Richard Stallman, the man responsible for the Free Software Foundation, GNU, and some disgusting statements about certain individuals, has made another one. This time, about Bill Gates.
He has written a truly repulsive FUD attack on not just software companies, but also Bill Gates’s charitable organisation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. I’ll analyse the article here, with my comments interspliced (he’s been good enough to release it under cc-by-nd, so mercifully this is allowed).
Businessmen and their tame politicians admire [Microsoft's] success in building an empire over so many computer users.
‘Admiration’ does not indicate respect or love. People can admire Hitler for successfully tricking so many people into voting for him in the German elections, but still hate him. Everyone hates him, because he was a bastard.
Many outside the computer field credit Microsoft for advances which it only took advantage of, such as making computers cheap and fast, and convenient graphical user interfaces.
Which came from the XEROX PARC and were refined by Apple, the latter of which is disparaged later in the article.
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.
The LA Times, after certain cock-ups, is hardly the first place I’d go to find reputable news.
The most depressing thing about this quote is that it claims Bill Gates’s charitable organisation is responsible for death and hunger. The evidence for this is shaky and circumstantial at best, and the fact that this organisation is being attacked simply because Gates is at the helm is deplorable.
Many computerists specially hate Gates and Microsoft. They have plenty of reasons.
WTF is a ‘computerist’?
‘Solicit funds’
Microsoft persistently engages in anti-competitive behaviour, and has been convicted three times. George W Bush, who let Microsoft off the hook for the second US conviction, was invited to Microsoft headquarters to solicit funds for the 2000 election.
Evidence, please.
Many users hate the “Microsoft tax”, the retail contracts that make you pay for Windows on your computer even if you won’t use it.
Most users don’t even know the Microsoft tax exists. I’m not saying that it’s a good thing, but I’m saying that the statement above is factually incorrect.
In some countries you can get a refund, but the effort required is daunting.
This is true, but it’s becoming easier, and more companies are pulling out of these agreements.
There’s also the Digital Restrictions Management: software features designed to “stop” you from accessing your files freely. Increased restriction of users seems to be the main advance of Vista.
Stallman is correct in this respect as well. Vista is the most awful OS in history.
‘Gratuitous incompatibilities’
Then there are the gratuitous incompatibilities and obstacles to interoperation with other software. This is why the EU required Microsoft to publish interface specifications.
This year Microsoft packed standards committees with its supporters to procure ISO approval of its unwieldy, unimplementable and patented “open standard” for documents. The EU is now investigating this.
To be fair, this is after Gates had handed most of the control of Microsoft over to Steve Ballmer, who’s even more of an idiot.
These actions are intolerable, of course, but they are not isolated events. They are systematic symptoms of a deeper wrong which most people don’t recognise: proprietary software.
And what is wrong with people making money from their hard work? True, some choose to give out of the goodness of their heart, and good luck to them. But to say proprietary software is morally wrong is demanding a communist society where people are forced to give away their possessions.
Microsoft’s software is distributed under licenses that keep users divided and helpless. The users are divided because they are forbidden to share copies with anyone else.
I don’t understand this, at all. If you do, then you’re welcome to explain it to me in the comment section.
The users are helpless because they don’t have the source code that programmers can read and change.
Then they just choose another option which suits their needs better.
If you’re a programmer and you want to change the software, for yourself or for someone else, you can’t.
You instead write a new piece of software that’s better. That’s how companies like Red Hat make their money, and Apple’s also used it to sell its software.
If you’re a business and you want to pay a programmer to make the software suit your needs better, you can’t.
The programmer instead writes a new system, which is better.
If you copy it to share with your friend, which is simple good-neighbourliness, they call you a “pirate”.
I partially agree with this statement, although I don’t think it qualifies as good-neighbourliness. Friends don’t give friends copies of Windows.
‘Unjust system’
Microsoft would have us believe that helping your neighbour is the moral equivalent of attacking a ship.
The most important thing that Microsoft has done is to promote this unjust social system.
Gates is personally identified with it, due to his infamous open letter which rebuked microcomputer users for sharing copies of his software.
It said, in effect, “If you don’t let me keep you divided and helpless, I won’t write the software and you won’t have any. Surrender to me, or you’re lost!”
But not all proprietary software makers are like this. To claim this is the case, which is, in effect, what Stallman is doing, is stereotyping all proprietary software makers.
‘Change system’
But Gates didn’t invent proprietary software, and thousands of other companies do the same thing. It’s wrong, no matter who does it.
Bollocks. It is simply a different method of distributing software, and is not ‘wrong’ in itself.
Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, and the rest, offer you software that gives them power over you.
What power do they exert over you once you’ve installed the software? Microsoft can install updates, and that’s it. The rest don’t even place that restriction on you.
A change in executives or companies is not important. What we need to change is this system.
That’s what the free software movement is all about. “Free” refers to freedom: we write and publish software that users are free to share and modify.
But users don’t want to share or modify their software. They want easy-to-use software that works.
We do this systematically, for freedom’s sake; some of us paid, many as volunteers. We already have complete free operating systems, including GNU/Linux.
But generally, users don’t like this, because it seems to them to have been designed with developers in mind, not users. Most haven’t even heard of it.
Our aim is to deliver a complete range of useful free software, so that no computer user will be tempted to cede her freedom to get software.
But until you do, it is hopeless. We have to make something that is good from the ground up for the average Joe User - that is, it should be operable from the command line with no working Internet connection, no graphics card, no technical knowledge.
In 1984, when I started the free software movement, I was hardly aware of Gates’ letter. But I’d heard similar demands from others, and I had a response: “If your software would keep us divided and helpless, please don’t write it. We are better off without it. We will find other ways to use our computers, and preserve our freedom.”
But other people do want to use it. So there.
In 1992, when the GNU operating system was completed by the kernel, Linux, you had to be a wizard to run it. Today GNU/Linux is user-friendly: in parts of Spain and India, it’s standard in schools. Tens of millions use it, around the world. You can use it too.
But it’s still baffling for the majority of users. Most people have no idea what an operating system is, let alone what disk partitions are. They also don’t give a stuff with regards to free as in beer and free as in freedom.
Gates may be gone, but the walls and bars of proprietary software he helped create remain, for now.
Converseley, the walls and bars of the GPL remain. This license is, in my view, unacceptable, because it refuses to link with proprietary software in any sense. This is a bit like Malcolm X in comparison to Martin Luther King (although nowhere near as important, of course) - we have to accept that proprietary software is here to stay, and embrace it along with FOSS. They can live together nicely - Mac OS X is an example of this. It includes FOSS components, but Apple still make their money by selling it with the additional software on top of the base system, Darwin.
In short, I think Richard Stallman is missing the point completely, and has failed to understand that you can’t change things overnight, and has also failed to understand that people do like proprietary software, even if they hate some proprietary software (i.e. Windows Vista).
