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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."
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!?"
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.
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,
He understands that well. But we can do something about Microsoft in particular, and we can hopefully prevent another Microsoft from happening.
He is disparaging a charity
His criticism comes from the LA times, so complain to them. And the LA times is rational and justified in criticizing the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation.
Shame on you, Richard Stallman. Shame on you.
No, shame on you by automatically assuming that because something is called a "charity" it actually is.
Third world nations need competitive economies, not selective meddling and handouts from publicity hungry US billionaires. And in order to get competitive economies, they need US and Europe to do something about their protectionism and monopolies. If anybody should understand that, it's self-proclaimed free market advocates like you and Gates.
The problem is people like you, not people like Stallman.