Richard Stallman on Bill Gates: "It's not the Gates, it's the bars" | Hacker News Reader

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

news.bbc.co.uk

25 pointsnickb69 comments

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 he thinks he can make FSF look good by bashing the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation by spreading what qualifies - by Stallman's own definition - as FUD.

Update: http://neosmart.net/blog/2008/richard-stallman-expert-in-the...

Lol. You definitely won't win many points by bashing the guy who is doing more to cure the worst disease in the impoverished world (malaria) than all of the governments of the planet combined. At least, not by bashing him for doing that.

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 mainstream Hollywood movies is that publicly donating to good causes is established standard practice for villains. (Again, not saying BG is a villain - being able to donate to good causes is one good motivation for trying to hit it big with a startup).

Gates didn't steal his money - he made it a way that Richard Stallman happens to disapprove of... there's a big difference.

Gates took his capitalist profits and put them to good use treating malaria in 3rd world countries - doesn't smell like the mafia or organized crime to me; but what do I know.

If you read what I wrote, I am not claiming that Bill Gates is running the mafia. I am merely making the strictly logical point that doing something good doesn't prove that your other actions are not bad.

I usually defend the business practices of Microsoft in discussions (for example http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=229715) - I am in general for capitalism (I say in general because people might have varying definitions of capitalism in mind). But if what Stallman says is true, that behind the scenes Microsoft is investing in damaging industries, I think it is fair to take that into account. Again, I have to stress I don't know the substance of Stallman's accusations - but something tells me you won't notice that I wrote that sentence anyway... In general, I like Bill Gates, I think he is a very capable guy.

Gates didn't steal his money - he made it a way that Richard Stallman happens to disapprove of... there's a big difference.

Not only RMS would disapprove. Big difference.

Backgrounder: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/19/ballmer_eggs/

http://www.theserverside.com/news/thread.tss?thread_id=49451

How about spending those EU funds directly to cure illness and not let MS and lawyers chip away at it???

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.

As a person who was born in a present day US colony, I can personally prove you wrong. These people make poor people suffer the exact same way as the Mafia and other villains. You can call it white collar crime, creative accounting, aggressive business practices or whatever euphemism you are comfy with. But the end result is the same: extort wealth from the defenceless.

You probably have a point but your statement is a little extreme. You have to look at the benefit the software provides as well as the cost and there are times when a closed source system is better than no system at all.

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.

I think Stallman was referring to this: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-gatesx0...

Maybe (I hope, but doubt) Gates is investing in such companies so that he can influence them to 'clean up' their act.

And:

Also announced was the decision to "... spend all of [the Trust's] resources within 50 years after Bill's and Melinda's deaths

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_and_Melinda_Gates_Foundati...

Most foundations exist eternally to provide welfare for social workers. I'll credit Gates for preventing that. Stallman didn't do basic research on the matter.

Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, and the rest, offer you software that gives them power over you.

Nope, sorry, you're wrong. I don't mind laying down 40 dollars for a million man-hours of work. I don't consider this an unethical requirement. What I do consider unethical is expecting developers to work for nothing as their moral responsibility to me.

For about 15 years, Stallman had several programmers on paid staff for the Free Software Foundation. I don't think he's expecting developers to work for nothing.

Stallman doesn't have any problem with you laying down 40 dollars for a million man-hours of work if that's what you want to do.

He has more of a problem that your choice to do so contributes to the likelyhood that a billion others will have to pay for something when that is not their choice.

Think about how much money Microsoft is getting from people and organizations who don't want their stuff, but pay for it anyways because that's the only option they know. Do you think that kind of business is ethical?

It's not a question of ethics. It's capitalism. It's not like buying the software hurts anybody, you're just spending money. You could make the same arguments about a lot of things, including the US auto industry, Nintendo, and Hollywood.

Hollywood films were imposed upon European countries after WW2 as a way to spread American ideas and culture, and it's partially because of that that Hollywood has been able to get so big. So now is it unethical that people 'have' to spend money on big blockbusters because they don't live in a big enough market to make indie films worth showing?

Or similarly, would you say the US car business is unethical because it was involved in strategically eliminating trains in various parts of the country so more people would drive cars?

(Look the Nintendo one up if you're confused, it's from the NES/SNES days.)

If this was about food and we were all being forced to buy McDonalds because McDonalds forced everyone else out of business, then I'd agree that we should be up in arms. But this is software. Or rather, it's JUST software. Computers would cost a lot of money with or without Windows.

In any form, taxation without representation is tyranny.

Microsoft isn't the government, though.

I stopped reading after it turned into a rant about how all software should be free. While I understand and agree with some of the complaints about Microsoft, the extreme 'commercial software is bad' position is kind of ridiculous.

You must not have read very carefully, because nothing in that article said anything about "commercial" software being bad. His points about Gates and his unethical and harmful business tactics are right on the money.

Commercial software largely means proprietary, especially in the area of web applications. It can have APIs and interact with other programs much the way Windows does, but it is proprietary nonetheless.

... which I consider a major loophole in GPL. If google is using a single line of GPL'ed software in their "Big Table" implementation, I demand to see the source, even though it's not "distributed" to my computer.

Matt, free software is the major reason why PG, YCombinator, YouTube and Google are possible: this is why starting a software company is so cheap these days. Without it you'd be paying "enterprise-grade" fees for shit like a web server, operating system, complier, editor, bug tracker and commercial libraries for reading every imaginable file format or speaking any kind of protocol, plus a thousand other software things an average business needs to exist.

Perhaps Stallman sees something you don't, partly because you take it for granted.

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. He can't because his religion blinds him to it.

Free software is often better for a given task, and would still be preferable if it were equal. But I like Photoshop a hell of a lot better than GIMP and Windows or OSX (for my laptop anyway, not so much for servers) much better than Linux. Free software still clearly lags behind proprietary in some cases, and always will.

There's plenty of room for both. And it's quite a large error on your part to assume I take it for granted.

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 people to hack and redistribute their hacks.

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.

How much you can do with an EULA covered software?

You USE (do) the software anywa. The gpl only limits distribution

"Free software still clearly lags behind proprietary in some cases, and always will."

For Stallman it is not a question of quality of software but of ethics. And he explains his views without resorting to religion or calling people idiots.

His views are a religion, and he essentially calls Bill Gates something worse than an idiot: evil.

I honestly don't understand your "religion" line towards Stallman's position. Yes, he's been consistent and kept saying the same thing for years, that's the only grounds you can base your analogy on.

Free software is a wonderful thing and keeping a source code "secret" or patenting stupid shit like "single click buy" is indeed evil, what else you want to call it when closed-source systems are forcing the entire world to reverse-engineer their file formats, communication protocols, etc. How many programmer-hours have been wasted re-implementing JPEG compression, TCP/IP stack, XML parsing, etc etc etc?

Tell me, how is it NOT evil to hold font-rendering patents forcing the entire non-Windows (or OSX) world to stare at fucked-up unreadable fonts? ... and at the same time borrowing anything they want from OSS community when they feel like it (look! there is "etc" folder in windows/system/drivers!) How is it possible to look into SCO vs Linux case and not call Microsoft's envolvement "evil"? If not evil, what is it then?

Moreover, the modern history of computing is actually proving that Stallman's views make perfect sense, even from commercial perspective: look at Adobe, who's actually being forced to open-source because they suddenly realized that this gives them an edge over Silverlight. Just compare that to Macromedia's not so distant dreams of selling crazy ass expensive "Flex servers". Or look at poor Opera fighting against the whole world's efforts of improving FF.

Even your own examples of better software don't apply. On features and flexibility alone, OSX can't hold a candle to even (!) Gnome and wins user's hearts purely on looks. What's more important, however, is that OSX itself is a giant example of open source (BSD) taking over commercial (Windows) with a for-profit company cashing out in the background - I still don't understand why OSS community lets Apple to get away with it: they took all they wanted and haven't given much of their own stuff back. Majority of code you get installed with OSX isn't written by Apple, yet they get to charge you for it. So don't use OSX as an example of successful closed-source product because it isn't.

Also, look back in time: open source systems have been innovating and are responsible for nearly everything we see around ourselves: languages, compilers, internet itself, the list is huge: commercial and closed-loop development hasn't produced anything with an impact, merely playing "catch-up -> copy -> resell" game.

You're an intelligent guy, you like to speak your mind directly and I enjoy your blog. There is probably something in your argument that you just can't get across.

free software is the major reason why PG, YCombinator, YouTube and Google are possible

This is not the argument that Stallman is making, and if he could fully grok the simple fact that business and not mankind is that which has benefited from free software, he'd probably go hang himself in despair.

Windows + IIS + VS + SQL Server is not that expensive. Altogether, it's still much cheaper than starting a lawn-care business.

Okay, then it's a matter of word choice. He actually was talking about 'proprietary' software.

"But Gates didn't invent proprietary software, and thousands of other companies do the same thing. It's wrong, no matter who does it."

That is an outrageous statement.

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 code therefore must be free, because otherwise it will all collapse into some sort of dystopian future and a black hole where all information is censured and controlled.

But this wasn't the case when Stallman started his activist efforts, and it's not the case now. 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. And there's really no evidence that the GNU approach has been solely or even significantly responsible for this state of affairs! It really seems like the market has understood the value of open source outside of Stallman's framework for it for quite some time.

From a free-market perspective, the two kinds of software fill different market requirements. Often times closed-source software pioneers an approach, makes an initial profit, and proves a demand which open source efforts then methodically fill. This makes a lot of sense, when you think about it.

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?

> 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.

> 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.

There is definitely slippery-slope rhetoric in the GNU propaganda. Thus far, no slope has existed. That's all I meant to say.

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

I am not saying this, but it is historically true that lots of different fields have been pioneered by closed-source or closed-license-source and that kind of funding. It may shortly thereafter become open-sourced in some fashion, or take longer.

It is also true historically that people who innovate often are forced to close their code, which otherwise they'd quite possibly be happy to open. It's more often companies that put restrictions rather than engineers themselves.

Sorry, I started to write a more details explanation of my position last night but was interrupted and closed the browser.

Stallman is suggesting that software should be free because people shouldn't have to pay for it, and so that anyone can modify it.

In theory that sounds great, but the truth is that capitalism has driven most of the software that actually enhances the lives of the majority of people who have computers. Look at the differences between Gimp and Photoshop (or even Paint Shop Pro), or between Impulse Tracker and Logic Pro. (IT wasn't free, actually, but it was really cheap!) Software that people pay for is usually better, and far more useful.

I tried using Gimp at my company for a while to save us money, and I was practically pulling my hair out after ten minutes. It sucks. It really, really sucks. It does a lot of cool things, but it's buggy and it's difficult to use.

If Adobe wasn't rich because they sell their software, their software wouldn't be nearly as good. Same with most other software companies.

Now if it wasn't proprietary, most of the advantages of being able to sell it would go out the window. If everyone had the source code to Photoshop, Photoshop would be nearly worthless. And then everyone would go off and add features when they could, and each feature would only be usable to the person who wrote it. There's no reason to make it usable if you're writing it for yourself.

And that's how Photoshop could become Gimp.

I think Ardour and Rosegarden would be fairer comparisons with Logic Pro. But your point still stands that it was programs like Logic, Cubase, ProTools, Studio Vision that made the market and between them figured out which features should be available and how they should be presented to the user.

> Stallman is suggesting that software should be free because people shouldn't have to pay for it,

No.

Stallman is suggesting that software should be free because people shouldn't have to pay for it, and so that anyone can modify it.

Can you cite a source? For reference, what the FSF actually says about selling software is here - http://www.fsf.org/licensing/essays/selling.html

It's his religion, and no matter how mathematically intelligent he may be, he's as blind to rational thought in that area as the most zealous Imam.

There are different types of intelligences, and it seems pretty obvious that he is incredibly strong in some and weaker than the average Wal-Mart shopper in a few.

He seems to dislike Gates more than you dislike him, yet he managed to avoid personal insults against Bill's intelligence, despite his own limited (according to you) mental capacity.

I don't dislike him at all. I consider him the computer science version of a communist. Well meaning, but misguided and suffering from a severe case of tunnel vision.

Saying he has limited mental capacity has a little different connotation than what I meant. Perhaps I didn't express it well. He would appear to be genius-level intelligent in certain regards (math/logic type) and the opposite in others (social, if his Craigslist personals and appearance are any indication). The free software thing is sort of a mixture of the two.

Also you managed to insult Imams and Wal-Mart shoppers for no particular reason, even though as far as I know neither takes a position on open source versus closed source software.

The selection of software at Wal-Mart is probably limited to closed source.

I don't think you understand arguments. When you are arguing for a cause, taking a "reasonable" middle ground doesn't get you anything. You have to argue for the extreme, so that the other side agrees to meet you half way. Then you get what you really want. (If they met you half way to your half way, then you'd not be satisfied.)

RMS needs to say "all non-Free software should go away" so that some of it will.

Depends who your audience is. If you're trying to convince smart people, arguing for extremes will make them think you're a fool.

And incidentally, if you find yourself trying to convince audiences of stupid people, you may want to stop and ask yourself whether you want to be spending your life that way.

You know that a lot of the famous idealist of the past have been laughed at for being diluted and not in touch with reality. RMS is not blind, he just sees what he wants to see. He knows the reality and knows that a lot of people laught at him for some reasons, but doesn't care. Look at him, he doesn't give up, he pushes harder and harder. I don't support his extremist ideas, im a more moderate free software fan, but his impact has been mainly positive. Did he cost any real harm to technology? Are his ideas killing jobs, destroying businesses? No, they are just supplying alternatives. We are now more ahead, if we didn't have free software. We may not be extreme as RMS, but we get pushed by a complete nutcase to do good. Im pretty sure RMS doesn't have any illusions and knows that he can never win completely, but he sees that he has positive effect and just goes on.

P.S. Gimp sucks, but Photoshop's prise tag sucks more.

Photoshop is worth it if your business depends on it. Gimp wastes your time. It takes a few weeks to work off the price of Photoshop vs the time you'd lose trying to get Gimp to work properly.

I don't agree with Stallman. Like probably most HN readers, I use a lot of Free/Open Source software - Linux, MySQL, Rails... and it's incredibly valuable. However I don't expect all software to be free, and to a large extent many major bits of open source software are 'market distortions' created by the big commercial IT companies. Eg OpenOffice is largely StarOffice, bought by Sun and open sourced, mainly in order to (IMHO) piss off Microsoft.

Writing good software takes time and skill (as we all know) and I don't think it's unreasonable that the people who do it should be able to charge end users for their efforts. Expecting all software to be written by public employees or in people's spare time is unrealistic.

The gpl explicitly allows you to charge for your software.

But forcing you to open source it prevents you from being able to, generally.

While true, there is the problem with the GPL that it allows your competitors to leverage your own efforts against you. That's suicide for dumb resellers of commodity applications. But the successful open source companies have proven that for more complex things you can easily make plenty of money if you dual-license your software and use the distribution the GPL allows to build up an established brand.

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 is viable to make money on free software. Stallman is an idealist who bases his demands on what an ideal world should be like. The case for software freedom (including the case for its economic viability) has been made repeatedly, most notably by Stallman. But the anti-freedom argument has never been convincingly spelled out, to my knowledge.

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. 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 (though perhaps now gaining ground rapidly).

The financial incentive enabled by proprietary software gives us things like Photoshop (sorry, GIMP still sucks) and Illustrator, Flash, Windows or OSX.

Certainly nobody would suggest that the open source community be legally prevented from making a Photoshop or Outlook or IE competitor. So why can't we have both and let the market decide? Why must proprietary be evil?

>Why must proprietary be evil?

Because rms says so

Why must proprietary be evil?

Personally I think it's a mistake to argue along the lines of good/evil.

The biggest problem with both proprietary and free software actually lies in the ignorance of the people who license and deploy either form without understanding the consequences, especially the technical and legal ability to access data and historic documents.

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.

But how things should be is the way they are, with both existing and the market deciding. Why should RMS decide how they should be, rather than the market and the individuals who comprise it?

Comparing a free market, in which free software competes with proprietary, to an oppressive theocracy is pointless.

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)

I can't see in what way you can call "freedom" restricting individuals from enter mutually-beneficious contracts. Governments must intervene to prevent abusive clauses. There are some limitations that would be reasonable like making a deposit of the source code for cases of disappearing vendors, forcing software vendors to honor the buyers' right to their own data...

But the basic fact is that someone can create and sell licenses for a closed source program that would not be profitable unless it's made for many customers. Sometimes an open source program can be made for the same niche and offer similar quality. But not always.

It's a little strange to attack the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for only giving away 10% of it's wealth per year and investing the rest. They give away a far larger proportion of their endowment than most other foundations. Notably, they recently announced that they intend to give away all their wealth within 50 years of Bill Gates' death. This is much different from other foundations funded by personal wealth: think of the Rockefeller Foundation, Ford Foundation, Carnegie Foundation, etc. that have effectively become self-perpetuating entities.

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.

At least that was also a crime.

Ah yes, those were the days my Friend...

Bash Microsoft, and all proprietary software: ✓

Refer to DRM as Digital "Restrictions" Management: ✓

Point out the Linux kernel is one "small" part of the GNU operating system: ✓

Whether you hate Bill Gates for his business dealings with Microsoft or not is a matter of opinion.

One thing we can thankfully all agree on, is Bill is sorely lacking in his ability to successfully dodge food...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/gallery/2008/jan/31/bil...

... at least Steve Ballmer does a pretty good job at it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S30WdoEHCH4

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