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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."
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.
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.
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?
Careful. Ask that around here and you're bound to get a few hopelessly ignorant responses from people who honestly believe Gates has done more harm than Hitler, and his giving away of billions in charity is all a ruse to solidify his ill-gotten position of power.
I've heard RMS when he's come to give talks at my university. I admire his dedication, sure, but anyone who tries to claim that he's done more good in the world than Bill and Melinda Gates is just painfully out of touch. There are more pressing concerns in the world than software, and no, getting rid of proprietary software won't magically fix disease, starvation, etc (cue the "but we empower nations to fix their own problems with free software!!!" responses)
Say what?
I can turn my PC on and off at will, add and remove files, wipe Windows off the hard drive completely and install Linux if I choose... hell I can even toss the whole thing in the dumpster and buy a Mac if I really want to.
How am I not in control?
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.
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?
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.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
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.
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.
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
So you propose some sort of tax on free software to pay to the poor? Or, Microsoft keeps charging for Windows but makes it GPL and gives whatever money they get to the poor?
How does your proposal work - specifically, how does the money get to the poor, and from whom?
I'm not a MS fan at all, but given we can all use free software if we choose to and donate money to the poor, unless your plan calls for mandating Microsoft give money to charity, that company has nothing to do with the aims you espouse.
PS - The Gates foundation may only give 'a fraction' of what it 'robs' (how does one rob by soliciting donations, again?) from the rich to the poor, but it is still donating more than you or I ever will, and therefore, has done more good than you or I will likely do in this context.
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.
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.
So you're saying, that it isn't?
Citations. Desperately. Needed.
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 reason they 'only spend 10%' is because they have a endowment to maintain. It's far better for them to use 10% of their endowment yearly, recouping that money through investment, and then being able to sustain that level of spending indefinitely (rather than spending everything in one go!)
For anybody wishing to bash the foundation though, the 'only spending 10%' figure provides a useful point as many people will jump to a negative conclusion without actually thinking about it.
> how does the money get to the poor, and from whom
Consider governments. They buy Microsoft products and the money comes from the national budgets. If they wouldn't buy the products, they could spend the money e.g. to health care (usually direct benefit for the poor) or they could even donate some of it to the countries that are more need of money.
The point is that the money could be spend on something more important. And usually at least some of it helps the poor also.
So basically, he being outed as a Charity basher because he is citing the LA times article [latimes.com] that the foundation only spends 10% of its money on actual helping the poor.
This is how all long-term charities work. You invest enough so that the gains allow you to consistantly give.
They could give away 100% of their money this year. But then what would they give next year?
It's the same when someone sets up a scholarship; the money donated for the scholarship is not given away - it's invested and the investment gains are given away. That way the scholarships can last for as long as the investment market allows.
The point of a charity investing a hunk of its money is so that it can exist beyond its initial contributions. If the charity just blows all of its money, its life will last as long as people contribute to it and die the day that stops. On the other hand, if you dump a shit-ton of money into it, have that money start making a healthy interest rate, and just spend the interest, the charity continues on basically forever with its supply of cash always building, or at least remaining the same.
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."
Consider the average government worker. They probably care very little about Free Software/Open Source/whatever. If the government didn't buy Microsoft products [or Apple products, or Adobe products] they would have to spend much money training people in the use of software that they have probably never seen in their lives.
And the "it's similar to the paid software" line doesn't hold here. Typical Americans [NOT the Slashdot crowd] look at something, see it's something not familiar and then walk away slowly until someone holds their hand and shows them how to do everything.
Microsoft has done plenty fine [incoming negative mods, I spoke positively of Microsoft!], and while I don't use their software on my Desktop, I do use it on my laptop specifically because getting open sourced software to work on the laptop is heinously difficult [I'm blaming SIS at this point for non-existant video support for my chipset].
My point: the government would find other ways to blow the money they'd save on software [training, bonus pay for the person who suggested open source, etc].
If you were offended by anything I said... No, I'm not sorry. Please lighten up.
I'm not sure anyone is criticising the foundation's financial model
Some people are taking it in a negative way though because of the tone of the article and how it mentions but doesn't explain the financial model. Just look at the parent post I replied to, to see somebody who took the financial model as a negative:
So basically, he being outed as a Charity basher because he is citing the LA times article [latimes.com] that the foundation only spends 10% of its money on actual helping the poor.
So you propose some sort of tax on free software to pay to the poor? Or, Microsoft keeps charging for Windows but makes it GPL and gives whatever money they get to the poor?
Many governments already donate for the health and development of foreign nations. It's paid by things like income tax. Better than the Microsoft tax, IMHO.
PS - The Gates foundation may only give 'a fraction' of what it 'robs' (how does one rob by soliciting donations, again?) from the rich to the poor, but it is still donating more than you or I ever will, and therefore, has done more good than you or I will likely do in this context.
I assume the donations don't come from thin air, but rather from the profit generated by Microsoft's illegal business practices. And since I already mentioned governments, individual people are not the fair point of comparison here.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
I think that the real question is, what if twitter and all of the others are RMS sockpuppets?
Paying money to train your population is a lot better than paying the money to a foreign corporation...
Governments already spend a lot of money training their population (schools) because having an educated population is beneficial to the country as a whole.
Also paying your government staff a bonus isn't so much a negative as giving it to a foreign corporation... The employee will be taxed on his bonus, and is likely to spend most of it locally (and incurring further taxes).
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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.
So what you're saying is that people's quality of life would be higher if they didn't pay for software?
That sounds like a very good deal, especially in these financial times when quality of life is actually going down as prices go up.
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Yes, if they were truly interested in helping the suffering they would publish the medical research so that others could assist the process and everyone could benefit.
Instead they are actually researching medical treatments for the benefit of drugs companies. If the research became public, profits would be much lower due to competition, but the benefit to the sufferers would undoubtedly be much higher.
Consider this...
A drug that cures HIV/AIDS with a 1 month course would be highly profitable in the short term, but individual sufferers would only need a month supply, and eventually HIV would be all but eradicated and the market would dry up.
A drug (or set of drugs) that keeps HIV at bay, prolonging the life of the patient while they continue to take the drugs would be far more profitable... A sufferer would need to continue buying the drugs for as long as he lived, which would be considerably longer thanks to the drugs.. And there would still be the possibility he could infect others, thus creating more potential customers.
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"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?
... what would free software copy then?
I don't know anything about the foundation and I'm certainly not an expert on foreign aid (I've taken two classes on development at my university), but I just wanted to answer your question about how aid agencies can do harm. People in the West seem to have this idea that if we give enough money to the poor they will escape poverty. However, the reason the poor are poor is not because they don't have enough money, it's because as a community are unable to sustainably produce wealth. So when given aid money for long periods of time the poor become dependent upon this money. So, when the stream of money is cut off the poor are worse off than they were before because they had become dependent upon it instead of developing new methods of producing wealth. Better ways of doing aid involve helping the poor develop ways of producing wealth like microfinance, business development services, and most importantly trying to get governments of poor countries to strongly enforce property rights and eliminate income redistribution and corruption.
Hope this helps
Its = possessive. It's = "it is"
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
The B&MG foundation is just something that screams out hypocrisy. All Gates' actions spell out mostly that he cannot live with the fact that it is possible to earn money with around free/shared/given away software, that reality defies his letter to the Homebrew Computer Club.
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.
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.
This is entirely false, and FUD. Any claims of money "funneling" are nothing more than allegations without any substance. But, hey, you believed them...
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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.
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Consider this: A pharmaceutical monopoly could hold the second state. But there is such a strong incentive for a single company to destroy the others to it's own benefit (they could presumably charge as much for the one-month treatment as the lifetime-of-treatment the other companies provide, and people would pay it. They'd pay in installments if they had to) that even a two-company coalition would find it very difficult to hold together.
Furthermore, the countries which centrally plan their pharmaceutical industry have also not found a cure for HIV.
Conclusion: No matter how much you bellyache and whine about some percieved wrong on the part of pharmaceutical companies, The reason we don't have a cure for HIV is that curing HIV is very difficult.
In the meantime, you're just going to have to deal with the consequences of your hedonistic lifestyle. Be very careful with the butt-sex (or avoid it entirely) and try to keep your fluid swapping within monogamous relationships.
And not just for yourself. By becoming infected, there is a minute but non-zero chance your fluids could become part of the blood supply, or taint an improperly cleaned dental instrument, or somesuch, and therefore affect someone who didn't get to enjoy the acts which lead to the consequences.
AIDS is only a problem because there are lot of selfish mofos out there. And not just the greedy pharma companies, either.
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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.
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.
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.
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"Actually, they are robbing the rich and the poor, with their lock-in monopoly. And then they pass a fraction of their loot back down to the poor and say "look how good we are" after which they invest the rest of the loot in more anti-competitive practices, here and in third world countries."
How is microsoft a lock-in monopoly?
1) You can use open-office to view nearly all MS-office formats
2) many distros of linux are now available in retail stores
3)don't like exchange? go here http://opengroupware.org/ (this is one example..there are many)
4) apache/php/mysql competes with iis/asp/MSSQL
The open source community needs to stop bitching about Microsoft and start writing better software.
Or Consider this: Due to the complex nature of retroviral diseases, we just don't KNOW how to create a drug that will eradicate the virus. Even longstanding and well funded attempts at creating a vaccine have largely failed. More money has gone into HIV / AIDS research than breast cancer (too lazy to look it up, it may be some other common disease, but the point is failure to "cure" AIDS doesn't come from lack of trying hard). It is a limitation of our understanding of the biology of the process rather than a capitalistic conspiracy to steal money from poor Africans.
And to all of you who think that Free Software would allow third world countries to magically fund hospitals, schools and other Good Things
Consider this:
How is it that certain African countries are sitting on huge mineral resources and still manage to keep a majority of their population at starvation levels? It's not money per se - it's greed, corruption and a lack of institutional stability. Magical Free Software won't improve this situation one iota. Bill won't improve the situation all that much, but he's likely to do more than three million LAMP servers running on hardware scrounged from dumpsters.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
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.
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.
The problem is, that idea only works if the drug companies are a cartel.
Let's say you're an executive for EvilCo, and your company develops that one month treatment for AIDS. You've got two choices:
1) Patent it, sell it for major short term profits
2) Sweep it under the rug, continue selling treatments for long term profits
(1) What makes you think "Big Pharma" is not a cartel?
(2) You left off the most realistic option -- the company never gets to the point of developing that 1-month treatment because that's a lot of money to produce something you are just going to shelve. Instead they have a corporate mindset that results in them only investigating avenues of research that are likely to lead to life-prolonging drugs rather than cures.
Hell, that kind of mindset does not even need to be a formal part of the process, it's likely to be internalized by the bureaucracy as a result of the environment (lots of government and insurance company involvement plus the oligopoly nature of the current market).
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
The truth is most of us (except possibly Stallman himself ;p) have the same story as you. The acceptance of Free Software is a long process.
When I first started programming, I wanted to get rich just like Bill Gates. I even had ideas I thought I would patent. I came in contact with early GNU/Linux versions about 13 years ago (I was 12 years old). I tried them for fun, then used Red Hat as a programming environment, but I would always switch back to Windows for all other activities (GNU/Linux was not really user friendly at the time). I was on dual-boot all the time since then, but used Windows most of the time.
Then came a time when I first encountered a GPL'ed library I wanted to use for a program I was coding. I had heard a bit of this Free Software non-sense previously but didn't care at all. Now it was attacking me! I mean, this library I didn't write wanted me to adhere forcefully to its philosophy! Not using it was out of question -- I still had the mind of the Windows script kiddie who downloaded cracks of Astalavista, stuck in the concept that software is proprietary. I wanted to make money with software, but would crack any proprietary software I would download.
Years later, I started looking into the Free Software philosophy more seriously. I realized that (I hope American readers don't jump off their seats) it was capitalism, the doctrine of property itself, that we were programmed to believe as the superior doctrine since our childhood through education and advertisement of the perfect life (ie, the American Dream) made it extremely difficult to apprehend the benefits and the logics of Free Software at first. Later, when I converted friends to Free Software, exposing its merits, I could see the same process going on for them over months. At first, they were reluctant, still imprisoned in the proprietary philosophy, but steps by steps most came to be Free Software enthusiasts. Now there is a fundamental difference between real world objects and virtual objects like source code (proprietary license), music (DRMs) or ideas (patents), it is the cost of copy.
If we could simply copy food like with Star Trek's replicator, then capitalism wouldn't mean much when it comes to food. Yet, some agriculture companies (Monsanto, anyone?) and consortium would try to make you pay the tax for the original copy. They would try to patent the DNA of the food you eat and get royalties. They would try to forbid, through lobbying groups pushing for new laws, people to copy the food themselves. They would offer "cheaper" prices to famine plagued countries to show a good image. They would give money to charity to justify their otherwise reprehensible acts. The problem with zero copying costs is that it's the fittest economically, in a free market it's bound to win: it is as much capitalist than Marxist and that is why a lot of people who were raised with the red scare built-in can't accept it.
It is exactly what is happening with Software (since the early 80s). While software is nowhere near vital as food, it is more important than most people want to acknowledge. "Give a man a fish, and you've given him a meal. Teach him to fish, and he'll have food for a lifetime.". Free Software is all about giving the end-user the ability to learn -- not everyone might do it, but out of the hundreds who could get Free Software in the third world, there ought to be a kid or two who understand it, enjoy it and improve it.
I have come a long way since I first encountered Free Software. The process of accepting Free Software takes time and it requires one to open his mind to concepts extremely foreign to what most Occidentals are raised to believe. This is why Free Software is so controversial, has so much haters and lovers. Stallman may be blunt (I would be if I was repeating the same thing over and over for 20 years) but the truth is, 99.999% of currently Free Software enthusiasts were once proprietary guys. Whereas, 99.9999% of proprietary guys never opened themselves to Free Software. That's a key difference.
Study the parable of the broken window closely. If Microsoft doesn't get our money it doesn't mean that we need to create another commercial institution that will take away our money and give a fraction of it to our health care. We have more money to begin with, so we can afford better health care.
Those who would give up liberty to obtain working drivers, deserve neither liberty nor working drivers.
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
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".
Nobody is saying you can't have a well founded opinion.
Je me souviens.
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.
Would you care to explain how it's in Gates' financial interest to give away his money as a "tax dodge"? I could, in theory, give away my entire salary to the Red Cross and pay no taxes. This is not a tax dodge - I'm left with no income and no taxes. By giving 80 million dollars to charity, Bill Gates manages to avoid taxes on that 80 million, but if he'd kept it for himself and paid the taxes, he'd end up with more money in his pocket.
So, unless he gains some massive financial benefit from controlling the charity, there's no nefarious scheme here. And he doesn't. I mean, seriously, do you think someone's going to dig up some documents someday that show the Gates Foundation making under-the-table payments to one of the richest men on the planet?
Get over your knee-jerk dislike for the man and admit that he's doing something somewhat noble.
Corporate donations are ALWAYS done in the pursuit of wealth. Sometimes indirectly, via publicity, but always with the bottom line in mind.
As the AC above correctly states, The Gates' foundation is NOT related to Microsoft. In fact, the bulk of the Money is Warren Buffet's, not Bill's at all.
Jeremy
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
The only thing I can remember was that the foundation had contributed to a charity that had also been represented by Jack Abramhoff. However, there was never anything bad about that charity, other than the association with Abramhoff.
Also, it would be kind of hard for The foundation to have been brought up in the anti-trust trial, since the foundation wasn't formed until 2000, and the antitrust trial was in 1998.
So how, precisely, could that have happened?
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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.
Large companies are far more likely to direct their research towards long term treatments rather than cures, thus significantly decreasing the chance that a cure will be found...
Also if a cure was found and patented, the short term profits wouldn't be all that major, if you priced it too high people would start cloning it, and governments in poor countries with serious aids problems would just pass legislation to ignore your patent and manufacture the treatment themselves. A government that denied an aids cure to a significant portion of it's populace who needed it because the sole manufacturer priced it too high would face riots and possibly be overthrown.
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