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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/
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.
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."
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.
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.
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."
Citations badly needed.
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.
I know there are probably quite a few studies out there that you can point me to that prove this (or claim to) but of course I could go out and find some that "prove" the exact opposite. Yeah, granted, we know who pays for a lot of the studies that claim MS has lower TCO. I tend to think your claim is right but the problem is that there are people with an agenda on both sides and that always makes it hard to sort out. Well, it's never hard if you've already made up your mind, of course.
When you consider how much money Microsoft drains from various countries' economies...
How much? Is that much money really being spent on software compared to the money needed for other issues? Even if the number is so big why would so much money be spent on software? In that case it sounds like there is a more fundamental issue of screwed-up priorities. And in the end people do have choices, even if MS is quite influential and willing to resort to scummy tactics.
Yup, poor African countries pay so much for Microsoft Windows they can't afford to build hospitals.
// MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
One may dislike Bill and MS, but the foundation Bill started has really done some great things.
That is far from clear. There is a reasonable argument to be made that most foreign aid is harmful. In fact, libertarians and proponents of unfettered markets, the kind of people who hang out at Microsoft, should be quite sympathetic to those arguments.
has made other extremely rich people start to do similar charity activities.
More of a bad thing doesn't make it better.
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?
Open source has been MUCH BETTER than closed source equivalents for as long as Microsoft has existed. Microsoft has, in fact, incorporated a lot of open source projects into their products.
Why doesn't Microsoft come up with a good and successful product themselves for once? Almost everything Microsoft has ever shipped was either something they bought or something they ripped off.
to be so awesome that it surpasses MS Office?
OpenOffice and KOffice will never be "awsome" because they are hamstrung by Microsoft Office compatibility; you can't be awesome if your primary user community demands compatibility with obsolete software.
But open source has long surpassed it with something better: browser based groupware, most of which is open source.
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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However, without Microsoft software, we would have never seen the price of computing dive into regular joe range. The FSF didn't accomplish anything noteworthy without Linus' blind and aggressive campaign to write a great kernel for some strange reason.
I don't believe BSD would have ever become Linux had the Linux movement not existed. As far as I remember, the free software movement that Linux is a part of actually came from DOS hackers. That's what gives Linux its feel- it's a 386 unix, not a unix for 386. In other words, it's not about unix, it's about the PC- and the PC begins with Microsoft.
RMS is simply unable to look at the reality of the PC revolution and how it affected the open source world. Microsoft helped drop these cheap little computers into peoples' laps and stick them on the internet. The universities were never going to create anything usable without all those dedicated DOS hackers. The world without Microsoft and Linux is a world of extremely expensive corporate unices and obscure free software projects furnished like plan9. Without the drive towards accessibility, perhaps Apple would have been our Microsoft and Amiga our Apple? Without Microsoft undercutting the computing industry for years, perhaps the free software movement would never have any target to aim for.
Even Firefox comes from Mozilla which comes from Netscape which was quite popular on Windows. When you remember that hatred of Windows ME and IE 5-6 has driven so many developers to work on alternatives, doesn't it seem unlikely that a software counter-culture like F/OSS would ever be at its strength without a culture to counter?
You see, there's this thing called economics. Third world countries often find themselves in a situation where they're bombarded by vendors who know how sell to a third world government- because they don't have the economic clout to throw their weight around. An open source scion does not arrive in a taxi cab and convert the government- a big corporation treats a warlord to a nice dinner and tells him how their product will make his country strong and respected. If it weren't Microsoft (it isn't Microsoft all the time anyway), it would be IBM (remember, the old Microsoft), Sun, or some other tech vendor.
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
"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."
The cost of actual software is very little compared the cost of support, which is still a significant cost when using "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."
If you want someone to blame for starvation and death in various countries around the world, don't blame Microsoft..blame the countries government..they are most likely the problem.
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.
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.
Wrong. Unless all those software developers who would have been writing software now switch over to doing the medical research, which some of which are certainly not cut out for, then society
STILL has to support those developers in some way, like preventing them from starving. Its possible that it would actually make the problem worse, not better.
Good, this at least partially offsets the amount of money we send to Asia on a yearly basis buying junk made there. We have a foreign trade DEFICIT (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_deficit), not surplus, meaning that all that money Bill is draining from the rest of the world STILL isn't enough to make up for how much America is giving to the rest of the world ( Middle Eastern oil, Far East consumer goods/electronics, and other crap ).
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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.
Football Odds
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.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
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.
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
"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!
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
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.
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
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.
You seriously overestimate Microsoft. Their annual revenue is in the vicinity of $50 billion. So many companies have higher revenues than this it isn't even funny. Do you want them all to shutter their businesses?
Even if you make the grossly oversimplifying calculation of $50 billion divided by (roughly) 200 countries in the world -- that comes to $250 million per country. On most country's balance sheet, that number is noise. And for the most part, that is actually only divided among developed/developing countries -- Somalia/Zimbabwe/Uganda are hardly spending 100s of millions of dollars on software..
This anti-MS trolling on /. is getting seriously pathetic. You would think MS is peddling arms to the third world, mining conflict diamonds, or exploiting natural resources in the Amazon or in Africa or something. If you really cared one iota about society having "money left over to spend on fixing disease, starvation, etc." you'd first educate yourself on the issues that cause it. Until then, let me disabuse you of one notion -- children in poor African countries are not starving to death because their parents (or even governments) used up all their money on software.