Linux Online - Stallman takes Gates to task over GPL

Stallman takes Gates to task over GPL


		Date:	May 02 2002

Applications Stallman takes Gates to task over GPL By Matt Loney ZDNet (UK) May 1, 2002, 6:00 AM PT TalkBack! Attacks by Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates on the GNU General Public License, under which much open source and free software is distributed, have been driven by a fear that the GPL creates a domain of software that Microsoft cannot privatize and control, according to GPL founder Richard Stallman. Gates' latest speech on the issue was delivered in mid-April to a Government Leaders' Conference in Seattle, where he warned developing countries against using software based on the GPL, saying those who put development time into it are denying themselves the benefits of essential taxes. Using some of his strongest language yet in his campaign against open source and free software, Gates equated the concepts to anti-capitalism. Noting that some countries that believe in the capitalist approach--"that is, that software should generate jobs...and government research and development should be generated on a basis that can be commercialized"--Gates characterized the open source and free software movements as factions against this. "The so-called (Free Software Foundation)... says that these other countries other than the U.S. should devote R&D dollars in the so-called open approach, that means you can never commercialize that software," said Gates. The Free Software Foundation is Stallman's fund-raising organization for GNU projects. But in a column for ZDNet UK, Stallman said the real reason that Microsoft attacks the GPL is that it creates a domain of software that the company cannot privatize and control. "Microsoft's approach to free software is simple: 'What's mine is mine, and what's yours is mine.'" Gates, said Stallman, believes that Microsoft should be allowed to take anyone's free software and make a proprietary version, "whose source code is their secret: they will push us to run it but they, not we, will control what it does. We are supposed to be grateful to them for barging in." In his speech to the Government Leaders' Conference, Gates said countries that put money into open source deny themselves "the benefits of these high-paying jobs and the kind of taxes that let countries fund their universities, and fund general research that then goes to renew that pool of commercial R&D." Clearly, he said, "there's an ecosystem there that has worked extremely well in the United States... and there is now a recognition that it's really a question of policy of allowing the so-called capitalistic approach to win the day." Gates reeled off a number of reasons that countries should not adopt open source software. One question, he said, is: "Do you need the source code of an operating system as a user of that operating system? That is, should you be paying your people to study the intricacies of how the operating system is built and stuff like that?" The basic answer, he said, is no. "For a few percent of the price of the PC you can buy a commercial operating system, where all the work of testing it, supporting it, delivering it, is included." Microsoft, said Gates, does provide source code to universities and large companies that want it. "But 90-some percent of the time, that's more an 'okay, it's nice, I have it, you know, should I ever need it.'" So source availability, said Gates, is not the big issue.

Not so, according to Stallman. The Microsoft "shared source" program, he says, is not about sharing at all--it is just another name for a nondisclosure agreement. "Think twice before you sign, because it is not just antisocial, it is risky too," he wrote.