Is Microsoft The Great Satan?

Bob McDob · Post by **Bob McDob** » 2003-08-03 07:01pm

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/microsoft.html

Many people think of Microsoft as the monster menace of the software industry. There is even a campaign to boycott Microsoft. This feeling has intensified since Microsoft expressed active hostility towards free software.

In the free software movement, our perspective is different. We see that Microsoft is doing something that is bad for software users: making software proprietary and thus denying users their rightful freedom.

But Microsoft is not alone in this; almost all software companies do the same thing to the users. If other companies manage to dominate fewer users than Microsoft, that is not for lack of trying.

This is not meant to excuse Microsoft. Rather, it is meant as a reminder that Microsoft is the natural development of a software industry based on dividing users and taking away their freedom. When criticizing Microsoft, we must not exonerate the other companies that also make proprietary software. At the FSF, we don't run any proprietary software---not from Microsoft or anyone else.

In the ``Halloween documents'', released at the end of October 1998, Microsoft executives stated an intention to use various methods to obstruct the development of free software: specifically, designing secret protocols and file formats, and patenting algorithms and software features.

These obstructionist policies are nothing new: Microsoft, and many other software companies, have been doing them for years now. In the past, probably, their motivation was to attack each other; now, it seems, we are among the intended targets. But that change in motivation has no practical consequence, because secret conventions and software patents obstruct everyone, regardless of the ``intended target''.

Secrecy and patents do threaten free software. They have obstructed us greatly in the past, and we must expect they will do so even more in the future. But this is no different from what was going to happen even if Microsoft had never noticed us. The only real significance of the ``Halloween documents'' is that Microsoft seems to think that the GNU/Linux system has the potential for great success.

Thank you, Microsoft, and please get out of the way.

Pu-239 · Post by **Pu-239** » 2003-08-03 08:01pm

Yes, but the FSF is also a bunch of idealistic hippies. They are just against, say IBM, or theKompany.com, as they are with MS, since they view all non-free(non-opensource) software as evil. Hell RMS even complained about some firmware in some sound card driver included in Linux being "proprietary".

Maybe someone should ask him how the HURD is going

.

YT300000 · Post by **YT300000** » 2003-08-03 09:15pm

But Microsoft is not alone in this; almost all software companies do the same thing to the users. If other companies manage to dominate fewer users than Microsoft, that is not for lack of trying.

Woah. I never saw that coming.

Iceberg · Post by **Iceberg** » 2003-08-03 11:53pm

Until I see open-source games and MP3 players becoming common, I won't believe the "we don't use any proprietary software" garbage.

Peregrin Toker · Post by **Peregrin Toker** » 2003-08-04 07:33am

Actually - there's a conspiracy theory that various hacker attacks actually are being carried out by Microsoft employees in order to make Windows users buy replacements for virus-damaged applications....

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2003-08-04 01:01pm

Sounds like a rather stupid one.

YT300000 · Post by **YT300000** » 2003-08-04 02:00pm

The truth is out there.

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2003-08-04 03:29pm

YT300000 wrote:The truth is out there.

...in reality, not in some techno-hippie's head.

SPOOFE · Post by **SPOOFE** » 2003-08-05 12:02am

So, instead of one major centralized OS - despite how buggy or crappy you may consider it to be - we'd be better off with hundreds of different OS's, most of which would be WORSE than Windows?

I don't buy it.

Linux lacks the ability to appeal to the Average, Ignorant User. It's these AIU's that give software companies their revenue, and it's these revenues that allow software companies to make more software, centralized and compatible.

If there had never been a central, standard platform, we'd still be stuck in the late '80s*.

(*Not referring to Microsoft in particular, but closed-source, mass-market software in general.)

Xon · Post by **Xon** » 2003-08-05 08:13am

The people at gnu.org have problems with anybody making a living (sucessfully) off closed source stuff.

Microsoft does allow Shared Source with paying Customers (ie governments & some universities ). "Shared source" being Microsoft keeps their copyright & ownership, but said person gets to inspect the source code.

And while the linux kernal is stable, the various GUIs sure as hell arent to pinical of stability.

Pu-239 · Post by **Pu-239** » 2003-08-05 09:06am

ggs wrote:The people at gnu.org have problems with anybody making a living (sucessfully) off closed source stuff.

Microsoft does allow Shared Source with paying Customers (ie governments & some universities ). "Shared source" being Microsoft keeps their copyright & ownership, but said person gets to inspect the source code.

And while the linux kernal is stable, the various GUIs sure as hell arent to pinical of stability.

On the contrary, I've found KDE very stable. X is a little sluggish, but that's because of my computer ( 450mhz PII ). Occasionally locked, but Win2k when I ran it crashed more. Rarely required reboot though unless my modem locked up. Now that 2.6 has forcible module unloading, shouldn't be a problem.

Shared source does not give the user the right to freely modify and redistribute- there are large limitations of what you can do with it.

The GNU people do not represent the Open Source community. They are the more radical "Free Software community".

Besides, shared source is only for organizations. The individual is considered unimportant and would never be able to get a shared source license.

Besides, shared source is not new. Hasn't sun and other unix vendors been doing that for years?

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2003-08-05 12:55pm

Ugh, I've found neither KDE or GNOME to be that stable. They work, but not that well.

SPOOFE · Post by **SPOOFE** » 2003-08-05 01:36pm

The individual is considered unimportant

This should be considered one of the great universal truths, despite the blow it'd deal to some people's egos.

Pu-239 · Post by **Pu-239** » 2003-08-05 04:24pm

phongn wrote:Ugh, I've found neither KDE or GNOME to be that stable. They work, but not that well.

What are you running when using your DE?

Isn't the RH version of KDE "broken" due to their "customizations"? You see all these kde people ranting about how RH has crippled KDE.

The debian version of KDE probably has been patched or something with bugfixes. Was a bit unstable at first until upgraded to 3.1.2-2. Some libraries have been broken (and continue to be- haven't upgraded to 3.1.3), but I haven't noticed anything. Then again, I mostly run terminal apps and Firebird with 10-25 tabs open, and kmail running in background. Debian "unstable" isn't really unstable, it's just that you have broken packages on the archives occasionally, (though KDE has been broken for over a month, luckily downloaded good versions before that). Maybe I shouldn't upgrade to nptl...

Get another distro

- RH sucks, unless you are a business.

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2003-08-05 04:37pm

I used Mandrake 9.0 for a while, and it was pretty good, but there were certain things that are a lot easier with Windows. Installing sound drivers was an exercise in masochism. It was a self-extracting exe, and of all the Linux help guides out there, I had to search through probably more than a dozen before one told me that "sh ./<filename>" is how you run something. Even if that had been easy to find out, I should have been able to just double-click on it. Then I tried to install NVidia's Geforce drivers, and not only were there 4 files I had to download instead of 1, but they trashed my installation! After that I basically gave up on Linux for the time being. I'll check it out in a couple more years, but it's got a long way to go right now.

Einhander Sn0m4n · Post by **Einhander Sn0m4n** » 2003-08-05 04:44pm

Hey, what about Mandrake? I have 1.8 gigz of Mandrake ISO on my HDD ready to burn...

Pu-239 · Post by **Pu-239** » 2003-08-05 05:07pm

Arthur_Tuxedo wrote: Even if that had been easy to find out, I should have been able to just double-click on it

Wouldn't that be a security problem? Anyways, you can double click and install RPMs depending on distros.

And did you try just asking somebody?

Many drivers come included with the kernel or the alsa package, so you must have had weird hardware.

nVidia drivers are easy to install- type "sh ./filename" and answer questions. One file. What four files?

Besides, windows can be just as hard. I don't think a newbie could install my modem driver, since it comes on a CD as a bunch of DLLs and an ini file inside a folder. You have to go add new hardware and specify a location.
Not harder, just different. Then again, Aopen is a crappy vendor...

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2003-08-05 05:16pm

Pu-239 wrote:Isn't the RH version of KDE "broken" due to their "customizations"? You see all these kde people ranting about how RH has crippled KDE.

RH removed a few tools and changed the labels, but nothing major.

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2003-08-05 07:28pm

Pu-239 wrote:
Arthur_Tuxedo wrote: Even if that had been easy to find out, I should have been able to just double-click on it
Wouldn't that be a security problem? Anyways, you can double click and install RPMs depending on distros.

Yeah, but my driver manufacturer, in their infinite wisdom, decided against releasing in RPM format. How is double-clicking a security problem?

And did you try just asking somebody?

There was no G&C forum then, and I don't have a news program.

Many drivers come included with the kernel or the alsa package, so you must have had weird hardware.

Not really, I just got the download version, so it didn't have a lot of that stuff.

nVidia drivers are easy to install- type "sh ./filename" and answer questions. One file. What four files?

Maybe they do it differently now. I had to get 2 installers and 2 libraries, and the second installer trashed my distro.

Besides, windows can be just as hard. I don't think a newbie could install my modem driver, since it comes on a CD as a bunch of DLLs and an ini file inside a folder. You have to go add new hardware and specify a location.
Not harder, just different. Then again, Aopen is a crappy vendor...

There's certainly truth to that.