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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?
fucking commie bastard
capitalism forever!
GOD BLESS AMERICA
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.
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.
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I'm sorry you don't understand tax law and the way that charities are used by for-profits, but you can, in fact, give away $10k and get back $20k.
"I still don't understand why he wants everyone to be naked."
Fuck you you stupid piece of shit. Anyone who sends dollars to Microsoft is a traitor and supports the rise of Communist China. Fuck you! Being naked is being assfucked by proprietary masters, Stallman makes valid points and all the typical pieces of donkey shit consumers can do is install more Windows software, knowing nothing about freedom and the values of open source.
Fuck you!
And when Security and the police shot him to death, it would be a net gain for the Free/Open Software Movements and for the world in General.
RMS is to Free/Open Source Movements as Jack Thompson is to the Anti-gaming Crusade
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
I have had discussions with people that support the claim that Gates has done more to harm than to help, but only assuming that most people are not woefully illogical and ignorant. Alas that is a false assumption. I have actually had people tell me that they prefer to buy Windows rather than use Linux for free, because "a portion of my money goes to charity when I buy Windows." It actually never occurs to these people to use Linux and donate the entire cost of Windows to charity!
... that is certainly to a large degree for show, and he is giving back very little of what he stole. He is no Robin Hood, to be certain. If you calculate what percentage of his ill gotten gains he has returned, it is parallel to me offering to give to charity and then asking that charity if they have change for a penny. Gates is no great philanthropist. He is a skilled opportunist, who knows how to leverage peoples ignorance and lack of logical facility, and so that is why we have people today purchasing Windows so that a couple of dollars goes tro charity rather than using Linux and sending a couple of hundred dollars to charity.
So in an ideal world, everyone would use Linux, or one of the *BSDs, and donate the money they would have spent on an OS to a worthy cause. In that ideal world every purchase of Windows would be a drain on charity funds. In that ideal world, people would not be illogical sheep lead to the proprietary slaughter. But we don't live in an ideal world.
As far as Gates giving to charity
RMS is an idealist. Anyone who doesn't respect him far more than they do Gates is merely ignorant. Unfortunately, RMS is also a bit of a nut, while Gates is pure criminal. Nuts are obviously nuts. Good criminals know how to avoid looking like criminals. So we have a world where ignorant people prefer the fine upstanding looking criminal to the obvious, but well meaning, nut.
Does any of this mean I wish Gates wasn't giving to charity? No. But lets not be so quick to call him a great guy. If he was a great guy, it wouldn't be so obvious who was donating the money, and the charity organization certainly wouldn't be called the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
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.
...a few hopelessly ignorant responses from people who honestly believe ... his giving away of billions in charity is all a ruse to justify his ill-gotten position of power.
There. Fixed it for you.
There's an Oxymoron if I have ever seen one. The reason one works in the "Open Source" community is because one lacks the skill to work in commercial software.
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.
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.
Stallman... you're so stupid that I'm impressed.
I had a GPL project but with this I'm dropping it in protest against you and your communistic manners and will soon announce its dead to the public.
Under you "guidance" the GNU and GPL projects will die.
The core of Sir John Sulston's complaint is the privatization of scientific knowledge but that is a core mission of the Gates Foundation. Every "gift" and grant comes with typical M$ strings, including software use and they demand a servile "respect" for "intellectual property". Real charity does not come with conditions, it is freely given out of love. The Gates foundation is all about Gates moving M$'s ethics into medicine but it should be rejected. Patient care is more important than profit. Control of medical information for profit may not be a crime now but it should be.
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