records of worker and environmental exploitation in third-world countries. Indeed, applying pressure through the use of its investment decisions might be the most effective power that a foundation of that size could wield.
In sum, the quote was probably a bit less than fair in that it has nothing to do with software, and was thrown in just to be spiteful. Still, the quote was just ONE SENTENCE... buried in an article that dealt exclusively with software otherwise.
The tactic of going after a charitable organization with extreme claims is getting old. Someone as smart as Stallman claims to be should be able to recognize this as the hallmark of a desperate individual trying to "make their mark on the world".
Funny, I noticed this at the bottom of his personal page:
"copyright (c) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 Richard Stallman
Verbatim copying and redistribution of this entire page are permitted provided this notice is preserved.
Verbatim copying and redistribution of any of the photos in the photos subdirectory is permitted under the Creative Commons Noderivs license version 3.0 or later. You can copy and redistribute the photo of me playing music to the butterfly under the Creative Commons Noderivs Nocommercial license version 3.0 or later. Any other photos of me in this directory may be copied and redistributed under the Creative Commons Noderivs license version 3.0 or later."
If Stallman is so damn benevolent and charitable, he should spend his time giving money to people, and not making extreme claims to get his face or name mentioned. The is a fine line between activism and self-glorification/self-publicization, and Stallman crossed it long ago.
Stallman is just a "techie" version of Michael Crook.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
Now, when I forget to say GNU/Linux, it's on PURPOSE!!!
I just want to say thanks to Bill and Melinda for giving me BBC all night. Keep it up!
load "linux",8,1
Do you really hate your country so much that you would wish to inflict upon it both economic oppression and removal of freedoms by arbitrary members of society as well as a bizzare and contradictory religious dogma?
You sir are un-American.
If Stallman himself needs to work as (according to TFA) an "expert food manipulator".
Oh, wait, it says 'FUD'. My bad.
Free software is ironically both communist-ic (yay collective good) and free-market-istic (the price of the software is the marginal cost of production of one copy, or, um, zero!) It's rather fun. Not too many markets work out that way.
What "collective good"? That might be the case if rms (or FSF) is proposing that software need to be released into the public domain, but even with copyleft, copyright is still individual property*.
Just because something benefits the society as a whole doesn't make it communistic---if it were, Soviet Russia must've been a paradise.
* for imaginary values of property.
I ask this out of genuine curiosity and ignorance.
As I recall, Gates's main argument is that programmers must make money for their work, as there is no incentive for them to produce software otherwise.
Apart from a few benevolent souls who produce software in their spare time, how exactly is completely free software a sustainable model? Or is the argument that you make your software open source but not free? Does this mean someone else can copy your hard work and produce a customized version?
I still haven't really grasped what incentive a business would have of producing software without protecting their work. Or is Stallman advocating a Red-Hat/Suse sort of thing, where you produce software and charge for consultancy? Meaning the more obscure your software is, the better?
How can you produce desktop software using such a model?
"feeding the poor" sounds really warm and fuzzy, but without a reversal in global population growth what are you "really" achieving? How about spending some of that money on weekly radio and TV spots that counteract the religious propaganda that we see and hear every day. I've love to see that, a syndicated radio network that examines sermons from famous religious leaders and exposes the fear and hate mongers that they really are. Now THAT would be charitable.
RMS is a tool.
It seems to me that RMS is stuck in a little world of his own. He doesn't understand that proprietary software is here to stay, and he has now resorted to FUD and statements which are, to be quite frank, libellous in nature. He is disparaging a charity to claim that all proprietary software is evil, which I consider to be a deplorable method.
Shame on you, Richard Stallman. Shame on you.
Those using pirated Tinysoft signatures(TM) are a real threat to society and should all be thrown in jail.
MOD PARENT UP!
Quote: "Microsoft software has a much higher TCO than best-of-breed free software."
The cost of owning a Microsoft product is very high, in my experience, because of the extreme sloppiness that Microsoft allows. Microsoft makes more money when users pay to buy new versions because they have discovered problems with the original versions.
It's amazing how many people are pretending to be charitable. It's amazing how well that works with the public. Basically, someone who made billions of dollars with tricky, sneaky, unethical business methods can gain a positive image by spending a little of that money on public relations.
Re-worded quote: "Microsoft drains money from the economy of every country in the world. Free software allows that money to be put to better use."
"Free software existed fine without RMS."
No, it didn't.
Yes, a software package that was already written and finished and made public would of course continue to exist. But there were literally thousands of companies and people who would take advantage of someone else's work and give nothing in return.
My look at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation shows it was founded with two primary purposes:
- Tax dodge--giving money to a charity reduces his personal income taxes. By giving it to a charity he controls, he gets additional benefits.
- As PR for Microsoft against the anti-trust investigation.
Bill Gates has been rich since the 1980s, but his Foundation didn't really get any significant money until 1999. And then Bill then realized around 2004 that he could run his Foundation as his "retirement", and so started giving it more focus.
By checking out the contributions provided at www.gatesfoundation.org, you can see (this is complicated by the fact he had two charities, with the primary one now being the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation):
- As of 1998, Bill Gates had donated a grand total of $300million to both of his charities. That's not for that year, that's over all previous years combined, with interest/appreciation. This number is embarrassingly low for a person worth $100billion. However, it's probably just about the right amount to maximize his tax savings on a yearly basis. Also, the charity was building an endowment, and not spending all that much money.
- Then suddenly, in 1999, in the middle of the Microsoft anti-trust lawsuit, he gives $15 billion. He gives another $5 billion in 2000.
- Then, once the anti-trust lawsuit effectively ended, in 2001, he gives $0. Yup, check it out yourself. Probably because he took a loss that year due to the stock market drop, didn't need the tax writeoff anymore, and didn't need the PR.
- In 2002, he gives $82.5million, again, back to the tax dodge. He gives $81.9 million in 2003. He's still worth $40-50 billion dollars due to Microsoft stock.
- In 2004, he starts to give his charity a little more notice, and starts donating $700million in 2004, $442 million in 2005, $333million in 2006, and $1.2billion in 2007.
I wouldn't be surprised if the recipients of his money found it had lots of strings attached, but I'm not interested enough to dig up all this dirt. Although it's nice he's giving some of his money away, IMNSHO, it's just about the least he could do (except for the $20billion PR stunt). I also think the expenses for this foundation are quite high, and are probably more of a tax dodge. The foundation also spends considerably less than he has contributed, so it's building a very large endowment. It seems benign. So far.
I liken it to a king tossing silver coins to the rabble around his carriage--but doing it only when the press is around.
A person who does good deeds to increase their public image is called a politician or entertainer. I think that one of these two people is looking to be in a position to control everybody in a more global way than just software. I would have to have some kind of hard evidence to consider the possibility that grandma and the wolf had merged into a single kindly genetic organism. The more likely solution is that the wolf ate grandma. One of the nice things about free source is that I don't have to agree with anybody to be able to use the stuff.
Richard Stallman is not about freedom. Richard Stallman only cares about end-user freedom.
But I fail to see why end user freedom should be more important than the developer's freedom to choose. It's almost as if developers were evil by default from his point of view. Unless of course they embrace the GPL.
diegoT
1) He conducted a campaign of terror that resulted in the egcs fork
2) He attacked Linus Torvalds
3) He created the GPLv3, which is a complete and utter failure
4) He is pushing Affero, which is horrible
5) He shows up at public events wearing a halo (literally, made of an old disc)
6) He undermines the credibility of the open source movement.
7) It's Linux, not GNU/Linux, you trademark-diluting parasite. In terms of source code, GNU utils make up less than 3% of a typical distribution.
8) We need an emergency coding project to replace GNU foundation software with work-alikes.
The world would be a better place if Richard Stallman were to retire from public life and stop all activity related to software.
I mean, he may be right that the whole foundation is just financial engineering.
There are whole medical labs dedicated to fighting TB and AIDS in southern Africa that wouldn't exist without the Bill&Melinda foundation. How is that hurting anything?
Gates said 30 years ago that all the work he invested in making some programs should be paid back by the people "stealing" his products. But then he imposes a very expensive tax for ALL computer users in the world. And then he plays dirty to make sure other people don't give the public better and cheaper products (I'm talking before the Free Software revolution happened).
Don't you think that's being a little hypocritical about it?
By forcing governments to use expensive Microsoft products you prevent said countries from using all that money for better causes, i.e. fighting AIDS and diseases, developing a solid independent industry, investing in education, etc. It's like taking money destined to the poor, and then donating a tiny bit of it to the poor and getting praised for that. My point is that the money the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation gives to the poor can't even be compared to the money they took from other countries and would end up in the hands of the poor sooner or later.
YOU CAN'T ERASE ALL YOUR BAD DEEDS BY DOING A SMALL GOOD DEED!
Really - do you think that someone who became millionaire by forcibly collecting money from nearly anyone, including taxpayers, who end up paying taxes for Microsoft Software (including Vista) installed in government offices (and that's AROUND THE WORLD - so that's a double Microsoft tax, not only for you, sir, but for all citizens of all countries) is really a charitative person?
Give me a fucking break.
This is EXACTLY THE SAME THING that the US has done. First they force their expensive products down the throats of foreign countries, raising their debts and increasing poverty. But instead of helping those countries develop their industries and invest in education, they give them "money for the poor" with the condition of investing in birth control (because we can't have poor people have many kids, think of the poor single mothers with 10 children!).
It's people like Bill Gates and company who help maintain the international Status Quo.
Ideological purity rarely works in the real world. If you take it too far you wind up with Bush as President... Without Apple, the GUI would have remained hidden away in the PARC labs until who knows? Apple took those rough ideas and polished them to a wonderful degree, then brought them to the world. Similarly the iPhone touch UI Apple has commercialized is fantastic. Who really believes open software would produce new classes of products such as those? I am very happy to pay money to innovators who bring me things I otherwise could never have. Open and commercial software are complimentary. I think patent law should be addressed so that open software products can come in and commoditize things once they have matured, but lots of real innovation happens in the commercial space.
Do you really hate your country so much that you would wish to inflict upon it both economic oppression and removal of freedoms by arbitrary members of society as well as a bizzare and contradictory religious dogma?
You sir are un-American.
All rights begin with our property rights, and there is no Dogma in the statement "God Bless America," other than acknowledging a monotheistic entity. Its compatible with Diesm, and monotheistic religions both Abrahamic and non Abrahamic.
--- Justin Dearing http://www.justaprogrammer.net/ We're just programmers.
I've never read a more infantile display of whining from someone with an obvious inferiority complex. Stallman exhibits a breathtaking level of paranoia and probably believes Gates AND Microsoft black helicopters are flying around him with super-sensitive microphones so they can be in a position to dominate the world with their cabal of confederates and governments. Pitiful.
I hadn't heard of that scandal. Imagine, The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation investing in a factory which poisons the lungs of the very people they claim to help. Mod parent informative.
Ahem, ahem...
I am not really impressed by B&M gates foundation... and the use they have given to it:
e-Mexico.
Which was about to be kickstarted with Open Source (with the backup of HP, IBM, Sun, etc)... until Bill Gates went to Mexico to speak with Presidente Fox... aaaaand, guess what:
Microsoft has pledged $60 million in software and training to help fund Internet kiosks that are being built in remote communities. The software maker has also allotted $10 million to train workers in small and mid-size businesses, along with an additional grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to the country's VAMOS MEXICO program to be used to move the country's libraries online.
Ohh, Vamos Mexico... the foundation from Fox's wife which has been investigated for allegued corruption practices.
Oh yes, B&M Gates foundation are God's messengers.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
I'm no MS apologist, but RMS is a wacko.
Is it me or is he kind of like the software equivalent of a religious fundamentalist (e.g. Taliban type)...?
Maybe if you stopped sucking your own cock every now and then, you'd have a better self-image.
Guys who can suck their own cock don't need better self-image.
Stallman's idea has caught on too, just not as well YET as the Microsoft one
It's kind of ironic that FOSS is gaining in popularity for a number of reasons, different from what Stallman is promoting it for.
Firefox has become a huge success mostly because it causes fewer *security* problems for average users. Linux and *BSD variants are mostly found on servers for performance/security/easy maintenance reasons. Linux is used to bring older PC's back to life, because it can be tailored to run well on systems where modern MS offerings wouldn't do. And it's found a new spot in the ultramobile PC market for the same reason, and because avoiding the MS tax makes a big difference when the hardware is cheap and the competition strong. From the looks of it, the 'freedom' or 'source code available' aspect isn't on top of anyones list.
Stallman is right, but he should realize that for average Janes and Joes, the 'freedom' and 'source code available' aspect matter *shit* when it comes to software. And these average Janes and Joes are who matters, because they're the biggest group of computer users (embedded systems aside).
Why not focus on practical advantages? "No nag screens or searching for cracks on shady websites". "No need to feel guilty if you didn't pay for it". "The authors would be happy if you pass a copy to your friends (and it's legal to do so)". "Promotes free standards so that computers inter-operate better (and make it easier for you swap hardware platform)". "Easier to fit on whatever hardware you've got". "No forced upgrades to the latest and shiniest that you don't really need". Are these reasons not good enough?
To Stallman I'd say: for each and every Jane or Joe that picks FOSS for these reasons, just be happy with the 'freedom' side-effect that comes with it (for them). Those who know what to look for, already appreciate your contribution. I know I do (free beer available if you ever travel to a place near me!).
Please explain how having software that works in the interests of the user where the user has the freedom to make the changes they want, limited chiefly by the user's willingness to alter it, is in any way similar to being called "a dumb slave".
Nobody is arguing against powerful reliable software. But when that software is proprietary instead of free one wonders for whom the software "just works"; who benefits from a program that spies on the user, keeps users from adding translations into the user's native language, disallows technical users (like programmers) from fixing bugs or adding features, or makes it a copyright infringement to share any version of the program with their fellows (whether improved or not, whether shared commercially or not). Powerful and reliable software can be bad for the user (see RMS' essay on "Why Open Source Misses the Point of Free Software" specifically the section called "Powerful, reliable software can be bad").
Digital Citizen
Richard Matthew Stallman designed and championed the GPL, the license under which Linux is provided. It is that umbrella philosophy that allows Linux to be the powerhouse that it is today. No company can use the work of others on Linux to engage in adversarial, tricky, sneaky behavior.
What is the link it's some blog crap? anyway I can't see an actual RMS quote. IF RMS is comenting that giving long term food aid to africa is a bad thing I would have to agree. It only leads to a large unsustainable population and greater suffering. Sure short term disaster relief and teaching people about birth controll and good farming helps people in africa. Also as the above posters have pointed out the charity is a tax dodge. The problem with RMS is that he is almost always right and yet gets mis represented due to the contriversy of his statments. He also has good reason to hate gates.
I appreciate your help in making my point that there are many illogical ignorant people in the world, but I really didn't need your help ;-)
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
To even imply that such philanthropy is harming the thirld world is nothing less than criminal.
No, what is criminal is that people like you take it for granted that dumping large amounts of "aid" on third world countries is going to help them. There is not a single nation in the world that has come out of poverty through external aid.
but you can go too far.
Yes, you did go too far. It's people like you that condemn millions to die every year by offering them handouts and creating dependencies instead of real economic development and progress. You're the real criminal.
I will resist the urge to moderate and instead will respond. It never occurs to people to use linux and donate the cost of windows to charity just like I go to the grocery store and don't buy the store brand and donate the difference in cost of the good stuff to charity. Its like how I dont bike to work and give the gas savings to charity. The people who buy windows instead of using linux for free "because a portion goes to charity" are really doing so because they dont know how to use linux and find that the cost of windows is worth the money vs taking the time to learn how to use linux. The money that windows makes goes towards research and paying for the salaries of everyone who works at msft and growing and maintaining the business and creating a return for shareholders. At no point has anything been stolen. Today, there are multiple OS that you can choose from. You can also choose not to have a computer. You can choose how much money you want to make by creating value for others through your work. I may not be worth $50 Billion, but I have the opportunity to do so. If I take advanatage of that opportunity (assuming I have done so through legal means, such as Bill Gates has done), it would be shameful for anyone to claim how I should be using that money. Why on earth should you not take advantage of people's ignorance? You dont make your own clothes, or grow your own food, or generate your own electricity, so you have to buy those things if you want them. Why should your computer software, a non-necessity for survival, be any different? If you can't write your own software or understand the software that is free, and I can, I should be charging you for software that you can understand and want to use. Until you reach the point where the price I charge is so high that you either learn to use the free stuff or go without, I damn well should take advantage of you. Gates has given 20 B to the endowment, and is currenlty otherwise worth 40-50. This would indicate he has given somewhere between 1/4 and 1/3 of his net worth (after taxes) to a perpetual charity. When you give to charity, you give to any charitable organization that you believe in. When you start an endowment, you get to name it whatever the hell you want. You seem to think that if Bill Gates suddenly gave 20 Billion to an anonymously named endowment that people wouldnt figure out who had done it, and that by naming it after himself it somehow reduces the effectiveness of the endowment. As if someone who made his money by being an opportunist suddenly doesnt know how to leverage the money from that charity. The obviously nuts, but well meaning richard stallman is still obviously nuts. He believes that because Bill Gates is no longer running MS in name, that suddenly proprietary software is going away. When an OS comes along that is free, easy to use for me, and easy to understand for everyone who sees/uses my computer, then proprietary software will begin to see its downfall. As long as the free market claims that software has value, people will pay for it. As long as people see the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation as a viable charity, it will be an additional reason to purchase windows. But lets be fair, it isnt the benefit for which they choose not to learn linux.
Its compatible with Diesm, and monotheistic religions both Abrahamic and non Abrahamic.
I guess that covers everybody.
http://outcampaign.org/
It seems like Microsoft has no problem dodging any real punishment in the US. The EU's antitrust actions against Microsoft, mild as they are, put the US' antitrust punishments to shame. So then it seems that Microsoft has no problem making more money as American individuals and organizations buy Microsoft's goods and services.
One of the major problems with this thread of the conversation is the assumption that illegally leveraging monopoly and violating the law around the world can be made right by philanthropically spending some of the ill-gotten gain. A more reasonable view of the larger issues here is to adequately punish the wrongdoing and recognize that saving people's lives, providing potable water, and decent universal health care (whether or not the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation does this) shouldn't depend on the whims of the wealthy.
Digital Citizen
fucking commie bastard
capitalism forever!
GOD BLESS AMERICA
Yeah, let's overlook that corporations are a creation of governments...
"Yeah!! Because lowering barriers-to-entry into the market and encouraging businesses to be competitive are so communistic.
Oh wait..."
You honestly think open source encourages competition? I removes all competition, which isn't the same thing.
Please do cite evidence of an organized movement for user's freedoms, preferably one which specifies what those freedoms are, prior to the free software movement RMS started.
Digital Citizen
You, sir, are a true American hero. I salute you.
Nonsense - free software is entirely free market.
People aren't giving all those free software based products away are they? Funny, I seemed to pay some money for my Asus eee 900 the other day, a linksys router from a while back, a dreambox satellite receiver and my gps system.
The distinction is that not all software is a product in itself (and I really wouldn't consider an OS to be a product, though it can enable and host many products).
Is it so bad that Microsoft is a business? I don't see Linux fans (myself included) citing Torvald's, or Stallman's, or any other core developers' helping the poor and sick of the world. For Mac fans, Jobs is notorious for his utter lack of charitable support, and has been criticized frequently over the years--usually in comparison to Gates, in fact.
Would it be too far to say that many of you can't distinguish between Microsoft, international software company, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, a charity? Because to use a phrase from my childhood... they're apples and oranges.
Also, why would they spend 100% of their money? That's poor business management, especially for a charity. When you rely largely on other people's donations, and you merely spend it, you'll end up with less money, doing a lot less good--because you'll use it all up and end up treading water for months or years.
To some of the people criticizing Gates' personal donations--do you think he's the only person donating? Google Warrenn Buffett. When a company like HP, or IBM, or any high profile business, gives money to a charity, do you seriously think they're doing it because they're saints? No. Its largely a political move to increase their standing in the community, as well as the added benefit of a tax write-off. Trying to single out one person or one company is utterly ridiculous when in the business world, its a pretty standard policy.
The fact is, nobody's looking to do Gates any favors--and if his charity were actually defrauding or mismanaging funds, believe me, they'd be called on it. If people have no problem taking on Microsoft legally, do you really think they'd hesitate on an "evil" charity that's just guzzling money for its own purposes?
Regardless of the reasons for donating, its obvious that Bill Gates gives a crap--which can't be said for most of the tech big wigs (I'm looking at you, Jobs!). On top of that, his personal involvement in the organization (and believe me, he is involved... Google it) is commendable.
Don't mix your negative views of Microsoft, the company, with your views of Bill Gates, the man.
(P.S.: How much money has RMS given to help his fellow man? Somehow, I don't see Linux doing much good to a starving Ethiopian child. Or an illiterate American child who can't afford to eat. Or... well, you get the point.
Furthermore, what percentage of _your_ money have you donated?)
More:
Quotes from Richard Matthew Stallman:
"Geeks like to think that they can ignore politics, that you can leave politics alone, but politics won't leave you alone."
"Fighting software patents one by one will never eliminate the danger of software patents, any more than swatting mosquitoes will eliminate malaria."
"Free software' is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, think of 'free' as in 'free speech,' not as in 'free beer'."
More quotes:
"People get the government their behavior deserves. People deserve better than that."
"Odious ideas are not entitled to hide from criticism behind the human shield of their believers' feelings."
"Injustice is happening now; suffering is happening now. We have choices to make now. To insist on absolute certainty before starting to apply ethics to life decisions is a way of choosing to be amoral." (Slashdot interview, 1 May 2000)
Its compatible with Diesm, and monotheistic religions both Abrahamic and non Abrahamic.
I guess that covers everybody.
I never said it did. Its not contradictory nor a dogma though. Also, remember, we acquired our collection of religions nutjobs because they were oppressed by Europe. We even came up with a couple of nutjob religions of our own.
--- Justin Dearing http://www.justaprogrammer.net/ We're just programmers.
And when Security and the police shot him to death...
And as Linus Torvalds held Stallman's dying body in his hands, RMS looked over his shoulder at the pages of code flying in the air and with his dying breath whispered:
"Perfect... They are all... perfect..."
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
It would be nice if Stallman were as outspoken about the Web based folks who use GPL software and because of his obsession with Gates and Microsoft, don't have to give back. The free software movement is more threatened by these folks, like Google, than it is by Microsoft. If software and our data move to the cloud and the big Web guys can use GPL but not give us back what they do and a chance to audit it, we're more threatened than we ever were by Microsoft.
He mentioned that while all of the biology and engineering tech were all IP'd up, the software side was FOSS -- Google Cytoscape to look up their software project. Predictably, he mentioned that Bill Gates was against this arrangement, and Lee Hood mentioned it took a lot of upper-management pep talk and persuasion to get his in-house software people to be happy about it as well.
I didn't bother asking Lee Hood questions about the software aspects as it was a biology symposium and the grad students were more interested in the biology aspects of the project, but I looked up Cytoscape, and guess what, it is written and extendable in Java. And this is largely on Bill and Melinda's dime.
It's about a communist as labour unions. In a free (information) society, people are free to gather and fix prices and demands collectively. And why shouldn't they ? This is not problematic, or at odds with capitalism at all. What /is/ problematic is that companies aren't allowed to do the same. There are laws against price cartels. Unless you're big oil, of course. Then it's all good and natural.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
Here is the Polish translation of this article: http://osnews.pl/problemem-nie-jest-gates-lecz-bariery-ktore-stworzyl/
Polish your GNU/Linux! http://polishlinux.org
Dude. They're called a paragraphs. Learn about them, and then maybe I'll read what you write.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
"Just because something benefits the society as a whole doesn't make it communistic---if it were, Soviet Russia must've been a paradise."
Do you even know the definition of communism? Here it is:
"a theory or system of social organization based on the holding of all property in common, actual ownership being ascribed to the community as a whole or to the state."
This sounds exactly like software licensed under the GNU license. It's owned by the community, rather than an individual (or the state...which in this case is the FSF).
Why is it so hard for the open source community to admit that it is software communism?
But if you don't have Linux, you're definitely NOT in control. Windows keeps "calling home", prevents you to copy a legitimately purchased DVD or CD thanks to all that DRM stuff. If you can still power off your computer and install Linux, you should be grateful that Bill and Steve haven't found yet a way to prevent you from doing that.
I am writing this on my Windows box. It is also my primary Linux box, but I use that part of it very rarely.
I have like... ummm MAYBE a dozen "legitimate" DVDs and about... uhh... ah lets say a couple of thousand (although its probably way more) of those other DVDs and CDs.
And out of ALL those "legitimate" disks only 2 are software. A Counterstrike CD I bought to be able to play online and a Battlefield 2 DVD I won in some online game.
WHO is stopping me doing WHAT?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
... what would free software copy then?
his Captain Obvious costume again.
Microsoft, Apple, and Adobe and others found ways to use open source software to their advantage using loopholes in open source licenses to close off the source for their commercial projects and putting limits on what code goes into the open source projects they use in their commercial software.
Bill and Melinda Gates charity foundation was created as a tax shelter for Bill and Melinda Gates to give away Microsoft and PC technology to ensure that Microsoft continues to have a high marketshare and forces the poor to buy more proprietary software and avoid open source software.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
You honestly think open source encourages competition? I removes all competition, which isn't the same thing.
Only in the sense that outcompeting someone so that they go to the wall removes competition. However:
Protection of competition does not mean protection from competitors.
Wikileaks, no DNS
From http://www.stallman.org/
"Richard Stallman" is just my mundane name; you can call me "rms"
He lets people refer to him as RMS.
Something tells me he has quite liberal views on the matters of proper protocol and titles.
Its not like he referred to Bill Gates as Billgatus of Borg. You know... as Slashdot still does?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Free software is ironically both communist-ic (yay collective good) and free-market-istic (the price of the software is the marginal cost of production of one copy, or, um, zero!) It's rather fun. Not too many markets work out that way.
What "collective good"? That might be the case if rms (or FSF) is proposing that software need to be released into the public domain, but even with copyleft, copyright is still individual property*.
That's a false dichotomy. If public good and individual rights are in "conflict", a free society isn't possible. Which I'm sure some power lusting types would hope we believe but it's just not true.
The FOSS world has found a way to drive public benefit via self interest. If I need software X and write it for my own benefit, I can GPL it and others can benefit "for free" with no loss to myself (as there is no "right to profit", profit is earned, not guaranteed).
Others in general (collectively as it were) can benefit from the results of my own selfish motivations. After all, I wanted/needed software X. I'm getting something out of my work. If you benefit, that's nice but wasn't my point. Put a million selfish motivations together and you can end up with entire operating systems that cost "nothing" (as it were) and anybody can benefit. Everybody gets to go along for the ride.
And I think the idea of the GPL is actually closer to the spirit of copyright as the Founders intended. The public can benefit from the selfish motivations of the individual. Copyright was intended to "encourage the useful arts and sciences". Not create the RIAA. Not give fat old men in executive offices yet another yacht. The idea was an inducement to the creative to create.
The best systems find ways to channel self interest in directions that are good for everybody at large. The "conflict" is an illusion and one that should be viewed with deep suspicion when pushed by some one or some group. After all, the systems in which you benefit but I lose are such as when you point a gun at me and take my wallet.
This guy never ceases to annoy me. PFO.
you might want to read this: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-gatesx07jan07,0,6827615.story?coll=la-home-headlines
Oh, please! Why do people persist with this "Free Software is communism" garbage? It is really annoying and not very intelligent.
The primary gripe associated with communism is the necessary element of autocracy, either by a small elite or society in general. Basically, the individual sacrifices his rights to society and is coerced to do so ("The good of the many outweighs the good of the few." If you want to use Star Trek terminology). Society works as a unit to produce for all, and individuals do not have the choice to not participate.
Free Software on the other hand is a hack to compensate for something that should never have existed in the first place: proprietary software. There is no universal, natural, moral or other Right embodied in copyright. It is a revocable privilege, originally limited to commercial transactions and limited in duration. While Congress has the power to create it, Congress is not required to. If it is revoked, no one can seek compensation. It is subordinate to Natural Rights such as those embodied in the Bill of Rights.
Copyright was never intended to cover something like software. Software is not an artistic work (although some people manage to make it artistic). It is a functional work. As such, a monopoly incentive is unnecessary. Businesses will pay for software to be developed even if they cannot restrict its distribution by any legal means. People will write software because they want their computers to do things they cannot currently do. This will never change, and the monopoly privilege only inhibits these processes by forcing the constant reinvention of the wheel.
Copyright also restricts a natural and universal right necessary for every Free Society: Free Speech. Copyright makes certain speech controllable, which makes it NOT Free. Liberal Democracies are literally inconceivable in the absence of Free Speech. In the absence of copyright, however, few things in our current world -- except for millionaire record execs -- are inconceivable.
Monopolies are anti-capitalist. Monopolies, like copyright, are a relic of Feudal system that the Revolution of 1776, the one that everybody was celebrating yesterday, toppled. This is the autocratic system where monarchs got to say who could do business with whom and where and when. The establishment of the United States happened as a reaction to monopolies and other trade restrictions. Unless one claims the Authors of the Constitution of the United States were communists, nothing that is anti-monopoly, like Free Software, can be called "communist".
Therefore, the true communists are people who would treat information -- speech -- like property, people who use the term "Intellectual Property". These are the people who wish to assert Feudal monopoly privileges in order to gain an unfair market advantage and charge unreasonable fees for their services. This are people who want the state to enforce their predatory taxation on society. Bill Gates is precisely this sort of communist, and his attempts to bring 1984 to our desktops (no, I am not inclined to provide a list. There should be no shortage of evidence on the net for the curious) is precisely the opposite of Freedom and Free Software.
Communists are people who do not believe in Free Software.
All data is speech. All speech is Free.
Careful, a similar argument was once used (and occasionally still is) to claim that communism with its central planning was superior economically because the competition of capitalism involved wasteful duplication of effort. The claim proved a bit flawed when put to the test.
Good point, however, I'd say that FOSS promote more competition, because it removes barriers of entry for competitors. May the best project win!
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
And if you get the public sector to solve these problems, you will find that the money will be spent on luxury offices and furniture, govnernment pension schemes, staff motivation jollies, banquet style power lunch meetings and chauffeurs, all for career beauracrats. Sometimes charities and foundations are better for such things.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Fantastic response to the gp's same old complaints.
Thanks for taking the time to type it up. People really need to get some perspective with the whole "MS is evil" and you eloquently explain this point.
Ditto, Gnome vs. MSWin.
Obviously the original strategy was to be familiar to MS users, so they would be comfortable switching. But, that would only work if the competition stood still. And, now there are online replacements like Google Docs.
Too bad. The best thing to come out of OO is the insight to be better instead of the same.
"Less money spent on software = more money for charity" Ahahahahahahahahaha. How many of you eggheads using Free Software has actually given the equivalent amount if you used proprietary software to charity? Huh? huh? WAHAHAHA.
The foundation is a tax shell and not doing "great things". The foundation makes poor people even more poor. It is used to enforce the monopoly of Microsoft: It gives away free pc's with Windows but included is an expensive support contract with MS.
It's not that Bill invented a businessmodel, he used an illegal one (monopoly).
Wrong. It's not a tax shell (btw, you mean shelter not shell) if you give away almost all your wealth. Think before you post.
"* Forks and other free competition can arise (the market is contestable)."
as an aside, innovation is also stifled with free software. Look at VNC as an example. Almost all of the remote viewing software packages out there are based on the original source..which is sloppy, buggy, and not very efficient. If it was closed source, many of these same companies would have been forced to develop their own version (which may have been better), which would have better for consumers.
" * Non-free software that is sufficiently good as to be worth the price can arise and/or persist.
* Once uncompetitive products have gone to the wall, terms and conditions (including price) do not change.
Protection of competition does not mean protection from competitors."
What is the point of trying to compete when you lose your edge as soon as you release your product/application?
I'm tired of people making the leap from free software to communism. Yes it's a socialist concept, sharing with the community, but it's also a libertarian concept, protecting freedoms as in free speech.
Libertarian Socialism? Compare and contrast with Anarchism, but anarchism in a world where there is significantly fewer resources to fight over.
What's the value of information that you don't know?
Compaq made IBM clones.
Clones create a competitor in the market place.
To remain domninant, you must either be cheaper, faster, better or any combination thereof.
Compare that to Windows: you can't recreate the operations (see all the "Photoshop isn't on Linux so I can't move" posts) where you have a monopoly grant. No competition, no free market pressure, stagnation.
MS software has FUCK ALL to do with computers getting cheaper. PC's and their competition between hardware manufacturers made computers cheap.
Exactly. If it weren't for proprietary software, from whence would the free software movement have copied TCP/IP, HTTP, and a decent web browser?
Oh, wait...
Another story on the BEEB today typifies what Gates & Family do with the supposed philanthropy:
moral corruption of the medical industry
RMS is not a fool. He is also right 99.999% of the time too.
Stallman exhibits a breathtaking level of paranoia and probably believes Gates AND Microsoft black helicopters are flying around him with super-sensitive microphones so they can be in a position to dominate the world with their cabal of confederates and governments.
Also, he sleeps with a katana under his bed.
http://xkcd.com/225/
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Microsoft attacked him first.
An authour of a piece of GPL software can re-release it under a different license, assuming of course he is the only once who has been working on it. And it's also possible to withhold your own changes to someone else's GPL program, if you're using it internally.
What's the value of information that you don't know?
I read what he wrote because it was interesting. It's too bad that you had to pick nits instead of countering his argument with your own points.
In English, we call that either a "cheap shot" or a "cop out."
Viable Slashdot alternatives: https://pipedot.org/ and http://soylentnews.org/
All rights begin with our property rights
How very English of you. So, is your Right to Free Speech based on "property rights"?
All data is speech. All speech is Free.
Really? Why thats new.
*yawn*
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Microsoft actually has a long history of its higher level employees contributing to or creating charitable contributions. For example, thanks to Ballmer's research, today's average office chair is now 73% more aerodynamic.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
...removes all competition, which isn't the same thing.
it doesn't quite remove all competition, but it does replace most of it with collaboration instead. To me, this is one of the best points of Open Source.
What's the value of information that you don't know?
Not troll
they give them "money for the poor" with the condition of investing in birth control (because we can't have poor people have many kids, think of the poor single mothers with 10 children!).
You sound like a pro-lifer who has been out of touch with this issue since the nineties. The US president has for the past eight years ignored Congressional demands and international treaty obligations to provide the US share of funding for UNFPA, solely because that organization educates women receiving its aid as to ALL of their reproductive health options. UNFPA, oddly enough, also acts a conduit for money to provide education and economic opportunities for the women receiving their aid: the single most effective way known to mankind to improve the overall economic status of poverty-stricken groups.
Uh, "if it looks roughly mouse-shaped according to my infra-red sensitive pit, eat it"? --Chris Burke 09-08-10
I liken it to a king tossing silver coins to the rabble around his carriage--but doing it only when the press is around.
Right... Like all those kings that created their software companies and made money actually building something instead of "collecting" it from that very same rabble or stealing it from their neighbors.
Yeah... sure... If Bill Gates used his money to make himself a giant golden pyramid. Or Taj Mahal.
Instead, motherfucker is giving away money to strangers.
That is so fucking evil.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
It's amazing how many people are pretending to be charitable. It's amazing how well that works with the public. Basically, someone who made billions of dollars with tricky, sneaky, unethical business methods can gain a positive image by spending a little of that money on public relations.
So Bill Gates is a ruthless capitalist who have built an empire by screwing over the empires of other ruthless capitalists? I have a hard time seeing how that can be "more evil" than it is "good" to give away that same money to people that actually need them. It is not like Netscape's presidents are sleeping on the streets because evil Microsoft bundled IE with Windows.
Football Odds
You hippies just sit here salivating for one of these articles to spew your brain diarrhea all over the page, huh?
Yes, many will not concur with Richard, but the truth is that the foundation IS Bill Gates PR arm. I give you the example of Mexico's enciclomedia project (which was an absolute failure): with the simplest menace of the country's strategy of including linux as a base platform for millions of computers for elementary schools, the B&MG foundation (after a lightning trip of ballmer and gates to personally talk to President Fox) donated 40 million dollars worth of boxes with a simple, little string attached: it HAS to run Microsoft Windows.
Thats not charity. Thats taking care of brand positioning in the future.
Now of course the foundation ALSO does some great things, with no strings attached. But when it comes to technology.... well, they just do what the founder needs them to do.
NO SIG
Yeh, like Apache is a copy if IIS or something?
"charity" = very obvious tax evasion scheme
as used in the past by -
rockefeller
ford
howard hughes
etc
- give up "ownership" but retain control. Sweeeeet.
Actually, Foo is simultaneously right and wrong regarding the nature of Free Software.
The reason is that it's not "communist-ic" but it is strongly "libertarian" in philosophy.
That is because licenses such as the GPL only bind developers who voluntarily use Free Software as a starting point for their own efforts, and does not inhibit others who choose not to participate. It does, however, require that those who do participate in the development of the code and direct derivitave works follow the rules and provide their work back to the community. It is actually the license fee to do so.
We tend to view fees as monetary flows from "Party A" to "Party B", but Free Software is more akin to a "barter economy" instead.
Any scheme that is "communist" or "socialist" requires mandatory participation. A "communist-ic" scheme would require that even from-scratch code would immediately become a publicly-owned work.
It is noteworthy that Free Software does allow anyone to republish and distribute copies at any desired price, so long as the source code is made available for no charge or basically "at cost".
It's important to further clarify that sometimes terms become muddy in popular use.
"Communist" and "Socialist" really mean "slave to the commune, with no option whatsoever."
The term "free market" is a market without external pressures of whatever kind used to create artificial barriers to entry or change.
"Libertarian" indicates the individual choice of who each individual chooses to participate with. It is based on voluntary cooperation and participation, not coersion and force, but does recognize defense.
In practice, all these get jumbled together, shaken, stirred, bent, folded, spindled and mutilated until none of them are recognizable.
Are you so ignorant that you truly believe that if MS never existed the world would be a hugely better place? Do you truly believe free software is the answer to the world's ill's? I've never seen such ignorant remarks in my life. What about the starving, poor people before MS existed or became a monopoly? Was that IBM then crushing all those people? Do you truly believe in places like Ethopia or anywhere else where the starvation and poor is so rampant that free software will some how feed them?
God I could rant on this all day but the people would never understand how the real world exists. Free software is great but my god to think the way you guys think that free software will magically fix everything is so ludicrous. And to attack the Gates foundation (feel how you will about gates they do good work) is simply stupidity at its finest. I guess people would prefer that he kept his money to himself and not try to help anyone at all. Yea, that's brilliant logic there for you imbeciles.
Get over yourselves, get over free software, join the f'ing real world and actually try to help people yourselves. Travel to those countries and take a real look at what software would or would not do for them. Guess what?! NOTHING ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. software will not help them one single bit. you getting off your lazy ass and helping them and donating your own money instead of complaining about other people who actually trying to help.
My god I've seen ignorance on this site before this is takes the cake
Tell me, what magnanimous acts of philanthropy has RMS performed lately?
He might be a skilled programmer, but as far as his ideas go... he's got so many stars in his eyes that he's completely lost touch (if he ever had it) with the real world.
Dude. Its called one paragraph. Breaking the text up doesn't make a difference to your ability to read. If your screen is so small that you can't read my above post without losing your concentration/place, you should either stop reading things on your cell phone or take your ADD medication.
It's called fascism (in the Mussolini form), and basically is a merger of government and business. It's a centrally planned and controlled system with private ownership and profits.
Really, it is an oligarchy run by elitists, and is not terribly different from feudalism.
Stallman has a personal hatred for Bill Gates, and is making himself look stupid.
This is like the worst argument EVER against FOSS's NATURAL way of promoting competition.
Without VNC, my friend, we would ALL be FUCKING STUCK with citrix: a sole vendor solution that sort-of, kind-of, works for basically ONE platform.
With VNC, MANY vendors can enter that arena and compete on the same base differentiating their product as they go along.
Now the trick here is that by your thinking, VNC shouldve been closed source to "compete" with citrix. But, you see, competition is almost never really exclusively a product vs. product issue. Competition happens in the market: brand positioning, sales capacity, market prescence, all of that is more important than the solution itself (if this wasnt the case, microsoft wouldve died with winME).
However, if you pick up an IBM HS21 bladecenter, youll see it integrates VNC as the thingie (horrendous by the way) through which you work with your blade servers.
If you pick up plenty of remote administration solutions that include seamless remote installing and filecopying, those include the VNC protocol as well, but add it other values...
Etc, etc, etc. The idea of remote viewing thingies in computers is NOT a citrix idea. Its NOT a UNIX idea. Its NOT a windows idea. For christ sakes, LICKLIDER's team (talk about ancient history), had already forseen it!
Propietary software provides imaginary walls to protect imaginary "inventions" that are nobodie's in the first place: it stiffles innovation by allowing basically pirates of other people ideas and granting them monopolies over basic simple stuff that are OBVIOUS WAYS one would use a computer since the DAMNED THING was invented properly (read Lickliders essays, in particular: The Computer as a Communications Device... we are talking 1962 at the latest, if i recall correctly).
NO SIG
Forced? No. Made it a much better choice in the short term with the intention of bending them over long term, sure. Took advantage of corrupt leadership and politicians, sure. Evil, sure. Forced, no.
Much like fixing what Microsoft has done too America requires fixing our politicians, fixing the 'problems' Microsoft has caused other countries requires fixing the politicians.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
tl;dr
Quite frankly, your misunderstanding of economics is astounding. If you misunderstood everything like that, you would turn your computer off to read Slashdot.
Even if Microsoft products have a higher TCO, it isn't in up front product cost. It's in hands-on maintenance and administration? Who do you think is going to eventually and inevitably do that?
Local workers. Therefor, training and other economies are created.
Without Microsoft and Apple tirelessly attacking the problem of computers at home, and Dell supplying the means, free software would be an exercise in University halls and the end result would be emacs, nethack and nethack inside emacs.
You'll understand this when you get older.
What is the point of trying to compete when you lose your edge as soon as you release your product/application?
This is a problem with competition in general. Without free software, the competition is less intense, so that short-term niches can appear. Perhaps there is an argument for competition to be less intense, so that the marketplace has an opportunity to anneal.
However, free software still provides competition; that the competition is perhaps too effective doesn't contradict that basic fact.
As competition, free software is interesting in that its wage is non-monetary, this leads many who don't realy grok supply and demand, and the roots of money in barter to consider such non-monetary wages as being somehow against the spirit of capitalism. Such distortion is then used to link volentarism with oppressive regimes, so as to present the exercise of freedom as anti-freedom.
Pretty bizarre, if you ask me...
Wikileaks, no DNS
Compare the size of community power between Linux and BSD.
Which one's the Daddy?
BSD has NO EXCUSE because, as you pointed out, it's been there a HECK of a lot longer.
So why hasn't it caught on? Because you're GIVING your work away.
Because of the BSD license.
Linux brought more people to it because it grew from ALL the additions made to it, not just the ones that someone decided, after all, to donate back.
And how was that achieved? GNU.
Who made that?
RMS.
So "there was an open source system before RMS" is ridiculous. There was, but it was powerless and it brought NOBODY together. RMS and GNU *did*.
I would mod you to the moon.
NO SIG
Am I the only one who noticed that the foundation didn't exist until Bill married Melinda. Personally, I think right after the honeymoon, maybe during, she took him out to the woodshed and he finally grew up. I wonder what she used, an ash shovel (mclintock) or a cane as I doubt bare handed would have done much. She's largely the driving force behind the charitable end given Bill's history of screwing everybody where money is concerned. By the way, if you take all the customers and enemies/friends that Bill Gates/Microsoft has robbed over the last thirty years, we've already contributed to the foundation plenty. And yes it does good things, but considering the connections and resources available it could do a lot more, never mind interleaving with all the other foundations. And has anyone else noticed, considering the sheer number of foundations around that we still have lots of problems?
RMS is largely about the ethical high ground and dareing us to get there. As the software freedom evangelist he does quite well. Of course, it does get old for us regulars but he's not aiming at us and even we need a reminder once in a while.
The yuppie generation, which these people are a part of, should get a good kick in the teeth, starting with government, considering they're in charge and blowing it for the rest of us. George Carlin described you people right. And much of this giving smells more like tax evasion and after mid-life guilt. If you want proof, just ask if you would donate if the financial/emotional gains didn't exist.
He failed to create the kernel because he believes in a misguided idea from academia called the micro kernel. This allowed Linux Torvalds to create the Linux kernel "just for fun". Torvalds is a talented kernel engineer, but he does not have the vision necessary to create the GPL or the GNU project. Witness the Bitkeeper Debacle.
Gates on the otherhand, is a money grubbing horse thief, that has screwed a long list of people and companies on his way to becoming a billionare. His company is a convicted monopolist. Almost everyone that has anything to do with computers (that is everyone, whether they know it or not,) has been hurt by Bill Gates.
History of free software
Meaning of free software history
Mirco kernel debate
YHBT. YHL. HAND.
ROTFLMAO
I'm not sure what is more hillarious:
Thanks for the laughs!
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Just because something benefits the society as a whole doesn't make it communistic---if it were, Soviet Russia must've been a paradise.
A -> B != B -> A.
I'll agree with your definition of totalitarian communism, but I would not equalize socialism with it.
Also libertarian simply means that one believes that individual rights and freedoms come before the rights and freedoms of the community as whole. So for example restricting what items one can bring on an airplane (taking away of individual freedom) to prevent mid flight terrorist attack (and protect the larger community consisting of people on the flight and possibly ground) is against libertarian view.
However, one can be perfectly libertarian and socialist in outlook. There is nothing wrong with valuing individual rights and freedoms but also supporting national health care and welfare, which are institutions made for the common good. In the end everyone ends up better off with these. Note that these are not rights nor freedoms. These are simply institutions designed to work well for all and not just economic elite.
Look at majority of Western Europe, which is mostly libertarian and socialist esp Scandinavian countries, Austria, France with 5 week vacations, national health care, and individual rights and freedoms.
As the island of our knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.
I view it more as socialism than communism.
"a theory or system of social organization based on the holding of all property in common, actual ownership being ascribed to the community as a whole or to the state."
But in the case of free software, what is held in common? The rights to the software, perhaps, but not the individual copies thereof. I may use gcc without getting approval from the People's Committee for Software Development.
If you bought a physical object one of whose components was patented, would you still not own the object, even if someone else held the patent?
RMS continues to be one of the strongest voices in advocating the how and why of open-source. It's a great thing we have him, and GNU.
Yeah. And Microsoft encourages fairness and competition.
I haven't read any RMS since the 90's but this bbc article is starkly misleading. The core ideas behind FSF were great, but the rhetoric in that article sounds purposefully misleading.
If a great ideas can stand on their own why not just say it clearly? Why qualify free as in "bar nuts"? Why not just come up with a better description? The FSF wants 'liberty' not 'no-cost'.
I see two possibilities for this seemingly everlasting confusion:
1. RMS is lying to himself and won't admit that the confusion benefits the FSF when people hear 'no-cost'.
2. RMS knows that the FSF benefits when people hear 'no-cost' and has lost sight of communicating the real message.
Some people may care less about liberty then getting something without paying. However, RMS's actions show someone who is frankly riding a long standing dishonesty by continually conflating no-cost with liberty.
I happen to believe he is actually blind to this. Yes RMS clarifies, but does anyone really believe that someone who reads a headline that says 'free' in relation to software thinks of anything other than 'no cost'. Why not actually just say what you mean and speak of software liberty?
How very English of you. So, is your Right to Free Speech based on "property rights"?
I own my person, my vocal cords and my thoughts. Now that doesn't necessarily mean that I own your "copy" of my thoughts after I tell them to you. However, if you consider speech commerce (in the general sense) then my statement holds true.
--- Justin Dearing http://www.justaprogrammer.net/ We're just programmers.
Microsoft software is no cheaper than it has always been (why the fuck does Office still cost so much?). All these cheap computers exist because of Michael Dell, who turned the manufacturing industry on its ear. He deserves most of the credit for the commoditization of computer hardware.
It encourages competition in other areas. For example, well-known OSS vendors compete on the quality of their service.
All rights begin with our property rights [...]
That's a very, very skewed point of view. After that, I wouldn't be surprised if you were to vote for your current president again, if you had the choice.
who have billions in endowments and yet sit on it? The numbers than some of the ivy league colleges have and essentially sit on is staggering. Yet the costs of college keep going up further locking many out of the loop. Those billions are just as "shady" invested as anything B&G do. Hell I bet I could designate shady anyone's investment, if your only intent is to vilify its damn easy to do.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
And he slips in a claim that the Bill and Melinda Gates charity foundation doesn't really help the poor; it just pretends to while actually subjecting them to greater harm.
And how does Richard Stallman help the poor outside of the FSF work? I guess all the ranting he does on his website about harry potter books, cell phones, lets boycott "everything" and removing passwords from their WiFi hubs will help out poor people.
I can never understand why people call this guy an activist, the activists I know actually do something about things they feel strongly about rather than talk about it or get others to do it for them; which from what his web site seems to promote.
So putting aside the software stuff what has this guy even done that is meaningful? I mean if he is going to attack the Gates' on things they do outside of MS time for him to fess up to what he as done for humanity outside of the FSF.
Do you even know the definition of communism? Here it is:
Did you even read what I wrote? Here it is:
... but even with copyleft, copyright is still individual property*.
Yes, I know precisely what communism means, which is why I brought up the point that copyright is an INDIVIDUAL property. The copyright holder has special rights and privileges that no one else has.
I for one believe that copyright should be abolished (which would, to the propagandists at least, be communistic), but I've never heard or read FSF or rms saying the same.
That's a false dichotomy. If public good and individual rights are in "conflict", a free society isn't possible. Which I'm sure some power lusting types would hope we believe but it's just not true.
We are using "good" in two different ways. Perhaps I should've said "collective goods". If some goods (products, THINGS) are held as a collective (as it is in a communist state), then by definition the same goods cannot be claimed by individuals.
At no point in my life would I claim that doing good things for the public is in conflict with self-interest---heck, that's the basis of capitalism, that individuals acting in self-interest could make the society, as a whole, better.
Well no, GPL is not free-market since it relies on copyright. If someone violates the GPL and puts GPL'd code on P2P without the license, and I download this code, modify it, and redistribute it, I should not be bound by the GPL. Yet, RMS will use the state enforcement of copyright protection to prevent me from doing that.
I do believe it is morally wrong to violate the GPL, but I also believe it is even worst to legally enforce the GPL, the GPL should remain honor based.
As for RMS, while his scheme is somehow voluntary (somehow since it relies on copyright enforcement), he still has a lot of marxist overtones, especially in his belief that access to the source code is somehow a positive right.
\u262D = \u5350
Back in my day we had a term called Robber Baron to describe exactly what Bill Gates was. Well not really my day as the term dates back to 12th century Germany but you get the picture. These people used illegal and immoral tactics to amass their fortunes.
Some of the big Robber Barons of the Industrial Age went and used their ill-gotten money later in life in philanthropy and are remembered today as people who helped the community even though they destroyed many lives getting to the top.
Compare Bill Gates to John D. Rockefeller. Both used illegal monopolies to become the richest man in the world. Both then used their fortunes as charity to try to buy the public opinion. Bill Gates is the Robber Baron of the Information Age.
I'm not going to say that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation hasn't done any good, because they have. I will say that the foundation still clings to Gates' practices of being shady. Also the idea that giving out Windows/Office licenses to the poor is a charitable donation is about as patronizing as Rockefeller's practice of giving dimes to children.
Great propoganda speech. Too bad it doesn't add up.
Communism as an economic model has nothing against free speech. The bulk of your post is your insistance that intellectual property and copyrights are evil. Why?
Programmers deserve to get paid as well. You insist proprietary software should never exist and that level of fanaticism isn't based on logic. Proprietary and OSS both have their places.
I often advocate for the use of OSS, but true freedom is allowing a developer to protect their works and profit from them, or give them openly as they choose to do so.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Has anyone seen Stallman and Michael Moore in the same room at the same time?
/LabMonkey09
No they're not. Corporations largely predate the existence of formal governments. They're a natural way to reduce the transaction costs in doing business. At the very least they exist since feudal time, when the lord couldn't care less about "creating" some form of organizations.
\u262D = \u5350
NPOs are only required to spend like 2-3% of their money doing good deeds, and that is precisely what their foundation does. Meanwhile, 95%+ of their money is spent investing in companies that harm the same communities they are trying to help. The LA Times did a massive set of features on the foundation. They showed that they were financing companies that kept living conditions down, and spread carcinogens.
Even worse, it has been suggested (though not proven) that the NPO is a massive front. If a corporation is willing to sign exclusive Microsoft deals, they get kickbacks, in that the foundation will invest in your corporation. People are donating money to the foundation thinking they are doing good deeds with the money, when the money is being used to strong-arm corporate contracts.
It has also been speculated that the foundation has strong-armed governments along similiar lines. Use our products, or don't receive aid.
In conclusion, the foundation does good, and there is no denying that. The question is, does the foundation do more harm than good? The LA Times team that investigated them sure thinks so, and they aren't crazy OSS zealots or anything.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Labor unions have little to do with free association and cartelization. Labor unions rely on politics to gain privileges.
For example, in NYC when a company needs to renovate an office space, they are forced by law to hire union labor. That's what unions are about.
Obviously there are some corporate rent seeking bastards as well, no doubt, but
a) That does not justify the behavior of labor unions since their practice harms innocents.
b) The view that labor union are about cartelization to rise the price of labor is very very naive.
\u262D = \u5350
There was a radio show in my area that spoke about philanthropy and how people like Bill Gates were using they're influence to change the type of aid that goes to some of these areas. The show gave as example that Foundations like B&M's would send medical aid to countries to help them and actually force this over the people (by people I mean those that are trying to get the funds to help these poor souls) that know what is needed to give proper aid. For instance, foreign aid is used to help people that are sick in Haiti from diseases. But the doctors out there would all stop their trade if someone would fund to fix the water supply line, they know that the diseases are caused by such things as lack of clean water. It's also a fact that doing this would cost a fraction of the cost of treating the diseases yet no money is being placed where it would do more good. So in that respect people like Bill Gates look like they are doing good and may even believe they are but haven't the vision to do what would be most beneficial.
NO. The founding father who fought for copyright specifically did it so the author of the works can make money, and the public can benefit. Just not at the same time.
Interesting that the 'poor widow' who needed to make from their work argument was trotted out.
What tge founding fathers Did Not Want, was anybody to be able to lock up copyright for a long period of time.
That was due to the damage copyright was doing to English society for the past 100 years before America was created.
From what I have read, I'm pretty sure if the founding fathers saw what's happening today, copyright in the constitution wouldn't be there, and they might have gone with one of the original idea to outlaw corporations; which also was doing series harm in England.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
That would be a died in the wool socialists primary gripe about communism (the autocracy that is).
Most free market thinkers consider the lack of property rights (property rights cover many good things) to be the primary gripe with all socialist schemes (including communism).
They would follow that autocratic control is a characteristic of all command economies (socialist economy being a subset of command economy, which also includes many dictatorial governments). The only question is the autocracy's reach (Heavy Industry? Farming? Transport? Food?).
In any case you don't know what you are talking about. Business software is developed to gain competitive advantage. If it were free the advantage would disappear and hence the software would not be developed and progress would not be made.
Besides code is art. That is all there is to say about that. The fact that sign painters exist doesn't make painting not an art.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I work for an organization (www.fhi.org) that gets quite a bit of money from the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation for any number of health related studies and/or programs. For him to say what he did shows that he has no idea what he is talking about, as the programs they sponsor serve a definite need.
No, the foundation cannot solve all the issues that these people face. Whether it is a lack of viable employment, stable food/water supply, sanitary living conditions, or just a dictator who generally opresses them, their problems are much greater than just general health.
I've got news for you Richard: Open source software isn't the solution to their problems either.
Ever feel like you are driving the getaway car?
I was agreeing with you until you pulled the nationalistic claptrap. 1776 hadn't anything to do with a feudal system, and Britain at the time was a capitalist economy, and the US obviously followed in those footsteps. 1776 was about completely different things -- the question of self-determination, to be blunt.
well said, but it doesn't go down well here at slashdot. The problem with it, is that it doesnt allow people to justify the downloading of all the hollywood movies and music and games that they want without paying for them.
The mindset of the anti-copyright lobby is basically jumping through whatever mental hoops are needed, regardless of implication, as long as you get to download spiderman 3 without paying.
This stallman guy is just as bad, apparently he would rather the people who got malaria jabs thanks to bill gates would just fucking die, so he can stay in his sad mental comfort zone where TEH MICROSOFT ARE TEH EVIL.
I don't know why the fuck people don't see stallman for the delusional and ignorant hippy that he is. What the fuck has he ever done to help the poor?
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
The catch with Copyright in the US is that it was originally 14 years, but laws have pushed it all the way up to the author's lifetime plus 70 years (or a flat 95 years on works made for hire, such as movies and music).
Unfortunately, when Eldred v. Ashcroft pointed out that this was contrary to the purpose of copyright as laid down by the Constitution, the Supreme Court gave a ruling that as long as the length was not infinite, it was not in violation of the Constitution.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
Simple question; simple answer: because some slashdotters, like any other group, regroup a lot of annoying and not very intelligent people. ;)
I mean, personally.
I don't think it's all that many.
You see you're equating what BG's *personally* done with what Hitler is responsible for.
Which is, not to put too fine a point on it, bollocks.
That you're saying OTHER PEOPLE will say this (which hasn't happened) is self-serving and egotistical in the extreme. You can't put words in the mouths of others.
No, bug Spyglass basically was (on the streets, that is -- basically bankrupted). Remember, that's the original IE engine that Microsoft promised to give a royalty for each copy of IE.. which they then decided would be 0%. Nice hmm?
The specific complaint (on page one of the story) they have is about an Italian oil company that (horrors) runs refineries in Nigeria.
These refineries further flare (horrors) small fractions at the top of their distillation towers. Refineries around the world do this.
The LA times story reflects their own luddite thinking more then anything.
Investing in the third world is a good thing.
I refuse to send any more revenue (via ad serves) to the hacks at the LA times.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
The GPL has nothing to do with the community. GPL'd software is owned by the creator, and certain (nonexclusive) rights are given to the customer. If Alice writes some GPL'd software for Bob, and Bob pays Alice then the community doesn't get anything - Bob gets some software and the rights to modify and redistribute it, Alice gets some money.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
And here is why you are wrong.
You are assuming that CEO's are concerned with the welfare of others, specifically the next CEO.
If a Pharma companies found a cure for AIDS, the CEO and board would make BILLIONS for themselves in bonuses because there profits would skyrocket.
Sure in 5 years when the money started to level off they would make less profit,but why would the CEO give a rip?
God help the CEO if the shareholders found out he withheld a cure, because there shares prices would triple.
In short, there is no motivation for the people the run companies to kept it away from the public.
5 years would be very quick too. It would take years and years to get everyone cured. My point would be true if id manufacturing and distribution was instantaneously.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Except that he screwed over plenty of other people who weren't "ruthless capitalists", namely, 99% of those who's ever owned a computer during the past 20 years, thanks to their monopolistic practices towards hardware manufacturers who certainly didn't take the cost of Windows licenses from their profit margins.
If you really wanted to keep your "anti-business" stance (as illogical as it may be), you should be praising IBM who's found a way to drain huge amounts of money from many large businesses, while leaving "mom & pop" stores, and your average computer user, alone.
No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
No they're not. Corporations largely predate the existence of formal governments. They're a natural way to reduce the transaction costs in doing business. At the very least they exist since feudal time, when the lord couldn't care less about "creating" some form of organizations.
And yet they have to be chartered by a government or they wouldn't exist.
And when XP is no longer supported by the hardware available, you have to pay to retrain.
When XP is no longer able to be activated, what will you use?
You have to pay to train whenever you move.
But, because Linux is open, you can keep older versions going for FAR longer. Especially if your hardware is open too. It can then come down to:
is it cheaper to retrain to a newer linux with support for Y built in or is it cheaper to get any drivers for new hardware backported
Actually Microsoft is communistic software.
Because when you live on total communist country, you dont own anything what you need to use to get your work done, it is owned by "the community" what is actually "owned" by those who controls what is done and when, leaders.
You dont own the software what you use when you use software from Microsoft or Adobe, you just "borrow" it from them and you only pay license to USE it.
In open source world, you can edit the code as you like without releasing changes, as long you dont share/sell etc it. but the community owns the rights to changes if you are traing to get handicap to drive other competitors away from market, so it's easier to stay on market and it lives better ways.
On Closes Source/Propietar license etc, world, those who has the money and power, controls everything and users are those who loose. Now the world is like Prince Johann is on control, but Robin Hood (Open Source) has come to save us and brings possibilities etc, for poor people.
to be able to comment on whether another organization that intends to help the poor actually does so or not.
if put into plain logical terms, you dont need to be doing the same thing, be in the same place, experience the same thing to be able to comment, speak, or even do research or put legislation on them.
lets provide examples :
you dont need to be a survivor of the holocaust to be able to say that holocaust has happened and it was a horrible thing, because we know from verifiable data that it was.
you dont need to have actually been on the moon to be able to say moon's surface is covered with mostly fine grained sand/dust.
you dont need to actually be someone in the bush administration to criticize their actions.
you can name other examples.
therefore if stallman, or any other person, thinks that some other group/party is not delivering what they promise, from their observance of proceedings, not only what they do in real life, what their foundation does are irrelevant, but they are entitled to their opinion just like every other asshole around the world. not that stallman and others are assholes though. but you get my meaning.
Read radical news here
In October 2006 the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation was split into two entities: the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust, which manages the endowment assets and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which "... conducts all operations and grantmaking work, and it is the entity from which all grants are made." Also announced was the decision to "... spend all of [the Trust's] resources within 50 years after Bill's and Melinda's deaths." This would close the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust and effectively end the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. ... Warren Buffett has stipulated that the proceeds from the Berkshire Hathaway shares he still owns at death are to be used for philanthropic purposes within 10 years after his estate has been settled.
The plan to close the Foundation Trust is in contrast to most large charitable foundations that have no set closure date. This should lead to lower administrative costs over the years of the Foundation Trust's life and ensure that the Foundation Trust not fall into a situation where the vast majority of its expenditures are on administrative costs, including salaries, with only token amounts contributed to charitable causes. Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
I wonder where you get this idea that OSS is not being taken seriously from...
Gates on the otherhand, is a money grubbing horse thief, that has screwed a long list of people and companies on his way to becoming a billionare. His company is a convicted monopolist.
i dare anyone who will be chanting praise about bill gates, to debunk the bold fact, and the especially underlined fact, before they even start their chanson.
Read radical news here
I'm no fan of RMS but I fail to find anything contentious in what he's written. It's all very bleeding obvious. To the point of being truisms. What RMS has done is use the platform to promote his own goals. Once. Again. So big. Yawn.
NO. The founding father who fought for copyright specifically did it so the author of the works can make money, and the public can benefit. Just not at the same time.
Interesting that the 'poor widow' who needed to make from their work argument was trotted out.
What tge founding fathers Did Not Want, was anybody to be able to lock up copyright for a long period of time.
That was due to the damage copyright was doing to English society for the past 100 years before America was created.
From what I have read, I'm pretty sure if the founding fathers saw what's happening today, copyright in the constitution wouldn't be there, and they might have gone with one of the original idea to outlaw corporations; which also was doing series harm in England.
I suspect you misunderstand what I was saying. The Founders meant to create incentive for the creative to produce. The GPL (et al) has managed to something very similar. The selfish interest of uncounted numbers of programmers is producing works that are beneficial to many.
That we've gone and turned copyright into a black hole from which nothing creative can ever emerge is a whole other issue. The Founders did blow it big time when they ignored Jefferson's call to specify the term of the monopolies in the Constitution. He also wanted the Constitution to require the grants have narrow scope.
We're living to regret that blunder.
they give them "money for the poor" with the condition of investing in birth control (because we can't have poor people have many kids, think of the poor single mothers with 10 children!).
Have you paid any fucking attention the political situation in Africa? I don't care if Bill Gates spends every red cent he's ever earned and then pimps Melinda out on the side to earn more, you can't fix Africa's problems by throwing money the *symptoms* there so long as populations run unchecked and the governments are run by thugs and liars like Mugabe and Mbeki and the many others ensconced in luxury and propped up by the military and tribal loyalists.
Long-term improvements in public health cannot take place with deeply corrupted governments and periodic and/or never ending civil wars. Yet this is exactly what you get when you add 2 parts tribal economics and 1 part overpopulation and shake violently. Rural agriculture is highly dominated by tribal social structures and as population increases (often due to well-intentioned and up-front beneficial health campaigns), the land system cannot produce any more farms to match the growth in population.
So you end up with mass migrations to urban areas, where, surprise-surprise, there are no jobs, housing or any other infrastructure and you end up with vast slums and shantytowns which become the fertile ground in which militias are recruited from, either to suppress their fellow citizen or to join in arms against whatever leadership is in power this time.
The long-derided missionary culture that aimed to save Africans from themselves through the word of God is as misguided and counter-productive as the current crop of do-gooders also looking to save Africans from their misery. The sad and painful irony is that most Zimbabweans would have been better off with Ian Smith's government than Mugabe's, yet we continue to vilify colonial governments.
The yuppie generation, which these people are a part of, should get a good kick in the teeth, starting with government, considering they're in charge and blowing it for the rest of us. George Carlin described you people right. And much of this giving smells more like tax evasion and after mid-life guilt. If you want proof, just ask if you would donate if the financial/emotional gains didn't exist.
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"Copyright also restricts a natural and universal right necessary for every Free Society: Free Speech. Copyright makes certain speech controllable, which makes it NOT Free. Liberal Democracies are literally inconceivable in the absence of Free Speech. In the absence of copyright, however, few things in our current world -- except for millionaire record execs -- are inconceivable."
Bullshit. That is just bullshit.
Free speech means that you can express any idea you want. Copyright only applies to a specific implementation of an idea. You CANNOT copyright an idea.
So, if I write an article saying that Gitmo is bad, you are free to write an article saying the same thing. The only time copyright would kick in is if your article is word for word what I have written.
And, for that matter, words MEAN things. "Free speech" means something, something very important I might add. It allows you to be free to express uncomfortable ideas, regardless of if it inconveniences the government. It is not a tool to be swung about because you want to copy music.
"Communism" means something too, by the way. It's a political system that is in direct opposition to the free market economy, one that involved taking rights and property away from people in the name of a greater good, and had an entire economy controlled by the state. I know people who grew up under Communism - I don't think they'd be happy with the way you're misusing the word as a prop.
So, do yourself a favour. Learn what "Copyright" and "Communism" MEAN. Read the Berne Convention, and do some reading about Soviet Russia and Communist China. The way you have misused these words, quite frankly, is offensive.
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
That link in the parent re-directs to a fake newspaper made by Microsoft that says Microsoft software is better: The Highly Reliable Times.
Quote: "With the Linux-based platform we would have a system crash at least once a week. Migrating to a Microsoft-based system has virtually eliminated server crashes..."
It's really disgusting when marketing people with no technical experience write advertisements.
I've observed that often Linux is as bad with documentation as Microsoft software, but I've never known Linux to be prone to crashes unless the hardware was unstable.
and read comments here citing cases in which bill gates used his foundation to get open source switch projects scuttled by donating 40 million boxes in mexico, on the condition that they run microsoft windows, for example.
if that is what it means to hold 'a position of importance', hell, world doesnt need any of that kind of important people, or that kind of charity.
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But I thought these were free? How can they be free if that's why they make the price increase not an increase? Without them, MS would have to have made XP cheaper.
Also remember that 80% of the code is the same code you paid for out of Windows 2000 for XP.
They've already been paid that, so why is it not 80% cheaper?
Same with Photoshop.
Most of the code has been paid for.
It's rather like getting a new car when the engine is a refurb, the seats taken from a well-cared-for older model and the wheels made from retreads.
Would you not expect the car to be cheaper than one with all new parts?
Yes, many will not concur with Richard, but the truth is that the foundation IS Bill Gates PR arm. I give you the example of Mexico's enciclomedia project (which was an absolute failure): with the simplest menace of the country's strategy of including linux as a base platform for millions of computers for elementary schools, the B&MG foundation (after a lightning trip of ballmer and gates to personally talk to President Fox) donated 40 million dollars worth of boxes with a simple, little string attached: it HAS to run Microsoft Windows.
i would really like to see what kind of 'charitable' act this one is. ah, also below too :
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-gatesx07jan07,0,4205044,full.story
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Doesn't sound like that at all. All instances of "better" are, by definition, better.
Not so much I'd say. The GPL rests on copyright law and derives its power from same. If you had no such monopoly grant, you couldn't put restrictions on the use of the work by others which the GPL does. If everything was public domain, you couldn't tell Microsoft (or Apple, who uses FreeBSD) they can't take the work and lock it up. You really would be doing "free work" for a corporation.
Used correctly, copyright can be a beneficial tool. That we've done our best to wreck it in this country notwithstanding.
The catch with Copyright in the US is that it was originally 14 years, but laws have pushed it all the way up to the author's lifetime plus 70 years (or a flat 95 years on works made for hire, such as movies and music).
Unfortunately, when Eldred v. Ashcroft pointed out that this was contrary to the purpose of copyright as laid down by the Constitution, the Supreme Court gave a ruling that as long as the length was not infinite, it was not in violation of the Constitution.
Didn't you just love that dodge? The court has handed down some rulings in recent years that just reek. Why not "life of the universe" then? I mean, that's not infinite near as we can tell. Okay, just in case it is, let's use "until the sun burns out"!
No, they had plenty of precedent to ignore to get where their corporate masters wanted them to go. Including, as you point out, that the people who wrote the Constitution passed a law of 14 years maximum. Which rather gives us a clue they didn't intend "infinity and beyond".
Yes, many will not concur with Richard, but the truth is that the foundation IS Bill Gates PR arm. I give you the example of Mexico's enciclomedia project (which was an absolute failure): with the simplest menace of the country's strategy of including linux as a base platform for millions of computers for elementary schools, the B&MG foundation (after a lightning trip of ballmer and gates to personally talk to President Fox) donated 40 million dollars worth of boxes with a simple, little string attached: it HAS to run Microsoft Windows.
also :
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-gatesx07jan07,0,4205044,full.story
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What the fuck has he ever done to help the poor?
The crops raised on his beard have fed millions of needy children in South America.
yes the analogy may seem a bit exaggerated but, you get my meaning.
you wont be able to persuade these companies to be more open to open source, and therefore freedom of the masses. because, their business depends on people not being free, depending on their software by lock ins.
what you propose is just like trying to promote the merits of equality for all, egalite, eternite, fraternite, to the aristocracy in france in 1789. its basically saying "hey, you are enjoying unjust privileges now, but would it not be better if you just forfeit them, and be equal with everybody else ?"
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Just because it's about individuals coming together and making no money doesn't make it communistic. That's exactly what charities and thousands of clubs around the world do.
Quite a few markets have charities/volunteer groups working amongst them. The real ale campaign group CAMRA produces the best beer guide in the UK, in competition with private companies. The Nuffield hospital group in the UK is a non-profit organisation competing against some private facilities.
That said, Stallman would like it to be the only way for code to be written, which is communistic.
Yes, many will not concur with Richard, but the truth is that the foundation IS Bill Gates PR arm. I give you the example of Mexico's enciclomedia project (which was an absolute failure): with the simplest menace of the country's strategy of including linux as a base platform for millions of computers for elementary schools, the B&MG foundation (after a lightning trip of ballmer and gates to personally talk to President Fox) donated 40 million dollars worth of boxes with a simple, little string attached: it HAS to run Microsoft Windows.
also :
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-gatesx07jan07,0,4205044,full.story
Read radical news here
Yes, many will not concur with Richard, but the truth is that the foundation IS Bill Gates PR arm. I give you the example of Mexico's enciclomedia project (which was an absolute failure): with the simplest menace of the country's strategy of including linux as a base platform for millions of computers for elementary schools, the B&MG foundation (after a lightning trip of ballmer and gates to personally talk to President Fox) donated 40 million dollars worth of boxes with a simple, little string attached: it HAS to run Microsoft Windows.
also :
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-gatesx07jan07,0,4205044,full.story
Also, as an earlier poster mentioned :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_and_Melinda_Gates_Foundation#Criticisms
Read radical news here
Yes, many will not concur with Richard, but the truth is that the foundation IS Bill Gates PR arm. I give you the example of Mexico's enciclomedia project (which was an absolute failure): with the simplest menace of the country's strategy of including linux as a base platform for millions of computers for elementary schools, the B&MG foundation (after a lightning trip of ballmer and gates to personally talk to President Fox) donated 40 million dollars worth of boxes with a simple, little string attached: it HAS to run Microsoft Windows.
also :
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-gatesx07jan07,0,4205044,full.story
Also, as an earlier poster mentioned :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_and_Melinda_Gates_Foundation#Criticismsplease explain this oil connection and the windows pushing in terms of investment and charity.
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People on slashdot have become stupid and short sighted.
The Free software whatever is not a revolution and is not going to save the world.
If governments didn't pay for software it would not automatically go to helping people, and we would have the same social/economic/health problems we have today.
The Foundation Does help people, even though the main purpose is most likely for tax purposes, but it also serves to protect his assets in other ways and there's a lot of people that have suggested that taxes on income have problems to begin with concerning a whole bunch of things. AND you would be irresponsible not to do something to protect your assets if you had as much money as Bill Gates.
Richard Stallman does not help his cause by acting like an asshole and degrading other peoples accomplishments.
Furthermore it's unreasonable to think that without Bill Gates only free software would exist. What would happen is that another person would have done what he did. AND that's the same for Richard Stallman's work.
Copyright is also not communist. It protects the right of a persons "speech" from being used without their permission. Just because it's been abused doesn't mean that it's bad.
He should concentrate on his work and not sound like a person trying to steal publicity by badmouthing other people. And work on making his movement sound less unrealistic and contradictory in the way he tries to describe it.
Fanboys aren't limited to microsoft or apple or videogames.
Yes, many will not concur with Richard, but the truth is that the foundation IS Bill Gates PR arm. I give you the example of Mexico's enciclomedia project (which was an absolute failure): with the simplest menace of the country's strategy of including linux as a base platform for millions of computers for elementary schools, the B&MG foundation (after a lightning trip of ballmer and gates to personally talk to President Fox) donated 40 million dollars worth of boxes with a simple, little string attached: it HAS to run Microsoft Windows.
also :
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-gatesx07jan07,0,4205044,full.story
Also, as an earlier poster mentioned :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_and_Melinda_Gates_Foundation#Criticisms
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eh criticizes Bill Gates and doesn't afraid of anything
The cost of actual software is very little compared the cost of support, which is still a significant cost when using "free" software.
a bullshit of the first order. you can get free, sometimes unprecedented first hand help from open source communities. just do a test by going posting a question on the oscommerce forums about some odd, out of the way tax implementation for out of state sales from ontario, in canada.
open source support comes generally much faster than shitty proprietary support. while the former comes free, the latter generally comes with a cost associated and outsourced to people that are not quite in the know of what they are saying you. you get passed from department to department and have to allocate half a day's work to getting an answer for the question you have, leave aside solving it.
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he maintains that Gates' departure from Microsoft doesn't mean the end of proprietary software
No shit. Does RMS think that Gates is the source of all proprietary software?
I have no respect for anyone who is a zealot and has to resort to bashing those who disagree them him. RMS fits that bill.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
ideology in modern western capitalistic world already ?
the right to retirement, weekly vacation days, daily working hour limits, job safety are all modern concepts that were only possible by pressure the socialist and communist revolutions of early 19th century, but especially 1848. still for these to come to fruition we had to wait until the advent of 20th century, and we are only able to have a civil working environment just for the last 60 years or so. before that, especially in 19th century, corporations were using people virtually as slaves - a few hours off for sunday mass, rest of the week hard work with pathetic pay for 10+ hours with no safety or guarantees and any retirement rights.
all the concept of preventing monopolies so there could actually be equal rights to compete comes from the socialistic ideals of late 19th century. yet still it took 2 presidents (theodore R and franklin D R) to get this important precondition of life to become a reality and liberated usa from the hands of 4 to 5 big robber barons you can easily name, even now.
i really detest people who put forward prejudices about stuff without knowing history.
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Well let me explain something to you.
1 Curing Malaria would not be on small deed.
Also do you know just how small a percentage Windows is in the average small countries IT budget?
You do know that they use Windows for the desktop because for many tasks it is still the cheapest and best solution?
How is Microsoft FORCING governments to use Windows? What exactly is stopping them from Using Macs, Linux, or BSD?
I really don't Microsoft and I do like, use, and support FOSS but you are foaming at the mouth.
If the Gates Foundation finds a cure for Malaria, helps control TB, or finds a cure for AIDS then yes NOBODY will remember anything Microsoft did wrong. What is probably more to the point in 100 years William Gates will be remembered as a great man that made his money running some software company.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
noone is offended when george w. bush is talked about as 'bush', or jean jacques voltaire as 'voltaire', thomas jefferson as 'jefferson', but you get offended by bill gates, a mere man, (he is just a mere man compared to the names i mentioned here), being named as 'gates' ?
from what holy see did gates get the sainthood bestowed upon him ? and when ?
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Yes, many will not concur with Richard, but the truth is that the foundation IS Bill Gates PR arm. I give you the example of Mexico's enciclomedia project (which was an absolute failure): with the simplest menace of the country's strategy of including linux as a base platform for millions of computers for elementary schools, the B&MG foundation (after a lightning trip of ballmer and gates to personally talk to President Fox) donated 40 million dollars worth of boxes with a simple, little string attached: it HAS to run Microsoft Windows.
also : :
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-gatesx07jan07,0,4205044,full.story
Also, as an earlier poster mentioned :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_and_Melinda_Gates_Foundation#Criticisms
also this
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4103.htm
Read radical news here
Yes, many will not concur with Richard, but the truth is that the foundation IS Bill Gates PR arm. I give you the example of Mexico's enciclomedia project (which was an absolute failure): with the simplest menace of the country's strategy of including linux as a base platform for millions of computers for elementary schools, the B&MG foundation (after a lightning trip of ballmer and gates to personally talk to President Fox) donated 40 million dollars worth of boxes with a simple, little string attached: it HAS to run Microsoft Windows.
also : :
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-gatesx07jan07,0,4205044,full.story
Also, as an earlier poster mentioned :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_and_Melinda_Gates_Foundation#Criticisms
also this
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4103.htm
Read radical news here
Your quips about Linus' work being a "blind and aggressive campaign" aside, you're ignoring quite a bit of history. Microcomputers did not spring fully-formed from Bill Gates' forehead! At the time of the 16-bit IBM PC many cheaper and more functional alternatives existed, though it is not surprising that no one remembers them today.
Do names like Amiga, Apple and Atari ring any bells? What about Sinclair? The various MSX-compatibles? All of these were very credible competitors for the PC, despite the MSX platform having a bit of a bogdown due to difficulties in making the 8-bit to 16-bit transition. The Amiga and Atari's ST lines were 32-bit from the start, and Apple never had a 16-bit stage.
Microsoft did not invent the personal computer. They did not invent the operating system. They did not even popularize personal computing: that happened inadvertently when PC clones came about and the prices started tumbling. For instance, personal computer terminals were par for the course in many companies and government offices throughout the western world quite a bit before IBM's 286-powered AT.
Furthermore there is still the question as to how microsoft was supposed to make money as a FOSS company.
The argument is often made that Microsoft is simply backwards and stupid for *Not* being a FOSS company and that they themselves would have profited and or would profit by switching to an open source model.
I would ask these people to cite a consumer Open Source company in existence.
"Sell support contracts". Oh really? When was the last time you personally purchased a support contract for a consumer piece of software? Microsoft has set its sights from almost the get go on the home. The home doesn't know what a "Support Contract" is. You give a consumer software which is free except for a "Support contract" and you've just given away the software for nothing.
Before people can make a solid argument against closed source as an unprofitable and backwards sales model they need to prove the viability of open source for consumers not just huge datacenters and fortune 500 companies.
This sounds exactly like software licensed under the GNU license. It's owned by the community, rather than an individual (or the state...which in this case is the FSF).
No , you are wrong , it's not owned by the public.It's owned by the author. Only difference is that in the case of GPL ,the author gives you the right to copy and modify it , as long as your modifications are also released under GPL.
Those modifications are yours , and so you are the owner of those modifications, not off the original source.
It basically comes down to this : Even though you realize everything freely , you are allowed to get credit for your work . If you made changes , you are allowed credit for those changes , but the original author still has to be named.
If it were purely communism , than you wouldn't be allowed to get credit , the state would get the credit.
Slipping shoelaces ?
Who says ?
\u262D = \u5350
Those things you mentioned are all hardware. It has been the position of the FSF that software should be free of cost in part because it can be reproduced for next to nothing. Their website even specifically states that if you charge for GPL software you can expect your customers to give it away for free.
So yea, the FSF has this hang up about charging for software as a business model.
Stallman does not believe in the concept of "intellectual property." We'll some of us disagree. Regardless, if you don't like Gate's policies, write your own software and give it away to anyone you like. The Linux and GNU has done this, which is an admirable and proper response. Whining about Bill Gates is not.
I'm sorry, but RMS is seriously an a-hole.
Sun releases GPL's Java: gnu.org doesn't pull the Java Trap webpage, they don't pull the page, and just preface it by saying Java's not a trap anymore. First of all, RMS, pull that friggin page; Java's not a trap (and it NEVER WAS, IMHO.) Let archive.org keep it for posterity if you like your writing so much. Second of all, HELLLOOOO, Java was open sourced? A little THANK YOU is in order, you ANNOYING IRRELEVANT JERKFACE!
Now RMS is being all snide about BillG's CHARITY? It's really pathetic how badly he hates, I feel sorry for him. Just because you're a leftist doesn't make you a right or good person automatically, you know?
Wow. Well, I suppose that a guy can only take so much irrelevance before he snaps and starts to actively do everything he can to destroy what he ostensibly champions. I think it all started when he stopped wearing shoes.
With "friends" like Mr. Stallman, Free (as in freedom, beer, or however you wish to slice it) Software certainly needs no enemies. Except we *do* have enemies, plenty of them, well-funded and in no need of help from shoeless hippies with overinflated egos.
Mr. Stallman, I have but one simple request: For the good of the Free Software community, shut your cake hole. You've degenerated into nothing but a caracature of what everybody wants to see as what's bad about Free Software.
Since I know you're unable to do that, I have an alternative request:
- Get a haircut.
- Put some shoes on.
- Build up instead of pathetically trying only to break down in your public commentary.
- Try to be less of an embarassment to the Free Software community.
Thank you.
I am not prepared to swallow this notion whole.
WordPerfect thought it had the Almost Perfect word processor for the PC.
The DOS era ends and the era of MS Word, Windows and Office begins. The web begins to weave its spell and SharePoint becomes a billion dollar node in the evolving MS Office eco-system.
OpenOffice.org is funded and staffed by Sun.
The Mozilla Foundation receives about 85% of its funding from Google.
This tells me that the problems of the office suite and the browser are not solved and that society is still paying the price for development - and contributing to the profit margins of their corporate sponsors - even when these programs nominally evolve through open source.
The bill is simply hidden in the price of shopping through Google or in purchases of goods and services from Sun.
That raises the interesting question of whether this model is not in fact regressive. When your project is funded through Ad-Sense is it the WalMart shopper who keeps it afloat?
Microsoft is building a $300 million research campus for 5,000 in Beijing's university district.
It's true that 60% of Microsoft's revenues come from outside the U.S. It's also true that Microsoft is a significant employer and investor outside the U.S.
The multinational corporation is not the one-way street the Geek pretends.
I often advocate for the use of OSS, but true freedom is allowing a developer to protect their works and profit from them, or give them openly as they choose to do so.
You are perfectly free to write your own code if you wish to profit from it by hoarding it. It sounds as though you are complaining about the difficulty of hoarding and profiting from the contributed work of others.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
seen HBD Venture capital?
Why does not Bill ask Steve to copy HBD?
All of them can be controlled directly, indirectly or otherwise at will by bribing enough of the important people at the right places, as usual.
Teach people fishing instead of giving them fish.
Start a nice new licensing scheme for M$ products where you get them on a loan for 10 years if you plan to start a tech company.
Why no BMGF Venture Capital for Third World?
Why no use of Bill's business acumen to expand the M$ enterprise into a huge network of Venture Capital firms?
Why is Bill not copying the VC route HBD takes?
I'm not well-informed in the ways money moves in the world, but I can see enough good being dine by VCs in California and Tech in general and specifically HBD in SA, another place where Billg's heart would yearn to help out the poor and the needy.
In short, why give bad infected fish for free when you can teach them how to fish for better fish and for lesser, at higher profits?
It's complete mismanagement of the process of empowerment of the poor.
A man of Billg's business acumen and global vision cannot be technically incomepetent to fail to recognize this simple fact.
Some big questions remian unanswered.
As for RMS, well, he has his ways.
Hackers have long memories. It works both ways.
What does it feel like to hate so much? I bet you're a very sad person. Crack a smile once in awhile, and maybe exhibit some empathy with those you disagree with if you are able?
"If you're a business and you want to pay a programmer to make the software suit your needs better, you can't." Really? So what are all these checks I keep receiving from clients who paid me to make the software better suit their needs? Our company slogan has always been "We make the impossible unlikely" I guess it's more true than I thought! -B-
-B-
There is nothing about Gate's Foundation in the mentioned article.
For truth!
No, the author I responded to said that any ip and copyright laws are BS, and that the concepts don't really exist. He claimed that proprietary software should never exist.
I never said people should be able to take community (GPL) software and hoard that.
I said that both have their place. Someone who wants to profit from their work should be able to protect it if they choose to do so.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Yes - that was the point I was making - most software is generally not a good product in itself - but it's useful for making products.
GPL enables that and at the same time, protects the people who purchase those products (and in turn, allows them to modify and sell variants based on the sofware used - since they're forced to release their own software mods, the situation remains unchanged for all).
It's a fair system, and it doesn't stop a good product from dominating a market, but it does reduce the risk of a monopoly.
Back in 1998 that other great hero of our times 'Bill Clinton' was having issues in the White House. Then something happened in Africa and what was the response? Bomb make believe terror training camps in far-off-istan and a Sudanese medicine factory. This factory sold to all kinds of places in the developing world, including Iraq under the oil-for-medicines thing that was imposed on them.
If born-with-a-million-dollars Gates really cared about improving the situation in the developing world then he would ask his government to put this one factory back together again and apologize.
Stuff the B+M foundation. Let's allow the developing world to develop. They don't want handouts. They wasn't even poor until us colonialists looted and pillaged everything. A level playing field of fair not free trade is all that's needed.
Same goes for everything these 'NGO's' have been up to over the last few years. You shouldn't be buying a clean conscience by handing them a few bits of loose change from whatever pile of worthless green bits of paper you get given every month.
Remember when W first came in and how we would all get rich on the long boom, not needing savings or a pension plan, just a portfolio of stocks? It didn't work. The economy does not grow for ever and the days of charities sitting on piles of interest bearing cash will have to come to an end much like the pension plans proposed back in the dot com era.
Microsoft does nicely out of the military. He could put something in the EULA to rule that out and single-handedly bring on an end to the arms-trade and your culture of militarism. Or maybe we cannot have such dreams in an 'imperfect world'.
They give a bunch of money, and deduct it as a charitable contribution. To an organization that they pretty much control, sharing it with Warren Buffet, yes that one. They can then make investments and directions of their charitable money towards business ventures that spread Microsoft software including libraries and education - which expose children to Windows as the only OS they know. Instead of spending personal capital to extend their business an personal interests, they "give it away" to a foundation that they control, and save on taxes. I'm sure there are a huge number of contributions that would not qualify as tax-exempt except that they are routed through this loophole.
Maximizing ROI for the charity is a goal - and as stated elsewhere they really aren't concerned about where the money is invested. Wikipedia says after they got called out on that, they scheduled a review - then cancelled it and said ROI is the way to go.
Not that donating is bad - but this seems to be run in the trademark microsoft evil style.
Wow, I never thought I would RMS attack a charity even if it's is from Bill Gates. At least Bill is trying, it might not be perfect, but is trying to do some good. I understand that RMS wants to make software free to use and its source openly avaliable and is adamant about it, but after this blurb maybe he should take a backseat and let someone else take the lead in the fight for free software. I don't like reading and hearing this kind of rhetoric from people in his position.
Yes, and kids throwing rocks through windows provides work for the glazier, who then buys bread from the baker, who buys shoes from the shoemaker who...
Long story short, you just invented the broken Windows fallacy... congratulations?
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
the sun might burn out before your interest in using the code fully wanes, why not just set copyright to expire "after it's clear no one would want this anymore." that covers all cases nicely and also isn't infinite (for example the copyright for the movie "Speed 2: Cruise Control" would have expired immediately)
Not to diminish the point you're making, but as I see it, your system would require everyone to play fair when the rules aren't enforced. They don't. RMS took a pragmatic decision with that one and I think it was the right call.
If you consider this USA corporate-welfare economy capitalist,
then you are another dogma-fool that simply spews spin-truth.
Why does this "new conservative" style of economics work equally ...?
well or better in China (a totalitarian state), India (a social-
cast state)
Obviously you were born to follow, but never think.
Free "Open" source code is proving to be the last bastions of Freedom and Capitalism in the Western Cultures. "Open" source code demands creativity and innovation to be competitive in an "Open" "Free" capitalist economy, and provides a non-government/UN economic engine for development in third world countries by wealth growth levelling of economic conditions.
Present patent and copyrights laws are industrial-age legacy systems supporting corporate-welfare and oppressing creativity, innovation, discovery, and economic growth.
The Western Cultures are slaughtering their only real-value cash cows, because dogma-safe is not creative-risk. US/EU world-bank global economic theory fails to understand and defeat dogma-economics, and accepts fear and retreat in to the status-quo of industrial age bad-economic .
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
The claim that B&M (and anyone pouring millions into the MDGs) are doing bad things to the developing world isn't that outrageous a claim. Remember the Prime Directive from Star Trek? It wasn't made of out of thin air -- it comes from a long line of dedevelopment critiques (people like Spanos, Escobar, and Illich) that state that development is bad. Illich states that it's unsustainable and probably can't be achieved by Africa/Latin America, so "selling the middle class life style" just increases expectation and demand while squandering supplies on development projects that focus on national infrastructure (super highways don't do you any good if you don't have a car) Spanos and others talk about how America and the west intervention is misguided -- it focuses on our conceptualization of America and the west as exceptional, which -- regardless of announced intentions -- dooms aid to ultimate failure, even if there are temporary successes. Then there's people like Escobar who flat out state that any development does horrid things to indigenous people. Those in this camp call things like the B&M G foundation neocolonialist in nature. They draw on both colonial empirical examples and examples of how trying to achieve the MDG have lead to crappy stuff happening. Don't forget those in the "globalization bad" camp, who claim that globalization is inherently predatory -- and that foreign aid is a tool used to indoctrinate areas into spheres of influence (these people point out that China is bidding for influence in Africa, and that some foreign aid funding comes from places like the Dept. of Homeland Security) Anyway, the lesson is, just because you try to do good doesn't mean you aren't being evil.
You stated (I won't quote, just look at the parent post):
RMS is a criminal: WRONG - Microsoft is the criminal.
RMS doesn't hold a position of importance: WONG - otherwise explain your reaction
RMS doesn't live in the real world: What kind of crap is that? I presume that there is ANOTHER world that you are aware of?
All this to wrap an idea: that somehow the vast profits made by illegal activity are good, because people will be fed, and diseases cured.
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
Microsoft probably wouldn't make much money doing exactly what they do but with open source also. Thats the point. Software development shouldn't focus around selling the same product over and over again, but should instead focus on selling services. Services include developing new features. Possibly, using a Ransomware scenario with source included, and then relicense it to a redistributable open source license after a certain minimum amount revenue was collected. Also, there is a fully functional desktop (several even) available right now. The free software ecosystem is very healthy.
Occam's razor is the blind faith in the natural selection of least resistance and in universal oversimplification. -- EF
Consider this, actually: the pharma corporations have _already_ developed and patented _cures_ for a lot of diseases. Roll the time back a century or two, and stuff like tuberculosis or cholera or pneumonia or typhus killed people by the dozen. We now have antibiotics against those. Bacterial infections used to be the number one reason to die after surgery. Now they stuff you full of antibiotics instead.
Get this: the bulk of the wealth of those pharma corps is built on selling _cures_.
What people don't get is that there's more than one kind of disease.
- bacteria: we're quite good at killing those, because they're different from your own cells. E.g., the whole beta-lactam (penicilin) group works because bacteria have some different proteins than you do in the cell wall, and the beta-lactam ring can cause the whole cell wall to collapse. E.g., Streptomycin and the like attack the bacterial ribosome, which luckily enough is different from the human one, so things can exist that react with one but not the other.
At any rate, that's antibiotics. And basically that's the only thing we're really good at curing: bacterial infections.
- viruses. These slightly modify your own cells to produce more viruses. But otherwise it's the same f-ing cell, the same ribosome, and the same proteins in the cell walls.
The best luck we've had with these is vaccines. We pre-train your own immune system to deal with certain viruses. But that's not as much a medicine, as some dead viruses for it to play with. Downside: for some viruses it doesn't seem to work. Others mutate so fast that it's hit and miss, e.g., flu.
We have some anti-virals, which are very different from anti-biotics. They tend to be very limited in effectiveness, and very toxic to your own body. Which is what's prescribed for HIV. (Hence, any antibiotics you get for a flu are pure placebo, btw. Nobody prescribes antivirals for a flu, unless it's something deadly like the bird flu, because the cure tends to be worse than a normal flu.)
But, at any rate, we're still pretty bad at curing viruses.
- cancer. This one is even weirder, because it _is_ your normal cells, with some safety mechanisms broken. Essentially for a cell to become cancerous:
A) the proteins regulating divisions must break. (Human papillomavirus does this by adding the code to a broken protein to your cells, so hopefully it binds with the DNA instead of the real thing.) But even that then hits the maximum division counter and stops. That's why warts don't kill you. So
B) the cell must start regenerating its telomeres, i.e., reset the maximum division counter. That sounds like doing something extra, but remember that every cell has the DNA for all other cells, it's just inhibited or not expressed. The body already has the code to reset the telomeres of, say, sperm. (So your kids start with a full counter, and not with your remaining life expectancy.) A broken cell can start doing the same by mistake.
When you get both in the same cell, it's cancer.
At any rate, these _are_ your normal cells, with as little as some wrong aminoacid in a protein or two. Even your own immune system has trouble recognizing a lot of them, and since they still mostly work like the rest of the body, they can even send the right signals to get more blood vessels to support their growth and other fun stuff.
And btw, there are a lot of types of cancer, depending on exactly what was broken and in what type of cell. So one cure-all medicine is highly unlikely.
Nobody knows how to treat the vast majority of these, because there isn't some vital _and_ different protein you can attack, like we do for bacteria. Chemotherapy and radiotherapy actually break the DNA of all cells, and hope that it kills more cancerous cells than good ones. Because (I) cells currently dividing are more vulnerable than cells who have their DNA nicely spooled, and (II) cancerous cells often have broken DNA-repair proteins, so some breaks would be repaired by a normal cell, but
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
"Yeah!! Because lowering barriers-to-entry into the market and encouraging businesses to be competitive are so communistic.
Oh wait..."
You honestly think open source encourages competition? I removes all competition, which isn't the same thing.
If you are competing on merits then sometimes the pay for software is better. It's not removing competition, it's changing it. If price doesn't matter then the better product wins.
Except that he screwed over plenty of other people who weren't "ruthless capitalists", namely, 99% of those who's ever owned a computer during the past 20 years, thanks to their monopolistic practices towards hardware manufacturers who certainly didn't take the cost of Windows licenses from their profit margins.
And yet I somehow still ended up with a 3 GHz superscalar processor with two gigabytes of RAM, a half-terabyte of mass storage, and a 1600x1200 display for $1,000.
Can you honestly tell me that would've happened if the market had remained fractured into three dozen different *nix fiefdoms?
Two parts to all this. I was a real open-source/GNU advocate back in the day (now the GNU part's been taken off -- I've grown up a little).
Stallman and Gates are both more complex characters than the standard /. fare allows:
1. Stallman's a jackass. I've heard him speak, this really gets its way through. Yes, he's a good hacker, but he tried to be some faux-Nelson Mandela figure atop of it. His combination of arrogance and political ignorance puts together a terrible little combination. He's a hippy doing what so many hippies did -- use the same fascist methods that his opponents used, only for a slightly different goal.
Look, Stallman, thanks for emacs, really. I use it to this day. But your idea of open source is *not* the one that took off. Get over it. Your idea of open source is ridiculous and nonsensical. Unlike you, some of us want to drive a decent car, have attractive significant others, and raise some kids. That requires, *gasp*! income! The thing is, you never understood capitalism. It's a double-edged sword that was too complex for you to understand. The vendor lock in, the obsolescence, the FUD, are all real concerns people have when using software. The actual money is rarely an issue (outside of MS pricing, covered below), the software usually saves people money. Vendors who provide source code, support, and adhere to standards do quite well in the industry.
2. Gates is also a jackass, but not the devil. Microsoft never learned how to write big software themselves. Just like the RMS & Linus's world, they need someone else to do all the heavy lifting (e.g. Bell Labs & Unix for Linus, Apple for MS), and then they can come in and copy.
Complaining about Gates's foreign aid is absurd. Sure, it's not a great system, it forces people to live off the handoffs of others, whatever. The real question is, is that why Gates is doing it? No, it's not. He's not getting anything back for it. He's not politically sophisticated, and this is the best idea so far on the topic.
Gates also has the right to take credit for making the PC world what it is today. Up through DOS, I liked the work MS put out. The software was small and simple, and they sold it at a good price. That was when they didn't need to pull giant bloodsucking bundling maneuvers to literally force customers to buy their shittier software (e.g. windows and all of office at once, instead of a la carte). Their software was fine when it was small and could be done by a few people. When it got larger, they couldn't compete, so they had to find ways to fix the game. In my book, that was Windows and beyond -- shitty software, racketeering tactics for selling it.
If y'all want heroes in this new world, check out the author list on some RFCs, or your favorite app. The names you never hear from eWeek or /., but the folks who get real stuff done. The nice thing is, they're actually pretty intelligent, friendly, accessible people. The way a proper hero should be.
Care about electronic freedom? Consider donating to the EFF!
How about a look at the big picture? Gates & co. are robbing the rich, and giving a fraction of this money to the poor. The alternative could be that we used Free software, and instead of the money going to Microsoft, it could go more directly towards helping the poor.
Also, the 10% flouted by astroturfers and the ill-informed is the bare minimum that Gates foundation can get away with and still call itself a foundation. To put it another way, 90% of the money is sloshing around in various investment funds. So 10% is a small price to pay to continue advancing the Microsoft Movement -- without being answerable to either a board or shareholders on the question of profitability.
MS, if one cuts away the Enron-style accounting, could very well have gone belly up long ago. To be sure, there are a lot of questions about what is bringing in any money. The Gates Foundation allows Bill to continue MS politics independent of MS itself...
Can you honestly tell me that would've happened if the market had remained fractured into three dozen different *nix fiefdoms?
Yeah, all the improvements you name are due to the industry's standardization on the x86 architecture, something that Microsoft took advantage of but didn't cause in any way. So, in that respect it would've been the exact same thing, though perhaps you would've gotten it for $50-100 less but with FreeBSD instead.
No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
the sun might burn out before your interest in using the code fully wanes, why not just set copyright to expire "after it's clear no one would want this anymore." that covers all cases nicely and also isn't infinite (for example the copyright for the movie "Speed 2: Cruise Control" would have expired immediately)
Akchoally, the copyright for the move "Speed 2: Cruise Control" would have expired backwards in time until the writers themselves disappeared.
Now if it just weren't for the potential damage to the fabric of space-time...
Who says ?
One wonders what all those corporate charters are for...
How can this be a troll? It just states the legal situation, in most countries, except giving the work to "public domain" still keeps the rights with the creator. Has nothing to do with communism or any other political or even business, whatever system. I agree, benefiting the society is not communism - are any benefits coming out for the public from US government communism? I don't think so and I don't think the politicians would like that definition either! But maybe the tax payback from GWB was a mark of communism, or enhancing the roads, or having FCC, FMA, etc? Do you think so, do you really think that it is that simple? Off topic, of course.
You have been modded informative, which is funny because it seems to imply that you can suck your own cock.
I'd love to watch a video of you paying through the nose because that's the only "fair" way for you to pay - all the blood, its probably rated R. I won't buy such a video at $30 AUD a shot though.
This has nothing to do with whether or not Microsoft the company is doing something wrong or illegal; the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation doesn't suddenly make everything Microsoft does or has done in the past right. That said, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has done and continues to do good things to improve people's lives.
I'm not an GPL guru, so I could use a clarification. Is it possible for an author to loose control over a product he/she puts under the GPL license. Bob writes an application, releases it GPL'd. It becomes a success. He later regrets using the license, then releases the same product (not a newer version) under a different proprietary license. What is the impact on someone deciding to fork the original GPL'd release?
How should Mr. Gates spend his charity money?
OK, let's take Africa as an example. Yea, it might be a stereotype, but it's true. What would be needed there to give it a chance? Easy answer: Basic heavy industries (coal, steel and oil) and basic infrastructure (railways, power plants and solid highways). Btw, the resources for all this are all right there. This is the very basic every country in every continent needs to get things going. There is no way around it, unless this is accomplished people will suffer in extreme ways no matter what clever politics you apply to them.
One thing stands in the way of making this real, and that is the west idealizing peasant life. No, these are not some "native people" wanting to "live in harmony with nature", no, these are suffering human beings that cannot help themselves while some ecologists are telling them to use solar panels because of the sake of the planet. In this very case, screw the planet, it can take 20 years more of this, even more so as it would be on a level that cannot compete with the stuff the west is doing just to keep the lights in NY on. You simply cannot feed a steel industry with solar panels. If you would be the one to chose: "save the environment" or "save billions of people", what side you take? Greenpeace took the wrong one, and that's why their founder left it for good.
And spare me this "but with the environment destroyed there is no [whatsoever]". This is neither about you looking at beautiful african landscapes nor the rain forest. Just take a side, because eventually, it will come to this anyway.
As Mr. Gates no doubt is a very intelligent man, he must know this. Does he invest his money that way? Is his charity work dedicated to this? I don't know, but if it is not, it is meaningless.
Want proof? Since I can think the so called "west" is pumping money into charities and the people suffer ever since. Every 20 to 30 years the body count from "civil wars" in Africa hits the WW2 mark. Nothing has changed with all the charities, especially the public ones. But nice parties they throw while they're at it.
On second thought, let's not go to Camelot. It is a silly place.
People persist with the "free software is communism" garbage because religious zealots like Richard Stallman persist with screaming that proprietary commercial software is intrinsically evil and will bring about the downfall of mankind and the subjugation of all humanity.
Not every commercial software developer out there is looking to dick the world over or impose a new world order. Some just want to sell you an archival utility or a game.
As for what communists believe in. At heart, a communist is a person prone to whatever varied beliefs people are prone too. Some care about Free software, some don't mind proprietary software, and I suspect most communists could care less because it's only software.
I have only twice ever called Microsoft for support, and both times it was because I wasn't able to activate Windows XP.
I remember back in the '90s FOSS advocates were chanting that we could all make our money from support. I thought it was idiotic back then too since most computer users above 18 had already been used to being able to call up a software company to get support from a real programmer. I'm speaking of BBS software in particular, but I found this to be true for a lot of small commercial apps.
I own my person
If you actually owned your person, it would be possible to demand it as your property in payments for debts, so debt slavery would be legal.
The truth is, property ownership is only a foundation of economic freedoms. Most of those "economic freedoms" are based on establishing ways to control other people through control of property, and therefore I find nothing positive or worth supporting about them.
You can criticize Communists until the cows come home, but they were right about this fundamental thing -- property that establishes control allows to obtain more property from controlled people, and serves against the interests of the majority of society. Something that eliminates this control without actually depriving people from use of that property is the perfect solution to this problem -- except, of course, it pisses off people who feel entitled to control of other people and don't use property for any other purpose.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Personally, I wouldn't give a fuck if it's communist or what. Call it what you want. I use GPL software, specifically Linux, because it fulfills my needs better than the alternatives. Not only that but it gives me a sense of ownership of my own computer rather than I'm just borrowing it at the behest of Microsoft. Since using Linux, my computer is fun again. Basically, I'm just frankly more happy with it.
If that makes me communist or whatever then strike up the band, comrade.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
Mod parent up. It is very true that copyright was intended to restrict businesses, not people. Copyright was created to prevent businesses who owned printing presses from taking a book an author wrote and printing it without compensating the author. It was never intended to restrict private citizens, since presumably only businesses would have had access to a printing press. I suppose it could have restricted anyone who wanted to hand-copy a book, but I highly doubt that was raised as an issue.
Copyright was intended to create a market in which an artist could create a work and license the right to copy to a company so that the artist could recoup their losses and if they so desired, continue producing works. "Work Made For Hire", companies suing private individuals, etc. were never intended to exist. Copyright originally lasted about a decade and a half, by that time it was assumed a good artist would have managed to recoup their losses (they could pay for another term if they wanted, but no more). Artist would have to keep producing.
Really, our current system of trying to enforce the will of companies that don't want people copying their stuff on the masses is something akin to corporate welfare.
The Gospel according to lolcat
I'm not sure what you're saying.
Is it okay to tie science up in IP as long as it's not math?
Competition for what? Kudos and pats on the back? OSS pays squat. In the real world, competition is about making the most $$$ while ensuring your competitor makes the least.
If the charity foundation is investing in the refineries, perhaps the charity foundation could use some of its presence on the board to induce the company to build environmental controls into its hardware?
Capital economies don't have to operate as slaves to the bottom line. Bill G's charity is by nature going to have a hard time demonstrating that fact, and that is really what the whole criticism is about.
I'd say that a charitable foundation with a mandate to provide for its on continued existence is not as much a charitable foundation as one with a simple mandate to help people.
Interest has to come from somewhere, you know.
I'd mumble something about a rich guy giving some of his friends permanent high-paying feel-good jobs, contrasting it to my efforts to help lower-middle-class kids get an education on less-than-lower-middle-class wages and a contract that is completely up in the air every year, with no way for my performance to buy me either tenure or higher wages. But I suspect my mumblings would be misconstrued to be the mumblings of a crazy man.
Until I hear about FOSS donating $3-4 billion a year to schools, disease research, immunization programs, literacy programs, etc you can all just stuff it. RMS, despite all thats hes done to advance software is a zealot nut case. *ducks incoming katana*
When Stallman decides to do something for the poor of the world, he should talk. I live in Bangladesh and can see directly the benefits the poor are receiving from the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation. I don't see any benefit that free software does to people who've never seen a computer.
Of course the wealthier like me benefit immensely from free software. I use firefox, gimp, open office. I run linux and freebsd on my servers. But what good does it do the poor. All my services are for people who can afford computers.
Stallman despite his best intentions does close to nothing for the extremely poor or even the moderately poor. The people who Stallman and his cohorts benefit are those like Steve Jobs, a greedy megalomaniac who takes free software and makes piles of cash with it and gives nothing back.
Take, for example, ODF.
One standard. No choice. No redundancy.
Eight applications use ODF.
8 choices. 8 Redundancies.
See, we can have both.
But your last quote is wrong, it isn't either one or the other, because "Free Software" is more than one piece of software.
An algorithm for detecting edges can be taken from a photo manipulation program and used in a computer visuals application. If it's open source.
But what if someone has a better algorithm? Well, we have redundancies but, because we can move code, we can have the best one win.
"He's a straaaawmaaaan! He's been going a long long time".
I find it interesting that you say that "Microsoft drains money from the economy of every country in the world. Free software allows that money to be put to better use."
I come from a developing country - India. Microsoft is a big hero here for the massive number of jobs it creates here. The number of consumers of MS products in India isn't that high (and is largely restricted to corporates), and the net effect is of massive gain for the country (the IT industry is one of the largest and most profitable sources of GDP for the country).
In addition, any corporation (or consumer) in India who chooses to purchase a MS product is exercising their right to purchase. They are not being coerced in any way, and many choose to pirate their software, or even go for FOSS (pirating MS products is by far the more popular choice).
It's low. It makes RMS look like a raving madman. And to say MS only make cash through an illegal monopoly is ridiculous and makes you look like a raving troll too. Millions of people choose MS software, even when "free" exists elsewhere.
Perhaps they should close the foundation? Is that what you want, exactly?
Gates has earnt a lot of money, for sure. Unlike many others in his category, he's putting some of it to good use. RMS can criticise when he's invested similar $$$ into 3rd world, until then, I suggest he get back to what he know's best; software.
throw new NoSignatureException();
Why did they agree to a deal like that?
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
RMS is no communist: he's an anarcho-capitalist from the school of Robert Heinlein. Free software works much like Heinlein's family communes: property is used in common, but everybody owns shares and has a say according to his or her contribution. Everybody can become a user of free software, but this does not make everybody an owner, since the the software is owned by those that wrote it, and every contributor can have his or her own private stuff that was not pooled.
RMS's "free software" could not be more un-communistic. Basically it's a weird form cartel whose members decide the price for the information they share among themselves is zero, and will compete in services. It's a weird form of cartel because it's not anti-competitive, since everybody can join and use that information for free. Information sharing is voluntary, while any brand of communism would make that mandatory.
Think about free software as you would think about language: if you invent a word or a turn of phrase, everybody would be allowed to use it as long as they don't claim to have invented it, but nobody can be forced to speak for free.
How does the GPL stop you doing that? It can't possibly - it just means you can't use GPL components in your efforts (and thus reduce the true freedom which is extended to everyone by the GPL).
Yea, but to repeat an earlier posters point - how do you think India's eco system woud benefit if corporations didn't have to spend all the money on licenses, but instead used that money to develop FOSS and develop new software?
There's no reason that the IT industry wouldn't be even bigger.
It's interesting to me that you revealed perhaps THE MOST AGGRESSIVE activity of Microsoft, and you apparently don't realize it.
You said, "They are not being coerced in any way, and many choose to pirate their software, or even go for FOSS (pirating MS products is by far the more popular choice)."
In my opinion and experience, that is one of the primary methods Microsoft has used to ruin the business of competitors: Microsoft encourages and allows piracy.
That's been happening since the days of the DOS operating system. At one time, Microsoft had made it impossible to buy DOS legally unless a system builder was very large, so smaller companies could not compete. Instead, in my area there were six legitimate distributors of pirated DOS. I also knew one national distributor of pirated DOS. I called Microsoft's legal department and complained intensely. That apparently forced Microsoft to take one of the distributors to court (I was a witness in the trial), and to tell the others to stop pirating.
But Microsoft continued its policy of not selling DOS to smaller customers. That meant that a smaller company could be shut down at any time by a complaint from Microsoft's legal department.
Much later, when I tried to report retailers selling pirated copies of Microsoft Office, I found that it was no longer possible to be connected to the Microsoft legal department by telephone. There were company procedures that prevented that.
I'm not an GPL guru, so I could use a clarification. Is it possible for an author to loose control over a product he/she puts under the GPL license.
You mean "lose control", right?
But the answer is "partly".
Bob writes an application, releases it GPL'd. It becomes a success. He later regrets using the license, then releases the same product (not a newer version) under a different proprietary license. What is the impact on someone deciding to fork the original GPL'd release?
Here's the deal: Bob still has copyright, so he *is* allowed to release the product under a new closed-source license, add new features that are closed-source, and so on. BUT the version that he released as GPL can still be freely used, forked, distributed, etc. under GPL. He gave us the right with that release.
The big difference between Bob & us is that you or I can only use/extend that last release under the GPL -- we don't have the right to change the license at all, mix it into our closed source product, etc.. Bob does have that right, though, and he can still sell closed-source licenses for his code for commercial applications. He doesn't have the rights to the code we write into the forked version though.
I guess I'd also point out that many of these kinds of applications -- where there was a single author, no development community, and the author decided to change the license at some point -- the project is not successfully forked. Think about it -- if the project is complicated at all, and it has no developer community already, that means a lot of work for someone to step in and maintain/extend/host the project... they'll be starting from scratch with probably no developer documentation, just a mass of source code.
On the other hand, a solid OSS project with a thriving developer community will likely mean that dozens of people own the copyright to the code -- Bob won't have written all that code himself -- so he won't even have the option of changing the license (all copyright holders would need to agree).
how do you think India's eco system woud benefit if corporations didn't have to spend all the money on licenses, but instead used that money to develop FOSS and develop new software?
Many are choosing to use FOSS to develop software and run their businesses. Nothing stops them from doing so, least of all MS. Any company using MS products is doing so of their own free will (or call it misguided reasoning if you want).
MS isn't stealing from these companies, or forcing them to use their products. They have every right to earn money from these companies. The net effect for these companies is profit. Would there be more profit if they used FOSS? Possibly, but it would be speculation to say so.
However, MS, and companies running MS products are employing millions - and that benefits India.
Mr Stallman, you are just ridiculous. That is all.
Is he so stupid?.... Seriously though
You know what .... the fight between OSS and proprietary software is OVER bro. They are both going to exist forever in a continuum that itself will RESEMBLE THE BAZAAR.
Although comments like this are simply BIZARRE. Philanthropy after the fact should be cheered. Giving away all the software in the world won't help any of the things that his money could do at this point.
Holy crap though ... RMS .. GET OVER YOURSELF.
One of the 4 freedoms of free software and the GPL is; "the freedom to share the software with your friends and neighbors". To me this sounds very much like a belief in community expressed by the license.
In your example both Bob and Alice are giving and taking from the software community created by free software and the GPL. Alice likely used preexisting GPL software as the tools or basis of the software she built. Bob benefits as such and also has the source code for the modifications that he paid for thanks to the GPL. Both people are members of and have benefited from the free software community.
Like a typical conservative, Stallman helps no one, yet feels he has some god-granted moral superiority to those who do.
Tell Richard to get off his fat ass and do something besides charge lots of money for speaking engagements where he does nothing but rant against all things Microsoft.
Sorry RMS, we are not giving you permission to dictate what software we are allowed to use, no matter how cleverly you write it into the GPL.
Violation the GPL is just bad. Enforcing the GPL is a whole other kind of evil. I don't care how "pragmatic" the GPL is, a GPL copyright owner enforcing his "property right" is using violence as well as a company using the DMCA for example.
\u262D = \u5350
I didn't attack the GPL. I attacked the poster who said proprietary software should never exist, and that copyright was inherently evil.
People must be one of two extremes. No one can seem to understand that a middle exists.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
MS software has FUCK ALL to do with computers getting cheaper.
Page through back issues of Creative Computing and you will discover that MS-DOS was rapidly gaining ground before the reverse engineering of the BIOS.
The generic MS-DOS PC was as much Compaq's competition as the IBM.
And how will the people they phone up be able to help them? The professionals users phone up can help in the same way car mechanics help car drivers, the way electricians, plumbers, and roofers help homeowners—all of these professionals (and many more) have the freedom to tinker and share information. In computer software we have had to value these freedoms for their own sake, politically organize, and fight for these freedoms for all computer users against anyone who would distribute proprietary software. We do this by making replacement programs that do the same jobs as proprietary software, making new programs that do interesting new things, and making it easier for people to use the free software we have created and distributed. When proprietors see us do this they clamp down harder by using new legal regimes to try and stop us from competing along side us (proprietors like controlled economy where they are the monopolist, they don't like competition). That has been the reality of the free software movement for over 2 decades now.
Users are not commonly programmers and they don't have the ability to make or fix programs. But users commonly want things simpler than they are, or they want programs that don't spy on them, or they want programs that don't take away what they thought was theirs (not surprisingly users apparently don't like DRM), and users want many other things some of which conflict with what other users want. Similarly most car drivers aren't mechanics, but they want stereos installed, sunroofs put in, oil changed, tires repaired or replaced, and other changes. And not all drivers want exactly the same things in or on their cars. Any homeowner will tell you that no matter how well their house suited its previous owner the house became great because people put time into making changes to that house. And every homeowner knows that their tastes will demand nothing different from them because no single arrangement of anything is to everyone's liking. Even if you have no problems with how government functions today you might have problems with government later. So in all cases we solve the problem in the same way: define and defend freedoms to let people do what they want with their stuff, and foster a culture around the freedoms we defined. You know it would be foolish to relinquish your freedoms of assembly and speech based on what you think and feel now (you might need them later), you wouldn't tolerate a car with the hood welded shut (you might want to get in there later), and you wouldn't buy a house with proprietary plumbing only one plumber could legally fix (you might want to leverage competing plumbers later).
We deserve freedoms to make our computers do what we want. We aren't harming others by inspecting, running, sharing or modifying software, playing our movies anytime we want, or using computers without being tracked (to name a few actions that collide with proprietors' interests). There's no ethical justification for keeping people from software freedom.
You really should listen to any of RMS' talks on the story of the free software movement so you can hear his logic behind why his framing of the debate makes sense and aims at a larger more important social issue: social solidarity.
Digital Citizen
I think the Foundation's money source (Microsoft's illegal leveraging of their monopolies around the world) is very much a part of this debate, particularly if you believe that "the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has done and continues to do good things to improve people's lives". I understand that some US states have laws which prevent relatively low-rent criminals from commercially exploiting their criminal behavior (such as selling their stories). We ought to at least be concerned when heads of illegal companies use their ill-gotten gain on an international multi-billion dollar scale, one which apparently feeds the drug patent juggernauts. Those juggernauts oppose the interests of the people who need life-saving drugs. One of the greatest triumphs of the modern corporate-friendly age is convincing people that it's wise to not look at the bigger picture.
Digital Citizen
I never said people should be able to take community (GPL) software and hoard that. I said that both have their place.
Indeed, you did not say that, and I now see that you argued in favor of strong copyright laws in the interest of preserving freedom. I overlooked that in my response, mea culpa.
But you omitted the case where a developer should be free to protect their works for the purpose of ensuring that they remain free, which amounts to a false dichotomy between "free to profit from" and "free to use". Your argument will be stronger if you include this case, as it nicely rebuts the frequently cited fallacy that fewer rules equate to more freedom.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
I disagree with your point that it was Microsoft that brought "unification to the desktop", a point that is often repeated.
What Microsoft accomplished was to replace other products with their own, not so much with better engineering as better marketing, and get their name out there as the most ubiquitous --> preeminent name in desktop computing.
That sounds a lot like they brought unification.
They played all the right hands, it was a product marketed under their names. While other may be involved, that does mean they brought around the change.
I own my person
If you actually owned your person, it would be possible to demand it as your property in payments for debts, so debt slavery would be legal.
Well finally someone to give a reason of why they disagree with me. I congratulate you for that.
Well I can't sell myself into slavery, but I can rent myself. As a matter of fact I do lease myself out for about 40 hours a week.
Yes property rights establish control, and regulating our property rights regulates our other rights.
--- Justin Dearing http://www.justaprogrammer.net/ We're just programmers.
There's some serious trolling going on in this site; people, amazingly seem to thing donating billions to charity is a bad thing compared to GPL freedoms. Are zealots really going to go so low as to try and piss on a charitable campaign because it was done by a guy who made a stack off selling his own code (I'll accept, the business tactics could've been more ethical)?
Moderations such as "overrated" to the parent really make me lose faith in humanity sometimes.
There's nothing "overrated" about someone saying "I receive Bills money, and without it the work I do for charity would be much harder." unless of course you want to censor this opinion.
If you look for bad in anything you'll find it; and that's exactly what some of the zealots are out to do at any cost.
RMS to me has proved to me that some OSS zealots are about blind belief at all costs, and that no line is too low to cross.
A damned shame too; OSS itself isn't bad, it's just some of the idiots associated with it that suck.
throw new NoSignatureException();
Proof or you're lying.
Wrong. The burden of proof is ALWAYS, absolutely always without any exceptions for any reason ever, on the accuser.
Copyrights are both good and bad, and which it is depends on what you value more.
Copyrights are bad for freedom because they place limits on freedom.
Copyrights are bad for society because they limit who can enjoy a work.
Copyrights are bad for society because people have to pay more for artistic work.
Copyrights are bad for society because they limit the generation of new (derivative) works.
Copyrights are good for authors and other creators, because the limits force other people to pay for their work.
Copyrights are good for corporations who hoard copyrights and use them to generate long term revenue.
Copyrights are potentially good for society because they may increase the number of artistic works generated.
If you value freedom above all others, then copyright is a travesty. If you value author renumeration above all others, then copyright is a no-brainer. It's all about priorities and conflicting interests.
Personally, I think the money generated for corporations by copyright has led them to ceaseless work to erode the freedoms of society in the name of increasing the flow of that easy money. And that, by itself, is reason enough for me to consider copyright as an evil that should never have existed.
So far, I have yet to hear any argument for copyright other than "But then I wouldn't get paid for additional copies of my work".
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Non-profits in the USA since the last redefinition allow for 10% to go into the cause. I've known people who exploited this as a tax shelter.
Essentially they have created an investment firm that gets large write-offs by giving away 10%...
It shouldn't be a legal charity or get any tax benefits. If you want to invest 90% and be a charity you should include microloans as part of your cause and then that 90% becomes 100% charity work (as long as you can get an exception for microloans not being a normal investment.) Micro loans do far more to benefit the poor than many of the common alternatives.
I'm not saying that microloans are the end all solution and the free market religion is as blindly and foolishly followed as the other religions. It is however better than investing in EXON, DUPONT etc.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
You can't rent yourself -- a contract that would allow someone to do "anything" with your body would be invalid.
You can rent your labor what is not the same as renting your body. In fact, nothing prevents you from renting a labor that you perform with tools that you don't own, or even with prosthetic replacements for your body parts that you may or may not own -- your body's involvement in your labor is not relevant, your control over performing your labor is.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
I work for an organization (www.fhi.org) that gets quite a bit of money from the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation
You're right that FHI may be doing some good. You're also right that that the Gates foundation is giving money for it. The question is whether the Gates Foundation comes out ahead in an overall cost/benefit analysis relative to other funding models.
I think your posting just shows that (1) Gates' attempt to white-wash his reputation through "charity" is working to some degree, and that (2) people at organizations like FHI apparently lack even a basic ability to reason about economic and social issues.
I sincerely hope that you aren't representative for FHI because with your lack of critical thinking, you are hardly in a position to deal with complex issues of international public health.
You can't rent yourself -- a contract that would allow someone to do "anything" with your body would be invalid.
You can rent your labor what is not the same as renting your body. In fact, nothing prevents you from renting a labor that you perform with tools that you don't own, or even with prosthetic replacements for your body parts that you may or may not own -- your body's involvement in your labor is not relevant, your control over performing your labor is.
So there are some restrictions in how I can exchange them, but I have an intrinsic set of resources (my person) and I can with some restriction trade that with others.
The fact that these restrictions increase my freedom supports my claim. I have specific property rights. Owning my person is an inalienable right, therefore it circumvents my intrinsic right to waive that right via trade.
--- Justin Dearing http://www.justaprogrammer.net/ We're just programmers.
The fundamental idea of property is that owner has absolute control over using it in all kinds of transactions, with state specifically limiting it in a small amount of cases where transaction would conflict with function of society. Often the owner has little or no direct control of his property's functions -- for example, land owner may be incapable of performing any agricultural work on it, or even unable to physically reach it. Ownership exists as a legally established control, and would be reduced to nothing if it is not recognized by other people and not enforced by the state.
With your body you have pretty much no ability to use it directly in any contract -- it's an unalienable part of yourself, and not a subject of trade. On the other hand, regardless of any legal fiction or even your own desires you have direct physical control over it. Even if you were a slave you would still physically control your body as long as you are alive and your body is capable of performing its functions. Nothing that creates, limits or revokes ownership can change the fact that you exist in your body.
If progress of technology will at some point allow people to create artificial bodies and move between them, it is possible that some form of ownership should be established for "unoccupied" bodies -- something has to regulate which person can move into those bodies because there would be more than one possible candidate for it. Even then a person would still have to have at least one body to remain alive, and depriving him of direct control of that body would kill, imprison or enslave him, so such transaction would be still illegal in any sane society.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Still waiting on that proof, twitter. Every post you've made since has been an admission that you're lying.
Programmers deserve to get paid as well. You insist proprietary software should never exist and that level of fanaticism isn't based on logic. Proprietary and OSS both have their places.
I never said that programmers do not deserve to get paid. That leap of logic is one that has been fed to you by the copyright advocates. The existence of copyright is in no way the only means of compensation for programmers or artists or creators of any kind. Equating the existence of copyright with the existence of compensation is unimaginative at best and could well be classified as completely idiotic.
Programmers deserve to get paid, but they do not deserve to be granted monopolies -- especially over speech.
I often advocate for the use of OSS, but true freedom is allowing a developer to protect their works and profit from them, or give them openly as they choose to do so.
Once again, just because the developer is not granted a monopoly does not mean that the developer cannot profit from his work. Most people are paid to program by other people that retain the copyrights to the programs they wrote, anyway.
Programming is a service. Information is never a product. Information is speech. Get used to it.
All data is speech. All speech is Free.
Copyrights are bad for society because they limit who can enjoy a work.
And this is precisely the problem. Copyright was created to limit who could profit from a work, and now it has been expanded to limiting people who will in no monetary way profit from the work. The intent of copyright at its inception was to increase the amount of information available to the Public. Now copyright is actually decreasing the amount of information -- massively.
All data is speech. All speech is Free.
Feel free to exclude that part if you like. I am not an "integrity of the work" advocate. As long as you get my point, you can substitute it with whatever historical struggle for Freedom you like :)
All data is speech. All speech is Free.
Information is akin to speech. And as a writer I value the ability to protect my intellectual property.
In the software world we've discovered other markets, such as selling support for free software, but the best means to profit from software is usually to sell it directly. It is difficult (not impossible) to sell software for a profit while at the same time giving it away for free.
Without copyrights, programming likely wouldn't be much of a viable profession. OSS profits directly often from people who learned to program professionally, but also contribute code freely because they choose to do so.
In a world without copyrights, many people wouldn't have learned to program because the career paths wouldn't be there.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.