The Microsoft hasn’t made the world better, it just made Microsoft richer along with several other companies who are benefiting from proprietary software : http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7487060.stm
We need a real alternative, not Apple products - not Adobe or any of the companies who are monopolizing the right to distribute software. You believe it’s ok ? Think of it, softwares are ideas, software is just brain cells packaged on a CD or downloadable off the internet. Since when we don’t have the right to use and copy ideas ? Would you imagine a world where I have to pay someone whenever I use the word “table” ? So why is it possible for software ? Because someone like Bill Gates and it’s empire made sure we can’t think otherwise.
There will be plenty of people who wants to defend the legacy of Bill Gates, here’s what Stallman sees the legacy :
- The microsoft tax on computer, you buy a computer YOU must buy it with windows AND you pay for it ;
- Digital Restrictions Management, where the file on your computer are not exactly “your” files you can’t do whatever you want with it ;
- Gratuitous incompatibilities, between their own software version so you are sure to need to upgrade to the next one.
- Standard corruption, Microsoft like to own the standards so they can be the only one to create the software that goes with it, last year they took ISO and force everyone by packing assemblies so ISO accept its office format as an official standard.
- Even its foundation - created to help - has its dark sides.
- If you need more ranting about Microsoft.
Stallman continue on proprietary software :
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. The users are helpless because they don’t have the source code that programmers can read and change.
If you’re a programmer and you want to change the software, for yourself or for someone else, you can’t.
If you’re a business and you want to pay a programmer to make the software suit your needs better, you can’t. If you copy it to share with your friend, which is simple good-neighbourliness, they call you a “pirate”.
The alternative is Free software, software we can use, copy, modify and redistribute, without any limitation of any sort. Free and Open Source Software is liberating the ideas behind the softwares you use every day
Comments 3
Sorry i’ve got disagree with you here
People create software and it’s up to them to decide if they get money for it
Do you work for free?
Microsoft tax? Yeah i agree that this is a bit wrong but if you complain enough to your computer dealer you can decline to use Windows and get your money back
DRM? YOUR files, that YOU create, are YOURS to do with as you please. Music & Video you buy elsewhere are not YOUR files which is why DRM exists…this isn’t Microsoft’s fault
Gratuitous incompatibilities - how so? If i’ve got Office 2003 they is a FREE download that lets me work with Office 2007…no-one is forcing me to upgrade
Standard Corruption? Maybe/maybe not - they have pushed ONE standard…then again so have IBM - does that make them corrupt?
Whatever the foundation is or isn’t doing wrong…it’s not the Microsoft foundation - it’s the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation
I think you need to be a bit more open minded instead of bashing other companies for the sake of it
Posted 04 Jul 2008 at 1:57 pm ¶Please don’t be sorry to say what you think. My point was to transport what RMS said about the end of the Bill Gates era. Since everybody is being apologetic
I don’t work for free, but I wish to, I wish money wasn’t the reason I work but something really better. I need to eat and thus have to work for money. That’s a very personal thing I believe in. I don’t think it’s possible to apply it.
I won’t go point by point, but there was corruption in the process of choosing the OOXML. MS and other use poor and corrupt countries to actually create a web of sympathetic vote : http://blog.ngowiki.net/2008/04/03/your-document-is-corrupted-ii/
Corruption is a strong word, like piracy is a strong word. Did MS pay to have people vote on their side, probably not, is the 17 years old kid a pirate because he shares music through P2P. It’s not piracy it’s just “copying”
Now as overall, does MS merit all that respect, does a company that has been convicted several times of abusing of its monopolist position be the repository of our work, our information.
“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.” Lord Acton 1887.
So goes Bill Gates
Posted 04 Jul 2008 at 2:24 pm ¶Hi David
My point about the standards was not to do with HOW they obtained the standard..it was the fact they have pushed one standard as much as other people have pushed theirs.
If they have used underhand tactics to push the standard through then definitely shame on Microsoft
I disagree with your definition of piracy
A 17-old using someone else’s work without paying for it is still piracy
Posted 04 Jul 2008 at 4:09 pm ¶Post a Comment