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www/philosophy essays-and-articles.html bill-ga...
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From: |
Pavel Kharitonov |
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Subject: |
www/philosophy essays-and-articles.html bill-ga... |
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Date: |
Mon, 05 Oct 2015 16:14:53 +0000 |
CVSROOT: /web/www
Module name: www
Changes by: Pavel Kharitonov <ineiev> 15/10/05 16:14:53
Modified files:
philosophy : essays-and-articles.html
Added files:
philosophy : bill-gates-and-other-communists.html
Log message:
New old article RT #1051486.
CVSWeb URLs:
http://web.cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewcvs/www/philosophy/essays-and-articles.html?cvsroot=www&r1=1.69&r2=1.70
http://web.cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewcvs/www/philosophy/bill-gates-and-other-communists.html?cvsroot=www&rev=1.1
Patches:
Index: essays-and-articles.html
===================================================================
RCS file: /web/www/www/philosophy/essays-and-articles.html,v
retrieving revision 1.69
retrieving revision 1.70
diff -u -b -r1.69 -r1.70
--- essays-and-articles.html 18 Aug 2015 06:25:35 -0000 1.69
+++ essays-and-articles.html 5 Oct 2015 16:14:53 -0000 1.70
@@ -349,6 +349,10 @@
Soft sell</a>. An article by Richard M. Stallman published in
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk";>The Guardian</a>.</li>
+ <li><a href="/philosophy/bill-gates-and-other-communists.html">Bill Gates
+ and Other Communists</a>. An article by Richard Stallman published
+ in CNET News.com in 2005.</li>
+
<li><a
href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2005/jun/23/onlinesupplement.insideit";>
Patent absurdity</a>, an article by Richard M. Stallman published in
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk";>The Guardian</a>.</li>
@@ -564,7 +568,7 @@
<p class="unprintable">Updated:
<!-- timestamp start -->
-$Date: 2015/08/18 06:25:35 $
+$Date: 2015/10/05 16:14:53 $
<!-- timestamp end -->
</p>
</div>
Index: bill-gates-and-other-communists.html
===================================================================
RCS file: bill-gates-and-other-communists.html
diff -N bill-gates-and-other-communists.html
--- /dev/null 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 -0000
+++ bill-gates-and-other-communists.html 5 Oct 2015 16:14:52 -0000
1.1
@@ -0,0 +1,175 @@
+<!--#include virtual="/server/header.html" -->
+<!-- Parent-Version: 1.78 -->
+<title>Bill Gates and Other Communists
+- GNU Project - Free Software Foundation</title>
+<!--#include virtual="/server/gnun/initial-translations-list.html" -->
+<!--#include virtual="/server/banner.html" -->
+<h2>Bill Gates and Other Communists</h2>
+
+<p>by Richard Stallman</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>Originally published in 2005 in
+<a href="http://cnet.com/au/news/bill-gates-and-other-communists/";>CNET
+News.com</a>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>Bill Gates discussed patents with CNET under the heading of
+“intellectual property,” a term that covers many disparate
+laws. He said anyone who won't give blanket support to all these laws
+is a Communist. Since I'm not a Communist but I have criticized
+software patents, I got to thinking this calumny might be aimed at
+me.</p>
+
+<p>The term “intellectual property” is too broad to have
+one opinion about. It lumps together copyright law, patent law, and
+various other laws, whose requirements and effects are entirely
+different. So anyone using the term “intellectual
+property” is typically either confused himself, or trying to
+confuse you. Why does Mr. Gates lump these issues together? Let's
+study the differences he sets aside.</p>
+
+<p>Software developers are not up in arms against copyright law,
+because the developer of a program holds the copyright on the program;
+as long as the programmers wrote the code themselves, no one else has
+a copyright on their code. There is no danger that strangers could
+have a valid case of copyright infringement against them.</p>
+
+<p>Patents are a different story. Software patents don't cover
+programs or code; they cover ideas (methods, techniques, features,
+algorithms, etc.). Developing a large program entails combining
+thousands of ideas, and even if a few of them are new, the rest must
+necessarily have come from other sources, such as programs the
+developer has seen. If each of these ideas could be patented by
+someone, every large program is likely to infringe hundreds of
+patents. Developing a large program means laying oneself open to
+hundreds of potential lawsuits. Software patents are a menace to
+software developers, and to the users. Since patent law covers
+execution of the program, the users can also be sued.</p>
+
+<p>A few fortunate software developers avoid most of the danger.
+These are the megacorporations, which typically have thousands of
+patents each, and cross-license with each other. This gives them an
+advantage over smaller rivals not in a position to do likewise.
+That's why it is generally the megacorporations that lobby for
+software patents.</p>
+
+<p>Today's Microsoft is a megacorporation with thousands of patents.
+Microsoft said in court that the main competition for MS Windows is
+“Linux,” meaning the free software GNU/Linux operating
+system. Leaked internal documents say that Microsoft aims to use
+software patents to stop the development of GNU/Linux.</p>
+
+<p>When Mr. Gates started hyping his solution to the problem of spam,
+I suspected this was a plan to use patents to grab control of the net.
+Sure enough, in 2004 Microsoft asked the IETF to approve a mail
+protocol that Microsoft was trying to patent. The patent license
+policy for this protocol was written to forbid free software entirely.
+No program supporting this mail protocol could be released as free
+software—not under the GNU GPL, or the MPL, or the Apache
+license, or any other.</p>
+
+<p>The IETF rejected Microsoft's protocol, but Microsoft said it would
+try to convince major ISPs to use it anyway. Thanks to Mr. Gates, we
+now know that an open Internet with protocols anyone can implement is
+Communism; it was set up by that famous Communist agent, the US
+Department of Defense.</p>
+
+<p>With Microsoft's market clout, it can impose its choice of
+programming system as a de-facto standard. Microsoft has already
+patented some .NET implementation methods, raising the concern that
+millions of users have been shifted to a government-issue Microsoft
+monopoly.</p>
+
+<p>But Capitalism means monopoly; at least, Gates-style Capitalism
+does. People who think that everyone should be free to program, free
+to write complex software, they are Communists, says Mr. Gates. But
+these Communists have infiltrated even the Microsoft boardroom.
+Here's what Bill Gates told Microsoft employees in 1991:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>“If people had understood how patents would be granted when
+most of today's ideas were invented and had taken out patents, the
+industry would be at a complete stand-still today...A future start-up
+with no patents of its own will be forced to pay whatever price the
+giants choose to impose.”</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>Mr. Gates' secret is out now—he too was a
+“Communist,” he too recognized that software patents were
+harmful, until Microsoft became one of these giants. Now Microsoft
+aims to use software patents to impose whatever price it chooses on
+you and me. And if we object, Mr. Gates will call us
+“Communists.”</p>
+
+<p>If you're not afraid of name calling, visit the
+<a href="https://ffii.org";> Foundation for a Free Information
+Infrastructure</a>, and join the fight agaist software patents in
+Europe. We persuaded the European Parliament once—we even got
+support from right-wing MEPs—and with your help we will do it
+again.</p>
+
+</div><!-- for id="content", starts in the include above -->
+<!--#include virtual="/server/footer.html" -->
+<div id="footer">
+<div class="unprintable">
+
+<p>Please send general FSF & GNU inquiries to
+<a href="mailto:address@hidden";><address@hidden></a>.
+There are also <a href="/contact/">other ways to contact</a>
+the FSF. Broken links and other corrections or suggestions can be sent
+to <a href="mailto:address@hidden";><address@hidden></a>.</p>
+
+<p><!-- TRANSLATORS: Ignore the original text in this paragraph,
+ replace it with the translation of these two:
+
+ We work hard and do our best to provide accurate, good quality
+ translations. However, we are not exempt from imperfection.
+ Please send your comments and general suggestions in this regard
+ to <a href="mailto:address@hidden";>
+ <address@hidden></a>.</p>
+
+ <p>For information on coordinating and submitting translations of
+ our web pages, see <a
+ href="/server/standards/README.translations.html">Translations
+ README</a>. -->
+Please see the <a
+href="/server/standards/README.translations.html">Translations
+README</a> for information on coordinating and submitting translations
+of this article.</p>
+</div>
+
+<!-- Regarding copyright, in general, standalone pages (as opposed to
+ files generated as part of manuals) on the GNU web server should
+ be under CC BY-ND 4.0. Please do NOT change or remove this
+ without talking with the webmasters or licensing team first.
+ Please make sure the copyright date is consistent with the
+ document. For web pages, it is ok to list just the latest year the
+ document was modified, or published.
+
+ If you wish to list earlier years, that is ok too.
+ Either "2001, 2002, 2003" or "2001-2003" are ok for specifying
+ years, as long as each year in the range is in fact a copyrightable
+ year, i.e., a year in which the document was published (including
+ being publicly visible on the web or in a revision control system).
+
+ There is more detail about copyright years in the GNU Maintainers
+ Information document, www.gnu.org/prep/maintain. -->
+
+<p>Copyright © 2005, 2015 Richard Stallman</p>
+
+<p>This page is licensed under a <a rel="license"
+href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/";>Creative
+Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License</a>.</p>
+
+<!--#include virtual="/server/bottom-notes.html" -->
+
+<p class="unprintable">Updated:
+<!-- timestamp start -->
+$Date: 2015/10/05 16:14:52 $
+<!-- timestamp end -->
+</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+</body>
+</html>
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