Stallman Attacks Gates, Microsoft, & Charity Foundation 976
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."
nothing "low" or "desparate" about it (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Richard Marx Stalin (Score:5, Insightful)
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...
Sour grapes? (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re:Too far (Score:4, Insightful)
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)
Re:nothing "low" or "desparate" about it (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
When I read how charities are a 'tax shelter', I realize how stupid the writer is. And in this case, how dumb the moderators are.
Give away a dollar to save 40 cents. Brilliant strategy. Especially when you consider the wealthy can probably reduce their tax liability to 20 cents or less per dollar.
Tell you what... give me $10,000 and I will give you back $4,000. Then you to can do the same brilliant 'tax shelter' strategy.
Re:Fair points (Score:3, Insightful)
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?
You arent helping either. (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Too far (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Common decency (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Article focus (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Wow! (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:You're a blind idiot (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
More of the same from Stallman (Score:5, Insightful)
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.....
Re:Too far (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Wrong summary. Try reading the article next time. (Score:5, Insightful)
You see, there's this thing called economics (Score:1, Insightful)
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.
Kinda low ... (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re:nothing "low" or "desparate" about it (Score:3, Insightful)
Come on, this is /. not the AICPA [aicpa.org]. Give a nerd a break on bad math skills!
Seriously, you would not believe how often accountants hear 'laypeople' talk about how much of a 'scam' charitable donations are for the rich. It is a popular meme that just will not die, mores the pity.
Re:Sour grapes? (Score:1, Insightful)
But you're missing the point. He's rich because of his anti-competitive and down right evil business practices.
And the net result is plain to see, the folding [or decimation] of competitors such as Corel, Wordperfect, Borland/Inprise, and so on.
So yay, he gives out money, money that he got by taking advantage of the market and basically being a prick.
If I prey'ed on drug addicts by pushing drugs, then used some of my money to buy books for a school, am I good person?
He basically led a company designed to lock people into one track of software, make it very hard/expensive to switch tracks, and then charge whatever they want for it.
You might say, oh why use Word? Use OO.o and you're done. Problem is when you have a million documents in Word/Excel/etc dating back to say the early 90s it's really hard to just say, oh let's move them all to OO.o.
Now if, for example, they weren't anti-competitive, their file format would be documented (so the customer knows what they are getting) and other office suites would be able to read them.
I mean disregard the "helping competitors" line for a second. When you rush off and buy a $100 copy of Word, they're not even telling you what the damn file format is! You're stuck using their software and have no choice about the matter.
Anybody remember Andrew Carnegie (Score:1, Insightful)
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.
Re:Too far (Score:5, Insightful)
So you're saying, that it isn't? [informatio...house.info]
Citations. Desperately. Needed.
Shameful.. (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
This is fair, more or less... (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re:Too far (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Too far (Score:4, Insightful)
> 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.
Re:Too far (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re:Too far (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
BBC: Microsoft's unethical system of restrictions (Score:4, Insightful)
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."
Re:Too far (Score:2, Insightful)
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].
Re:Too far (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:You see, there's this thing called economics (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:You see, there's this thing called economics (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Sour grapes? (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Too far (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:"Anonymous reader" (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Too far (Score:4, Insightful)
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).
yes, people like you are shameful (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Too far (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:You see, there's this thing called economics (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't think it's an accident that Bill's interest has turned to pharmaceuticals. (1) There's a lot more money involved, and (2) software doesn't help you live longer.
Re:Too far (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:You see, there's this thing called economics (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Richard Marx Stalin (Score:2, Insightful)
"Just because something benefits the society as a whole doesn't make it communistic---if it were, Soviet Russia must've been a paradise."
Do you even know the definition of communism? Here it is:
"a theory or system of social organization based on the holding of all property in common, actual ownership being ascribed to the community as a whole or to the state."
This sounds exactly like software licensed under the GNU license. It's owned by the community, rather than an individual (or the state...which in this case is the FSF).
Why is it so hard for the open source community to admit that it is software communism?
But if there wouldn't be any proprietary software. (Score:2, Insightful)
... what would free software copy then?
Re:Too far (Score:3, Insightful)
Hope this helps
Re:Richard Marx Stalin (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:B&M Gates smoke curtain.... (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:You see, there's this thing called economics (Score:5, Insightful)
"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.
Re:Richard Marx Stalin (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:You see, there's this thing called economics (Score:5, Insightful)
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 ).
Re:Richard Marx Stalin (Score:2, Insightful)
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 [wikipedia.org]? Compare and contrast with Anarchism, but anarchism in a world where there is significantly fewer resources to fight over.
How did MS software make CPUs cheaper? (Score:1, Insightful)
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.
Re:You see, there's this thing called economics (Score:1, Insightful)
It's funny as I always thought it was the hardware manufacturers who have driven down the cost of computing as most of their components follow set standards, whereas Microsoft software does not follow the available standards. Hardware costs have come down but the cost of Microsoft software has risen.
Re:Too far (Score:3, Insightful)
This is entirely false, and FUD. Any claims of money "funneling" are nothing more than allegations without any substance. But, hey, you believed them...
Re:BBC: Microsoft's unethical system of restrictio (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Too far (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Right And Wrong At Once (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
There's A Name For That.... (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Richard Marx Stalin (Score:3, Insightful)
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).
Re:Don't be deceived by your eyes. Dig a little mo (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Too far (Score:5, Insightful)
"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/ [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.
Re:Too far (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
I would disagree slightly with your definitions... (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Too far (Score:3, Insightful)
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).
Re:You see, there's this thing called economics (Score:3, Insightful)
Sorry, I don't buy it. It's like saying all the money spent on Iraq would have been spent on healthcare if we hadn't invaded Iraq. It wouldn't have been spent on Iraq, but it's not like Bush sat down and said "Okay, healthcare, or invasion..." when deciding what he wanted to do over his morning lucky charms or whatever. The money wasn't previously allocated to healthcare, just like the Windows license money wasn't previously budgeted for charity by most people. (Note to morons: plz don't take this as an opening to debate Iraq/national healthcare, as I am not going to argue either in a slashdot thread about RMS and Microsoft, or any slashdot thread, for that matter. This applies to all sides of both issues.)
Also, how many Linux users build their system from the ground up? I did, and not really to avoid the Microsoft "tax" (though I admit that was part of it) -- I did it to be sure the hardware freaking worked in Linux. Or what about people using second hand computers? Or converts after the fact? Dual booters?
If you don't want to pay Microsoft, you can find a way, and sometimes it will end up saving you more than just avoiding their license fees.
Re:Makes Sense at First Glance (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:There's A Name For That.... (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Gee, that sounds exactly like today's USA and UK.
Really, it is an oligarchy run by elitists, and is not terribly different from feudalism.
No human organisation is terribly different from feudalism, in that the strongest get the lion's share of the power and loot (and women, by the way). Nowadays the barons are just a whole lot better at disguising what they're up to from the peasants. Who are, relatively speaking, a whole lot worse off then medieval peasants were compared to their overlords.
Re:Too far (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
You are being VERY short sighted. (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Richard Marx Stalin (Score:3, Insightful)
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 [wikipedia.org] 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".
Re:Too far (Score:2, Insightful)
Nobody is saying you can't have a well founded opinion.
Re:BBC: Microsoft's unethical system of restrictio (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Wow! (Score:2, Insightful)
Now, you can produce music with ZERO MONEY (provided you got a PC). With GNU / Linux and a decent Audio editor and recorder (Ok, Audacity isn't the cream of the crop, but at least it gets the job done), and some music editor (forgot the names, but there are), you can produce your own album, and then burn the CD with k3b or another CD recording tool.
But let's get back a little in time, and that zero money became a couple thousand dollars: First you needed Microsoft Windows, and then an audio and music editor like Cakewalk Studio. The difference from zero to 2 thousand dollars is enough to keep amateurs out of the business. That's the power that Microsoft, Apple, Adobe and the rest keep over you. They keep for themselves, the tools that YOU NEED to succeed.
Given that Microsoft, Apple, etc. wrote that software, isn't it well within their rights to "keep it to themselves"? They're not obligated to give you the software they wrote for no charge. I think it's a great thing that you now have some free alternatives, but I find your statements absolutely ridiculous. No one's stopping you from writing your own music production software. If you can't, or it would take too much time, then why do you expect other people to do it for you for free?
And the more money you give to them, the more powerful they become to keep improving their product AND CHARGING MORE FOR IT. Or have you see software prices decrease over time? Well, actually, they have. According to this page [lowendmac.com] and Amazon [amazon.com], Photoshop has decreased in price. $1000 - $999.00 = One dollar :)
So Photoshop has improved itself over the years, but costs roughly the same? What's the problem?
Now let's go to Microsoft Windows. In the 80's, MS-DOS costed around $40. The price for Windows Vista Ultimate is $319.95. Eight times more. Connect the dots, and guess how much Microsoft Windows 7 will cost when it's out.
$40 in the 1980's is worth more than $40 today, you know. It's not an eightfold increase in price.
Re:You see, there's this thing called economics (Score:2, Insightful)
the obvious rebuttal is that communism relied on 'central planning' to manage scarce resources, like labor and equipment while free software - and all other ideas - are abundant resources that remain the product of free markets in scarce resources labor and equipment.
Except that you, like many other FOSS proponents, leave out one hugely critical piece of the equation: how do FOSS programmers support themselves? Past surveys have shown that FOSS projects are almost always started and maintained by people who program proprietary, non-FOSS software for a living. Ergo, proprietary, non-FOSS software for profit is an absolute necessity in order to support the FOSS community.
Now, some FOSS projects are given away free but with paid-for support infrastructures. This is a great idea, but it damages quite a bit of the we're-cheaper-than-non-FOSS argument. Study after study -- and your own argument -- holds that initial purchase price is an almost-insignificant piece of the TCO. If I get a piece of software for free but pay the same to support it as I would've a proprietary solution, I've gained little or nothing in the process.
And don't say I've gained independence, or I'm supporting "the movement" or any other ideology-based argument. I don't give two damns about where my software comes from or what economic model supports it. I care that it (a) performs the function I want it to perform with reasonable efficiency and reliability, and (b) I want the cost of the software to be reasonably related to the value I extract from it. Leave the preaching and proselytizing to the RMS's of the world.
Re:Gates Foundation not primarily a charity (Score:1, Insightful)
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.
Re:Too far (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:You see, there's this thing called economics (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:BBC: Microsoft's unethical system of restrictio (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Too far (Score:3, Insightful)
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?
Re:BBC: Microsoft's unethical system of restrictio (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re:Right And Wrong At Once (Score:3, Insightful)
You're just a libertarian associating OSS with your own political ideals to some how link libertarians with OSS.
The truth is... OSS is just that.. freedom. Its whatever the author intends it to be. It is not for any one beleif to assume what OSS is or isnt, other than will and right of the authors and contributors behind it.
Some may be libertarian, some may be communist. I'm sure there are Chinese OSS authors out there that are communist, and i'm sure there are some Chinese OSS authors out there that are pro democracy... and of course there are also US authors who may or may not be libertarian.
Attempting to link OSS with any single political movement is typical humanity at its worst... selfish and reassuring of ones ego.
Re:Too far (Score:3, Insightful)
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.