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."
Too far (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Too far (Score:1, Interesting)
So you're saying, that it isn't? [informatio...house.info]
Harm? (Score:3, Interesting)
I still don't see the harm that Gates brought to the computing industry with Microsoft. They brought a unification to the desktop and IT that simply didn't exist before, and pushed for standards that made it easier.
And even now there are still problems with all of this. Look at the browser market. Even if IE were not involved, you still have the problem that Firefox, Opera, and Safari render pages differently. Their performance is also very different. So say, a website that you write for one may be great on performance but when launched in another browser be completely and utterly poor.
Even setting "standards" for rendering don't resolve that, as exactly "how" those standards are implemented are left up to the developers. Then you still have the issue that Safari is the most common browser used on Macs, and that's certainly going to heat up as Safari 4 makes its rounds.
Either way, Microsoft tried to reduce this as much as possible. And they succeeded. Despite the fact that millions of people don't know how to use the computers they use every day, they still use them and have access to them. You can still get an education with them.
There are points where IT nerds don't want to learn anything new anymore--it's just at a much higher point than the average person, but still exists...
Makes Sense at First Glance (Score:4, Interesting)
When I first read rms' potification, it made a certain sort of sense. If you've ever been threatened by the BSA, as I have - twice - you begin to recognise that many software vendors use EULAs to give themselves ridiculously expansive rights, far beyond the government's constitutional limits (at least in the USA). Enter my house to audit my computers? In your dreams.
After a great deal of thought, however, I realize that his view on free software and society actually do make a lot of sense. Free-as-in-liberty software is worth supporting IMHO. So this former Microsoft enthusiast does. Still use a Microsoft mouse, though - they make great hardware. :-)
I have no opinion on the Gates' foundation - I favour charity, obviously, but I'm not up to speed on the details of their goals & policies.
--
Written on the best-selling N800 GNU and Linux tablet.
Re:Richard Marx Stalin (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:nothing "low" or "desparate" about it (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
This is not RMS' argument. His argument is that the charity invests some of their money into companies like oil plants which pollute the air, see this article [latimes.com].
If you're going to defend RMS, at least get it right.
From the article:
Monica Harrington, a senior policy officer at the foundation, said the investment managers had one goal: returns "that will allow for the continued funding of foundation programs and grant making." Bill and Melinda Gates require the managers to keep a highly diversified portfolio, but make no specific directives.
I don't think they're specifically looking for investment in oil and gas companies, this just happened to be one of their investments (I'm not saying that it's OK, but RMS can blow things way out of proportion).
Re:Too far (Score:0, Interesting)
Well there's a lot of debate, if you look into alternative health, ppl like Dr. Mercola [mercola.com] and Dr. Tim O'Shea [thedoctorwithin.com] and do a bit of searching on the AIDS conspiracy/medical conspiracies you'll get some insight into the controversy.
I know slashdot whole heartedly embraces main stream medical science and believes everything their doctors tell them because it's science right? no corruption or greed or agendas right? Nobody ever falsifies data for ego reasons, research funding, or to get published etc etc... and that can be applied to anyone really. Look at the data and make up your own mind.
I think the two big things regarding the Gate's foundation is related to vaccination and AIDS. These are two topics that are full of conspiracy. Is HIV == AIDS? Some ppl think it is all based on shoddy research, and that AIDS is BS. In Africa supposedly a lot of deaths just get filed under AIDS, no proper testing or methodology. never mind the extreme poverty, starvation, war, lack of sanitation, and other minor things like that. And from what I've read on vaccination I don't ever want to be vaccinated again. You can believe it's good for you, personally I think it's poison.
So if you have that view that the multi-billion dollar sick industry, big drug companies and their doctors are in it for the money and power, and make things up in order to deceive a gullible public, and then you see Bill Gate's foundation pushing those things around the world, the cynics might see it as an extension of imperialism and not some altruistic good for humanity effort although that works well for public relations. "Don't hate on Bill and Microsoft, they took billions of your dollars but see? They're doing so much good in the world..... shame on you for questioning their intentions..."
Re:Harm? (Score:4, Interesting)
I disagree with your point that it was Microsoft that brought "unification to the desktop", a point that is often repeated.
It was IBM, not least through there open hardware policy, that wiped out any significant competition and brought a single platform to the desktop. Microsoft, very shrewdly, hung on for the ride and then jumped off at just the right time. It was a brilliant business plan, maybe the most perfectly executed business plan ever, but they were not the ones that created the common platform. Nor did MSOffice, et al, accomplish anything in that department other than bring most of the desktop under the auspices of the same company. Heck, they completely blew it in the database department, after acquiring the most promising company out there, Fox. IE did nothing for "unification", quite the contrary, and the list goes on with malware protection, email clients, and all the other standard stuff on the desktop. People were sharing documents and spreadsheets before Word Or Excel came on the scene.
What Microsoft accomplished was to replace other products with their own, not so much with better engineering as better marketing, and get their name out there as the most ubiquitous --> preeminent name in desktop computing.
Bill's argument (Score:3, Interesting)
As I recall, Gates's main argument is that programmers must make money for their work, as there is no incentive for them to produce software otherwise.
Apart from a few benevolent souls who produce software in their spare time, how exactly is completely free software a sustainable model? Or is the argument that you make your software open source but not free? Does this mean someone else can copy your hard work and produce a customized version?
I still haven't really grasped what incentive a business would have of producing software without protecting their work. Or is Stallman advocating a Red-Hat/Suse sort of thing, where you produce software and charge for consultancy? Meaning the more obscure your software is, the better?
How can you produce desktop software using such a model?
Overpopulation...Anyone....Anyone? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Too far (Score:3, Interesting)
Holy cow, it's just like his strategy for software: break stuff so that you increase the market for fixes!
Between that and this [informatio...house.info], Gates really does sound evil!
Re:Makes Sense at First Glance (Score:1, Interesting)
I have no opinion on the Gates' foundation - I favour charity, obviously, but I'm not up to speed on the details of their goals & policies.
I think this is the only sensible comment in the whole thread.
But a few comments:
First: If I was rich, I would set up a "charity", just for marketing purposes. Just to get good karma, especially if people did not have a favorable view of myself. A charity would change that. And it could cost ZERO: give 5 or 10% of the foundation money, maintain the rest as investment done by the foundation, just the tax break would be more than the 10% given each year. And, really, you would still be in control of the money. You could not use it to make a bigger home, but you could use it to do mostly anything else, especially to amass power.
How do I know this: I work in an area subsidized by the BMG foundation, and although I am not funded by them, they are so powerful that they review and evaluate my work.
RMG contributed a LOT. (Score:5, Interesting)
No, it didn't.
Yes, a software package that was already written and finished and made public would of course continue to exist. But there were literally thousands of companies and people who would take advantage of someone else's work and give nothing in return.
Richard Stallman (Score:3, Interesting)
Richard Stallman is not about freedom. Richard Stallman only cares about end-user freedom.
But I fail to see why end user freedom should be more important than the developer's freedom to choose. It's almost as if developers were evil by default from his point of view. Unless of course they embrace the GPL.
Re:You see, there's this thing called economics (Score:4, Interesting)
Careful, a similar argument was once used (and occasionally still is) to claim that communism with its central planning was superior economically because the competition of capitalism involved wasteful duplication of effort. The claim proved a bit flawed when put to the test.
(note: I am not comparing free or open source software to communism. Just the arguments to arguments supporting communism)
Don't be deceived by your eyes. Dig a little more. (Score:3, Interesting)
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?
Gates said 30 years ago that all the work he invested in making some programs should be paid back by the people "stealing" his products. But then he imposes a very expensive tax for ALL computer users in the world. And then he plays dirty to make sure other people don't give the public better and cheaper products (I'm talking before the Free Software revolution happened).
Don't you think that's being a little hypocritical about it?
By forcing governments to use expensive Microsoft products you prevent said countries from using all that money for better causes, i.e. fighting AIDS and diseases, developing a solid independent industry, investing in education, etc. It's like taking money destined to the poor, and then donating a tiny bit of it to the poor and getting praised for that. My point is that the money the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation gives to the poor can't even be compared to the money they took from other countries and would end up in the hands of the poor sooner or later.
YOU CAN'T ERASE ALL YOUR BAD DEEDS BY DOING A SMALL GOOD DEED!
Really - do you think that someone who became millionaire by forcibly collecting money from nearly anyone, including taxpayers, who end up paying taxes for Microsoft Software (including Vista) installed in government offices (and that's AROUND THE WORLD - so that's a double Microsoft tax, not only for you, sir, but for all citizens of all countries) is really a charitative person?
Give me a fucking break.
This is EXACTLY THE SAME THING that the US has done. First they force their expensive products down the throats of foreign countries, raising their debts and increasing poverty. But instead of helping those countries develop their industries and invest in education, they give them "money for the poor" with the condition of investing in birth control (because we can't have poor people have many kids, think of the poor single mothers with 10 children!).
It's people like Bill Gates and company who help maintain the international Status Quo.
Re:You see, there's this thing called economics (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:You see, there's this thing called economics (Score:5, Interesting)
The economics issue extends to the operations of Bill and Melinda's "charitable" giving as well. You see, the foundation actively opposes generic drugs. I'm not one to suggest Bill is malicious. He really truly believes that the free market doesn't work, that government must establish artificial monopolies on ideas, and his foundation would like to apply the same principles that enabled Microsoft to dominate the US software market to the world pharmaceutical market.
People disagree. Others believe that the market should be left to its own devices and find its own equilibrium. Some would say that denying access to generic drugs by pressuring governments to avoid doing business with companies that produce them, and by also pressuring them to establish, practice and enforce US laws establishing artificial monopolies over ideas on their soil (this is ironically called "free trade"), is causing great harm to the world's poor. Yes, even killing them.
The debate about the usefulness of artificially concentrating great wealth in the hands of the very few so that these superior intellects may shower the rest of us with their munificence extends beyond the world of software. It's entirely appropriate that RMS would be discussing these issues as they relate to the Gates' "charitable" foundation, which invests in the very pharmaceutical companies who's profits are tied to squashing competition from generic drug manufacturers. Thank god someone is doing it, because heaven knows we can't count on our self-interested media conglomerates to provide any kind of balanced perspective.
B&M Gates smoke curtain.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Ahem, ahem...
I am not really impressed by B&M gates foundation... and the use they have given to it:
e-Mexico [infoworld.com].
Which was about to be kickstarted with Open Source (with the backup of HP, IBM, Sun, etc)... until Bill Gates went to Mexico to speak with Presidente Fox... aaaaand, guess what:
Microsoft has pledged $60 million in software and training to help fund Internet kiosks that are being built in remote communities. The software maker has also allotted $10 million to train workers in small and mid-size businesses, along with an additional grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to the country's VAMOS MEXICO program to be used to move the country's libraries online.
Ohh, Vamos Mexico... the foundation from Fox's wife which has been investigated for allegued corruption practices. [nytimes.com]
Oh yes, B&M Gates foundation are God's messengers.
Re:nothing "low" or "desparate" about it (Score:2, Interesting)
What's wrong with hippies and activists? Are they somehow inferior to "professionals"?
Re:Too far (Score:5, Interesting)
As well as on numerous occasions (esp. during M$ antitrust trial) it was revelead that Bill & Melinda Gates foundation was used to funnel money into "independent" entities who were FUDing against Open Source and other M$ competitors. Also there were many reports of donations filled with freebies like M$Wind0ze and M$Office "for millions dollars." Hardly a charity.
Check that too - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_and_Melinda_Gates_Foundation#Criticisms [wikipedia.org]
They might be doing something good - for a change - but essentially the B&MGF is business and nothing else.
Re:Richard Stallman (Score:3, Interesting)
This is an excellent point. It reminds me of Henry Ford's sentiment that someone could have any color for their car so long as it was black. The FOSS community can keep trying to do what they can to unseat Microsoft's reign, but until their products actually as designed totally with the average user in mind, Microsoft will dominate.
Re:You see, there's this thing called economics (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Newsflash!
You can find it all (pay-ware and free-ware) for next to nothing on torrents.
And yes - "society" does that.
You think third world countries give a flying fuck about RIAA and Microsoft (no.. wait...) Micro$oft (thats better) and whoever else it is that is the target of the day because they demand that you keep paying for your electrons over and over?
Ummm.. NO!
Why is that mythical "Year of Linux on Desktop" not coming yet? .DOCX and .XLS to .PSD and .DWG.
Because it is simpler to get pirated software. It costs the same. AND - it is more compatible. Yes - COMPATIBLE.
With those proprietary "industry standard" file formats every single software and hardware company keeps trying to push. From
Its there. For free. Download it. Use the crack or serial you got with your rared install. It works.
Free software? As in speech or as in beer? Who gives a fuck?
All software is for free!
Illegal? Where? Somewhere in Russia?
Sure... you go and explain it to them door to door. Or implement a lock that a 12 year old hackers will crack over weekend.
I'm sure half of India and China is losing sleep over it too.
And all those Africans without electricity and drinking water... oh boy... they must be thinking day and night about the illegality of software piracy and problems proprietary software causes to the "society".
They probably wake up screaming "AAAH! Bill Gates is coming to eat our children and make us use Office 2007!! RUN! RUUUUN!!!"
Re:Too far (Score:3, Interesting)
Please. What do you suggest as the reason why someone would respect RMS? His good looks? His impeccable cleanliness? His tact? His unmatched skill at singing and songwriting?
Actually, it's mostly because of the association of his license and ancillary software with Linux. Stallman owes at least as much to Linus Torvalds as Torvalds does to him.
Like it or not, without RMS, Linux would never have been anything but a 386 assembly-language pet project,
Perhaps, but various *BSD flavors would still exist. There were already various efforts afoot to provide source-available unix-clones. Linux just happened to become available first.
Agree or disagree with him, if you can't imagine why anyone would respect RMS, then you need to research what's happened over the last 25 years.
Actually, most of that is negligible - most software in use is still proprietary and closed source. Open source fills a few important niches, but it's hardly irreplaceable.
Sure, Stallman has made some noteworthy contributions, but his crack-pot political agenda has arguably done just as much to inhibit the adoption of open-source software as it has to promote it.
Re:Too far (Score:2, Interesting)
Global capitalism, spread and maintained largely through Microsoft products, causes more problems with poverty and economic disparity than Gates' foundation can ever fix. In fact, charities let this effed-up system continue by dealing with the outcome and not the source of the problem. So the guy's kinda right
More about Richard Matthew Stallman (Score:5, Interesting)
Quotes [junauza.com] from Richard Matthew Stallman:
"Geeks like to think that they can ignore politics, that you can leave politics alone, but politics won't leave you alone."
"Fighting software patents one by one will never eliminate the danger of software patents, any more than swatting mosquitoes will eliminate malaria."
"Free software' is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, think of 'free' as in 'free speech,' not as in 'free beer'."
More quotes [stallman.org]:
"People get the government their behavior deserves. People deserve better than that."
"Odious ideas are not entitled to hide from criticism behind the human shield of their believers' feelings."
"Injustice is happening now; suffering is happening now. We have choices to make now. To insist on absolute certainty before starting to apply ethics to life decisions is a way of choosing to be amoral." (Slashdot interview, 1 May 2000)
Re:Gates Foundation not primarily a charity (Score:3, Interesting)
If Bill Gates did not give money to his Foundation, he would need to send that money to the US Govt, and reduce everyone's taxes by probably about $1. So it's cost me at least $1.
If Bill Gates gave his money to someone else, it would be a donation. But he's giving it to himself, since he controls his own Foundation.
The Foundation has restrictions on what it can do (it's a non-profit), but so did Microsoft, and we see how well that worked out.
Lee Hood is using Java (Score:5, Interesting)
He mentioned that while all of the biology and engineering tech were all IP'd up, the software side was FOSS -- Google Cytoscape to look up their software project. Predictably, he mentioned that Bill Gates was against this arrangement, and Lee Hood mentioned it took a lot of upper-management pep talk and persuasion to get his in-house software people to be happy about it as well.
I didn't bother asking Lee Hood questions about the software aspects as it was a biology symposium and the grad students were more interested in the biology aspects of the project, but I looked up Cytoscape, and guess what, it is written and extendable in Java. And this is largely on Bill and Melinda's dime.
Re:Too far (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Well, I don't think he's done any harm by giving away his money. But I'll point out that he did the world far more good in the process of earning his money than he'll ever do giving it away.
Re:Richard Marx Stalin (Score:3, Interesting)
It's about a communist as labour unions. In a free (information) society, people are free to gather and fix prices and demands collectively. And why shouldn't they ? This is not problematic, or at odds with capitalism at all. What /is/ problematic is that companies aren't allowed to do the same. There are laws against price cartels. Unless you're big oil, of course. Then it's all good and natural.
Re:Richard Marx Stalin (Score:3, Interesting)
Oh, please! Why do people persist with this "Free Software is communism" garbage? It is really annoying and not very intelligent.
The primary gripe associated with communism is the necessary element of autocracy, either by a small elite or society in general. Basically, the individual sacrifices his rights to society and is coerced to do so ("The good of the many outweighs the good of the few." If you want to use Star Trek terminology). Society works as a unit to produce for all, and individuals do not have the choice to not participate.
Free Software on the other hand is a hack to compensate for something that should never have existed in the first place: proprietary software. There is no universal, natural, moral or other Right embodied in copyright. It is a revocable privilege, originally limited to commercial transactions and limited in duration. While Congress has the power to create it, Congress is not required to. If it is revoked, no one can seek compensation. It is subordinate to Natural Rights such as those embodied in the Bill of Rights.
Copyright was never intended to cover something like software. Software is not an artistic work (although some people manage to make it artistic). It is a functional work. As such, a monopoly incentive is unnecessary. Businesses will pay for software to be developed even if they cannot restrict its distribution by any legal means. People will write software because they want their computers to do things they cannot currently do. This will never change, and the monopoly privilege only inhibits these processes by forcing the constant reinvention of the wheel.
Copyright also restricts a natural and universal right necessary for every Free Society: Free Speech. Copyright makes certain speech controllable, which makes it NOT Free. Liberal Democracies are literally inconceivable in the absence of Free Speech. In the absence of copyright, however, few things in our current world -- except for millionaire record execs -- are inconceivable.
Monopolies are anti-capitalist. Monopolies, like copyright, are a relic of Feudal system that the Revolution of 1776, the one that everybody was celebrating yesterday, toppled. This is the autocratic system where monarchs got to say who could do business with whom and where and when. The establishment of the United States happened as a reaction to monopolies and other trade restrictions. Unless one claims the Authors of the Constitution of the United States were communists, nothing that is anti-monopoly, like Free Software, can be called "communist".
Therefore, the true communists are people who would treat information -- speech -- like property, people who use the term "Intellectual Property". These are the people who wish to assert Feudal monopoly privileges in order to gain an unfair market advantage and charge unreasonable fees for their services. This are people who want the state to enforce their predatory taxation on society. Bill Gates is precisely this sort of communist, and his attempts to bring 1984 to our desktops (no, I am not inclined to provide a list. There should be no shortage of evidence on the net for the curious) is precisely the opposite of Freedom and Free Software.
Communists are people who do not believe in Free Software.
Re:You see, there's this thing called economics (Score:3, Interesting)
You see, the foundation actively opposes generic drugs.
citation?
Re:Too far (Score:5, Interesting)
I've heard this before, although generally about cancer. 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
Option two sounds the best, right? But you don't exist in a vacuum. If your researchers found the cure, then how long until SatanDrugs, LLC or BeelzePharm makes that same discovery, and will they do the same thing you are? Maybe they already have. Maybe they're on their way to the patent office now...
It's kind of like the old prisoner's dilemma scenario. You can't trust every other company to act for the collective good for the industry, and since any one of you could sell out for short term profits, why not you?
There's also another problem, which is that it's a cold hearted bastard thing to do. If your R&D department actually discovered a cure, you think the people who know about it are going to sit quietly while you sweep it under the rug? What kind of PR are you going to get when they go public? The only way to guarantee they'd keep quiet would be to have them killed. Otherwise, your company would have the worst PR incident since the holocaust.
Re:BBC: Microsoft's unethical system of restrictio (Score:1, Interesting)
Quite frankly, your misunderstanding of economics is astounding. If you misunderstood everything like that, you would turn your computer off to read Slashdot.
Even if Microsoft products have a higher TCO, it isn't in up front product cost. It's in hands-on maintenance and administration? Who do you think is going to eventually and inevitably do that?
Local workers. Therefor, training and other economies are created.
Without Microsoft and Apple tirelessly attacking the problem of computers at home, and Dell supplying the means, free software would be an exercise in University halls and the end result would be emacs, nethack and nethack inside emacs.
You'll understand this when you get older.
Re:Oh God, (Score:4, Interesting)
As a software developer or some IT-related guy, you may not care about the freedom aspects that Stallman talks of, and you may not like the character. However common people, the ones who don't know about the details of software, don't care for Open Source, and they will never care for Open Source: how the availability of the code or the development model is any help to them? The only thing that may convince them --and I mean people interested in politics, not mindless drones watching debilitating TV programs all day long (there are still some normal intelligent people around the world you know)-- is the freedom aspect. Richard Stallman is highly regarded for that in the non-IT communities.
For instance, he was three days ago on a national radio here (among other guests) to discuss Free Software -- and while other protagonists always went too deep in the details, Stallman was the only one understandable (while speaking in a foreign language!) by any regular person.
Now I agree he could show better, he has a lot of defects (I know stories from friends who had to "manage" him on his trips), but even as eccentric and probably a tad insane, he is doing an awesome job which is still necessary for the advent of Free Software.
Re:You see, there's this thing called economics (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm a Linux zealot. I haven't used a Microsoft product out of free will since 1999. But even so, I do admire Bill's work when it comes to fighting diseases, starvation, and so forth. More below:
society will have a lot of money left over to spend on fixing disease, starvation, etc.
In an ideal society - yes. And heck - I would absolutely prefer that various countries choose to use Linux (or BSD) instead of Windows. I especially think that third world countries should do so. But! That doesn't help your argument.
The thing is, most third world countries aren't ideal countries. There is a huge lot of corruption, inefficiency, and so forth.
I'm pretty sure that more of the money third world countries pay for microsoft products - end up as paying for fighting disease, starvation, and so forth - than money _earmarked_ for doing exactly that in many of the countries in question. Why? Because the Bill and Melissa gates foundation tries to make sure that their money is used efficiently (if I remember correctly).
I still would rather that they used free software, instead of being locked in. I think the countries would benefit from it in the long run. But I very, very much respect Bill Gates for how he spends his money on charity.
Re:You see, there's this thing called economics (Score:1, Interesting)
OSS has stuck their head in the sand and tried to argue that standards are developed arbitrarily by some third party instead of realizing that the whatever the greatest number of users accept is the standard.
OSS has tried, at every turn, to discredit and defame anyone whom they think of as unnecessary to their cause. They do this under the auspice of "helping" society. Just as long as that society doesn't include any advertising, management, legal, technically unsavvy, or financially motivated people.
OSS still can't compete with commercial software, even when they give it away for free. Every piece lacks something the commercial packages use and is recognized as an industry requirement.
OSS takes money from hospitals and poor countries by trying to artificially create a new knowledge brokerage. Oh don't use MS stuff, you have to pay those guys for it. Use our stuff, its free - but you have to pay this guy whatever he asks for to support it because the software is obscure and the pool of eligible talenet to support it is smaller.
OSS has used a monopoly on ignorant youth, who have no firm understanding of working economics and learned how the world works from reading it in a book, in order to force a position that they cannot obtain using market forces.
Basically, I'm so sick of hearing you people bitch about how there isn't "fair" competition and how the consumer wants more choices. You have done more harm to yourself then good.
Name me one consumer who wanted office to be sold separately from the OS.
Name me one consumer who thought they could never go and get a web browser other than the one the OS came with.
How the fuck did Apple come back if there is no competition?
No, what you want is for all barriers to entry to be removed so you can poison the market with your shit. If your stuff was better people would use it, ala Firefox. The truth is, most of it doesn't measure up. Almost ubiquitously, whenever this is pointed out, one of you morons starts spouting off on how the market is ignorant or incorrect or rigged. Nevermind that there are plenty of examples of that not being true, you just want that association to magically be true for whatever bullshit project you happen to be associated with.
Fundamentally, you just want to usurp the current state with a state that you get to call the shots in, not give power to the people. That's not open, that's regime change.
Re:You see, there's this thing called economics (Score:5, Interesting)
Not quite. It was found that for certain types of goods and services ( healthcare, education, defense etc... )it worked rather well. In fact, it works so well that even the USA is considering to finance healthcare through a centrally planned system rather than the free market. They don't say it too loudly, and obscure what it really is by calling it other things, but that is essentially what is being done.
The flaw of comunism was not that it recognised that SOME goods and services were better provided throughc entral planning, the flaw was that it assumed that the best way to provide one type of good would necessarily be the best way for ALL goods. In reality central planning works well when goods have large positive externalities, and especially so for public goods. Conversely a free market works well for goods that have no, or minor , externalities, and fails horribly in other cases ( pollution, health care, etc.. ).
The flaw of capitalism is the same as the flaw of communism. It is based on an assumption that all goods and services are equivalent. In reality the extent to which suplier and consumer in a private market pay and benefit from all the effects of a good ( positive as well as negative ) depend greatly upon how much third parties are affected by the goods production and use. For some goods the costs and benefits are accounted for almost completely by the market , for these goods capitalism works well. For other goods there are large external costs and benefits that the market doesn't care about. For these goods capitalism fails horribly.
If you knew your economics you would be well aware that capitalism as well as comunisms are naive generalisations of principles that only hold true under very specific conditions.
Re:Richard Marx Stalin (Score:4, Interesting)
Great propoganda speech. Too bad it doesn't add up.
Communism as an economic model has nothing against free speech. The bulk of your post is your insistance that intellectual property and copyrights are evil. Why?
Programmers deserve to get paid as well. You insist proprietary software should never exist and that level of fanaticism isn't based on logic. Proprietary and OSS both have their places.
I often advocate for the use of OSS, but true freedom is allowing a developer to protect their works and profit from them, or give them openly as they choose to do so.
Re:BBC: Microsoft's unethical system of restrictio (Score:1, Interesting)
No, bug Spyglass basically was (on the streets, that is -- basically bankrupted). Remember, that's the original IE engine that Microsoft promised to give a royalty for each copy of IE.. which they then decided would be 0%. Nice hmm?
Re:You see, there's this thing called economics (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, I'd say that the two main examples of communism - Russia and China - showed it to be a raging success. Let's not forget that, when communists came to power, Russia was a backwards agrarian society which had just lost World War I and had it's government collapse, and China was little more than a bad joke, having been a partially occupied and economically abused puppet of both West and Japan for years, not to mention having gone through several civil wars and in fact being in the middle of one.
Both states became superpowers under communist rule. Of course they were also dictatorships with a habit of disappearing anyone opposing the rulers, but that had always been true for both; neither China nor Russia had ever been democracies nor even moderately free societies in their histories, and arguably still aren't.
So no, communism hasn't been the unmitigated disaster people often think it was for the states which tried it. The problems associated with it come from the social conditions and traditions prior to the revolution, and the process of revolution itself. For countries which adopted left-leaning policies in a peaceful fashion and didn't succumb to dictatorship and personality cults, they have been extremely helpful; see the Nordic countries, for example.
So no, I don't think "sounds like communism" is a valid counterargument to anything.
The irony here is that free software, by putting the means of production into the hands of the users, pretty much accomplishes the basic idea of communism (which was that labourers, not factory-owners, should get the profit from their labour).
Re:Richard Marx Stalin (Score:3, Interesting)
NO. The founding father who fought for copyright specifically did it so the author of the works can make money, and the public can benefit. Just not at the same time.
Interesting that the 'poor widow' who needed to make from their work argument was trotted out.
What tge founding fathers Did Not Want, was anybody to be able to lock up copyright for a long period of time.
That was due to the damage copyright was doing to English society for the past 100 years before America was created.
From what I have read, I'm pretty sure if the founding fathers saw what's happening today, copyright in the constitution wouldn't be there, and they might have gone with one of the original idea to outlaw corporations; which also was doing series harm in England.
I suspect you misunderstand what I was saying. The Founders meant to create incentive for the creative to produce. The GPL (et al) has managed to something very similar. The selfish interest of uncounted numbers of programmers is producing works that are beneficial to many.
That we've gone and turned copyright into a black hole from which nothing creative can ever emerge is a whole other issue. The Founders did blow it big time when they ignored Jefferson's call to specify the term of the monopolies in the Constitution. He also wanted the Constitution to require the grants have narrow scope.
We're living to regret that blunder.
Re:Don't be deceived by your eyes. Dig a little mo (Score:3, Interesting)
Well let me explain something to you.
1 Curing Malaria would not be on small deed.
Also do you know just how small a percentage Windows is in the average small countries IT budget?
You do know that they use Windows for the desktop because for many tasks it is still the cheapest and best solution?
How is Microsoft FORCING governments to use Windows? What exactly is stopping them from Using Macs, Linux, or BSD?
I really don't Microsoft and I do like, use, and support FOSS but you are foaming at the mouth.
If the Gates Foundation finds a cure for Malaria, helps control TB, or finds a cure for AIDS then yes NOBODY will remember anything Microsoft did wrong. What is probably more to the point in 100 years William Gates will be remembered as a great man that made his money running some software company.
not only la times article, but these too (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, many will not concur with Richard, but the truth is that the foundation IS Bill Gates PR arm. I give you the example of Mexico's enciclomedia project (which was an absolute failure): with the simplest menace of the country's strategy of including linux as a base platform for millions of computers for elementary schools, the B&MG foundation (after a lightning trip of ballmer and gates to personally talk to President Fox) donated 40 million dollars worth of boxes with a simple, little string attached: it HAS to run Microsoft Windows.
also : :
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-gatesx07jan07,0,4205044,full.story [latimes.com]
Also, as an earlier poster mentioned :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_and_Melinda_Gates_Foundation#Criticisms [wikipedia.org]
also this
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4103.htm [informatio...house.info]
But are the problems ever really solved? (Score:3, Interesting)
I am not prepared to swallow this notion whole.
WordPerfect thought it had the Almost Perfect [fitnesoft.com] word processor for the PC.
The DOS era ends and the era of MS Word, Windows and Office begins. The web begins to weave its spell and SharePoint becomes a billion dollar node in the evolving MS Office eco-system.
OpenOffice.org is funded and staffed by Sun.
The Mozilla Foundation [wikipedia.org] receives about 85% of its funding from Google.
This tells me that the problems of the office suite and the browser are not solved and that society is still paying the price for development - and contributing to the profit margins of their corporate sponsors - even when these programs nominally evolve through open source.
The bill is simply hidden in the price of shopping through Google or in purchases of goods and services from Sun.
That raises the interesting question of whether this model is not in fact regressive. When your project is funded through Ad-Sense is it the WalMart shopper who keeps it afloat?
Microsoft is building a $300 million research campus for 5,000 in Beijing's university district.
It's true that 60% of Microsoft's revenues come from outside the U.S. It's also true that Microsoft is a significant employer and investor outside the U.S.
The multinational corporation is not the one-way street the Geek pretends.
Re:You see, there's this thing called economics (Score:5, Interesting)
I call bullshit on your bullshit.
1. Microsoft didn't even target "regular Joe" computers. They aimed to capture the enterprise market, and succeeded. Their software was extremely boring to the "regular Joe", but they managed to estabilish themselves as a de facto standard, and then creeped into the home desktop.
That's a very ignorant statement. On the contrary, Microsoft was always interested in home machines, since the beginning; they wrote code for the hobbyist Altair systems before the PC was even a gleam in IBM's eye. In the eighties, Microsoft defined the MSX [wikipedia.org] standard specifically for home computers. Microsoft was one of the first companies to release games on the PC, with the first version of Flight Simulator available in '82.
2. Microsoft was at the right place in the right time, and their monopoly was essentially sponsored by IBM - any other company would have done the job as well.
3. The first "regular Joe" computers - ZX Spectrum, Atari, Commodore, Amiga - had nothing to do with Microsoft.
Shows what you know. The Commodore [wikipedia.org] and the Amiga [wikipedia.org] all shipped with BASIC written by and licensed from Microsoft. The Atari [wikipedia.org] also licensed the language from MS, and sold it as a separate product. Microsoft also released a lot of software for Apple - guess who wrote the most popular BASIC for the Apple II? That's right, Microsoft. And Word for the Apple Macintosh was available in 1985, very soon after the Macintosh release in 1984.
4. The real reason why the price of computing dived were related to the price of hardware falling dramatically over a short period
So, you're saying the price of computers went down because the price of computers went down. BZZT! The price went down because of the commoditization of computing, because of the huge economies of scale mass production allows. And mass production become possible because people suddenly wanted computers, and bought them in droves. And, except for a technically savvy minority, people didn't want computers for the processor they had inside. They wanted them for the software running on them, for games, word processing, desktop publishing (which was quite a buzzword at a time).
RMS/Gates (Score:2, Interesting)
Two parts to all this. I was a real open-source/GNU advocate back in the day (now the GNU part's been taken off -- I've grown up a little).
Stallman and Gates are both more complex characters than the standard /. fare allows:
1. Stallman's a jackass. I've heard him speak, this really gets its way through. Yes, he's a good hacker, but he tried to be some faux-Nelson Mandela figure atop of it. His combination of arrogance and political ignorance puts together a terrible little combination. He's a hippy doing what so many hippies did -- use the same fascist methods that his opponents used, only for a slightly different goal.
Look, Stallman, thanks for emacs, really. I use it to this day. But your idea of open source is *not* the one that took off. Get over it. Your idea of open source is ridiculous and nonsensical. Unlike you, some of us want to drive a decent car, have attractive significant others, and raise some kids. That requires, *gasp*! income! The thing is, you never understood capitalism. It's a double-edged sword that was too complex for you to understand. The vendor lock in, the obsolescence, the FUD, are all real concerns people have when using software. The actual money is rarely an issue (outside of MS pricing, covered below), the software usually saves people money. Vendors who provide source code, support, and adhere to standards do quite well in the industry.
2. Gates is also a jackass, but not the devil. Microsoft never learned how to write big software themselves. Just like the RMS & Linus's world, they need someone else to do all the heavy lifting (e.g. Bell Labs & Unix for Linus, Apple for MS), and then they can come in and copy.
Complaining about Gates's foreign aid is absurd. Sure, it's not a great system, it forces people to live off the handoffs of others, whatever. The real question is, is that why Gates is doing it? No, it's not. He's not getting anything back for it. He's not politically sophisticated, and this is the best idea so far on the topic.
Gates also has the right to take credit for making the PC world what it is today. Up through DOS, I liked the work MS put out. The software was small and simple, and they sold it at a good price. That was when they didn't need to pull giant bloodsucking bundling maneuvers to literally force customers to buy their shittier software (e.g. windows and all of office at once, instead of a la carte). Their software was fine when it was small and could be done by a few people. When it got larger, they couldn't compete, so they had to find ways to fix the game. In my book, that was Windows and beyond -- shitty software, racketeering tactics for selling it.
If y'all want heroes in this new world, check out the author list on some RFCs, or your favorite app. The names you never hear from eWeek or /., but the folks who get real stuff done. The nice thing is, they're actually pretty intelligent, friendly, accessible people. The way a proper hero should be.
Re:You see, there's this thing called economics (Score:2, Interesting)