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Richard Stallman on Bill Gates: "It's not the Gates, it's the bars"

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Re: Richard Stallman on Bill Gates: "It's not the Gates, it's the bars"

#31

Post by edw519 »

rms should stick to software. He'd make a lousy district attorney.

Of all the evil Microsoft did to the world, "prosecuting" them for writing propietary software is an unwinnable argument. Instead of presenting arguments against illegal monopolistic practices he chooses the one thing Microsoft did that most people agree with: creating IP. And by arguing against IP, he disqualifies himself from attacking Microsoft's biggest crimes: hijacking others' IP.

The U.S. government couldn't get Al Capone on any of the big stuff, so they went after tax evasion to put him away. At least that was also a crime.

Re: Richard Stallman on Bill Gates: "It's not the Gates, it's the bars"

#32

Post by krschultz »

Tichy wrote: post #24
ComputerGuru wrote: post #17

I stopped reading the second I reached this: Gates' philanthropy for health care for poor countries has won some people's good opinion. The LA Times reported that his foundation spends five to 10% of its money annually and invests the rest, sometimes in companies it suggests cause environmental degradation and illness in the same poor countries. I've just lost all my respect for Richard Stallman. He's a total ass if…

So as long as you donate a percentage of your income to a good cause, it doesn't matter how you made that income? Like if you run a serial killer business or the Mafia, you are still good, as long as you donate to cancer research? Not a judgement about Bill Gates Foundation vs Stallman, I don't know much about it, just questioning your logic. My qualified opinion from reading lots of crime novels and watching mainstr…

I agree with you on the point you are making. For example Hezbollah in Lebanon gains much of their power from their charity work - and uses that power for terrorist actions. BUT I don't think you can equate BillG with the mafia, villians, or terrorists. So in this instance, RMS is WAY off base, and winning himself no favors. In fact he just looks like a whiner.

Re: Richard Stallman on Bill Gates: "It's not the Gates, it's the bars"

#33

Post by krschultz »

bayareaguy wrote: post #23
mattmaroon wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're assuming it's an either/or proposition. I never said that. I love free software, we use it for many things at Draftmix, and I own a ton of websites myself, none of which are hosted on Windows. I think it's had a hugely positive impact on the world, and I hope that some day my startup can contribute back. But that doesn't mean proprietary software is evil. There's a place for both, and Stallman doesn't see that…

It's ironic that the biggest obstacle to Stallman's idea of free software is his own stupid use of the word "free", so I feel I have to ask but do you mean free as in "without charge" or free as in "unencumbered"? Given that this is Hacker News, it's perhaps important to keep in mind that Stallman has nothing against commercial software. The whole "free" issue for him has to do with restrictions on the right of peopl…

No, the issue for Stallman is for the software to be open and stay open. There are many places where the GPL put limitations on what YOU CAN DO with the software. His whole "rights for the people" is a side effect of "rights for the software". By free he means the SOFTWARE is free, not the people using it are free to do what they want. There is a reason the BSD people complain like hell about GNU and the GPL. In my view, the BSD is 'free' software i.e. you can do what you want with it, and the GPL is 'shared' or 'collective' software i.e. you can change it, but you have to share all your changes.

Re: Richard Stallman on Bill Gates: "It's not the Gates, it's the bars"

#34

Post by rplevy »

mattmaroon wrote: post #19
rplevy wrote: post #11

It's important to ask whether society benefits from proprietary source code whether it be controversial claims to patents on genetic data or software. Proprietary ownership of code harms society by limiting farmers, scientists, end users from having their rightful freedom and flexibility. The short term benefit to individuals gained by selling licenses does not excuse the resulting restriction of freedom, because it…

The "anti-freedom argument" (which should actually be called the pro-proprietary argument, because nobody sane is against free software) is fairly simple: there can be both and both can coexist peacefully. We can (and do) have Linux and Windows, and use them for different things. The market and individuals decide which is better for what task. Some people say Ubuntu is finally a usable desktop OS for average Joe. Eve…

The fact that the two coexist does not constitute a valid argument for how things should be, in a better world. There are many less-than-ideal things that coexist together with superior alternatives. For example there are countries where women are required to cover their entire face in public, but the fact that they coexist with secularly governed nations does not validate theocracy as not being oppressive. Similarly we have two ways of doing things coexisting with free and proprietary, and the world would be a better place if one of the alternatives was simply not present.

The line about financial incentive is very disputable as it is all about personal preferences. I personally prefer emacs over eclipse (emacs just rules), gimp over photoshop (photoshop is bloated, doesn't run in Linux as far as I know, and I know how to use Gimp better), Inkscape is awesome, Flash sucks big time, and Windows is needless to say, horrible.

Free OS took 20 years? No I think freedom at the level of the OS was the original way of doing things, from the very beginning. It's the proprietary software that got in the way making it difficult for modern free OSes to catch up by constantly setting hurdles by requiring free software to reverse engineer things that needed to be compatible.

Re: Richard Stallman on Bill Gates: "It's not the Gates, it's the bars"

#35

Post by greendestiny »

Tichy wrote: post #24
ComputerGuru wrote: post #17

I stopped reading the second I reached this: Gates' philanthropy for health care for poor countries has won some people's good opinion. The LA Times reported that his foundation spends five to 10% of its money annually and invests the rest, sometimes in companies it suggests cause environmental degradation and illness in the same poor countries. I've just lost all my respect for Richard Stallman. He's a total ass if…

So as long as you donate a percentage of your income to a good cause, it doesn't matter how you made that income? Like if you run a serial killer business or the Mafia, you are still good, as long as you donate to cancer research? Not a judgement about Bill Gates Foundation vs Stallman, I don't know much about it, just questioning your logic. My qualified opinion from reading lots of crime novels and watching mainstr…

I'm not sure I follow your logic? ComputerGuru hasn't suggested that the Gates Foundation exonerates Bill Gates in anyway, just that its hypocritical of Stallman to use FUD.

Re: Richard Stallman on Bill Gates: "It's not the Gates, it's the bars"

#36

Post by chandler »

mattmaroon wrote: post #19
rplevy wrote: post #11

It's important to ask whether society benefits from proprietary source code whether it be controversial claims to patents on genetic data or software. Proprietary ownership of code harms society by limiting farmers, scientists, end users from having their rightful freedom and flexibility. The short term benefit to individuals gained by selling licenses does not excuse the resulting restriction of freedom, because it…

The "anti-freedom argument" (which should actually be called the pro-proprietary argument, because nobody sane is against free software) is fairly simple: there can be both and both can coexist peacefully. We can (and do) have Linux and Windows, and use them for different things. The market and individuals decide which is better for what task. Some people say Ubuntu is finally a usable desktop OS for average Joe. Eve…

I agree with much of your position, however:

> Some people say Ubuntu is finally a usable desktop OS for average Joe. Even if that's true, it took how many decades for free operating systems to reach that mark? They're at least 20 years behind in crossing the line...

Let's look at those 20 years up to the release of XP--would you consider (any flavor of) DOS usable for the average Joe? What about Win95/98, with its dll issues and where simply browsing the internet would blue-screen a computer?

Fact is, by todays standards, it took Microsoft ~20 years to have something suitable for the average Joe.

Additionally, ironically, Free Software is the main advantage Ubuntu has over something like XP/Vista regarding usability for the average. Having a centralized index of freely available software, all of which is downloaded/installed/patched on a regular basis using a unified interface is huge.

(not that a payment system is wholly incompatible with a centralized software repository, but it certainly would be difficult to unify proprietary software due in no small part to the wide variety of DRM implementations)

Re: Richard Stallman on Bill Gates: "It's not the Gates, it's the bars"

#37

Post by Tichy »

greendestiny wrote: post #35
Tichy wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So as long as you donate a percentage of your income to a good cause, it doesn't matter how you made that income? Like if you run a serial killer business or the Mafia, you are still good, as long as you donate to cancer research? Not a judgement about Bill Gates Foundation vs Stallman, I don't know much about it, just questioning your logic. My qualified opinion from reading lots of crime novels and watching mainstr…

I'm not sure I follow your logic? ComputerGuru hasn't suggested that the Gates Foundation exonerates Bill Gates in anyway, just that its hypocritical of Stallman to use FUD.

Maybe I misread his post then.

Re: Richard Stallman on Bill Gates: "It's not the Gates, it's the bars"

#38

Post by mojuba »

KirinDave wrote: post #12
gwniobombux wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Could you elaborate? Just like Stallman actually explains, why he thinks proprietary software wrong.

The problem with Stallman's statements here is that he makes arguments that are essentially non-sequiturs. He argues that code ought to be open because it is the best situation for all parties involved, which seems more-or-less on the money (although there are edge cases where it may not be true, as ESR pointed out). But this leads him to a militant, legally questionable and altogether obnoxious philosophy that all c…

code ought to be open because it is the best situation for all parties involved

He usually emphasizes that it's the best situation for users, and as far as I can tell never mentions software makers in this context.

What he says essentially is software must evolve like an academic discipline. In academia, everything is open and accessible for everyone, so that you can take any one's work, improve it and share your improvement with others in the same manner. That's the way academia worked for centuries, and in fact it worked that way in all political systems.

Note that Stallman is not pushing Computer Science as an academic discipline - not at all. Instead, he says all software must be free as in academia, as I understand it, and there is a reason for that, he says: proprietary software "divides" us like no other product or service we may buy. (Well, you'd add music, video and all kinds of copyable goods to the list of things that "divide" us, but notice that they became cheaply copyable thanks to computers and software.)

So, what's wrong with his point in principle?

Re: Richard Stallman on Bill Gates: "It's not the Gates, it's the bars"

#39

Post by Herring »

KirinDave wrote: post #12
gwniobombux wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Could you elaborate? Just like Stallman actually explains, why he thinks proprietary software wrong.

The problem with Stallman's statements here is that he makes arguments that are essentially non-sequiturs. He argues that code ought to be open because it is the best situation for all parties involved, which seems more-or-less on the money (although there are edge cases where it may not be true, as ESR pointed out). But this leads him to a militant, legally questionable and altogether obnoxious philosophy that all c…

> There is lots of free software and lots of for-pay software and some intersection of the two, and the world seems fairly happy with this situation.

Noone was arguing that closed source isn't profitable. "Proprietary software exists" isn't an argument for it's existence & many are unhappy about it.

>

>Often times closed-source software pioneers an approach, makes an initial profit, and proves a demand which open source efforts then methodically fill.

I hope you're not saying OSS isn't innovative.

Re: Richard Stallman on Bill Gates: "It's not the Gates, it's the bars"

#40

Post by juanpablo »

krschultz wrote: post #33
bayareaguy wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's ironic that the biggest obstacle to Stallman's idea of free software is his own stupid use of the word "free", so I feel I have to ask but do you mean free as in "without charge" or free as in "unencumbered"? Given that this is Hacker News, it's perhaps important to keep in mind that Stallman has nothing against commercial software. The whole "free" issue for him has to do with restrictions on the right of peopl…

No, the issue for Stallman is for the software to be open and stay open. There are many places where the GPL put limitations on what YOU CAN DO with the software. His whole "rights for the people" is a side effect of "rights for the software". By free he means the SOFTWARE is free, not the people using it are free to do what they want. There is a reason the BSD people complain like hell about GNU and the GPL. In my v…

How much you can do with an EULA covered software?
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