[leglug-users] RMS: It's not the Gates, it's the bars

[Mohammed Shublaq]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7487060.stm

By Richard Stallman
Founder, Free Software Foundation

To pay so much attention to Bill Gates' retirement is missing the point. 
What really matters is not Gates, nor Microsoft, but the unethical 
system of restrictions that Microsoft, like many other software 
companies, imposes on its customers.

That statement may surprise you, since most people interested in 
computers have strong feelings about Microsoft. Businessmen and their 
tame politicians admire its success in building an empire over so many 
computer users.

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.

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.

Many computerists specially hate Gates and Microsoft. They have plenty 
of reasons.

'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.

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.

In some countries you can get a refund, but the effort required is daunting.

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.

'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.

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.

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".

'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!"

'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.

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

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.

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.

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."

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.

Gates may be gone, but the walls and bars of proprietary software he 
helped create remain, for now.

Dismantling them is up to us.

Richard Stallman is the founder of the Free Software Foundation. You can 
copy and redistribute this article under the Creative Commons Noderivs 
license.