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Oh, please! Why do people persist with this "Free Software is communism" garbage? It is really annoying and not very intelligent.

The primary gripe associated with communism is the necessary element of autocracy, either by a small elite or society in general. Basically, the individual sacrifices his rights to society and is coerced to do so ("The good of the many outweighs the good of the few." If you want to use Star Trek terminology). Society works as a unit to produce for all, and individuals do not have the choice to not participate.

Free Software on the other hand is a hack to compensate for something that should never have existed in the first place: proprietary software. There is no universal, natural, moral or other Right embodied in copyright. It is a revocable privilege, originally limited to commercial transactions and limited in duration. While Congress has the power to create it, Congress is not required to. If it is revoked, no one can seek compensation. It is subordinate to Natural Rights such as those embodied in the Bill of Rights.

Copyright was never intended to cover something like software. Software is not an artistic work (although some people manage to make it artistic). It is a functional work. As such, a monopoly incentive is unnecessary. Businesses will pay for software to be developed even if they cannot restrict its distribution by any legal means. People will write software because they want their computers to do things they cannot currently do. This will never change, and the monopoly privilege only inhibits these processes by forcing the constant reinvention of the wheel.

Copyright also restricts a natural and universal right necessary for every Free Society: Free Speech. Copyright makes certain speech controllable, which makes it NOT Free. Liberal Democracies are literally inconceivable in the absence of Free Speech. In the absence of copyright, however, few things in our current world -- except for millionaire record execs -- are inconceivable.

Monopolies are anti-capitalist. Monopolies, like copyright, are a relic of Feudal system that the Revolution of 1776, the one that everybody was celebrating yesterday, toppled. This is the autocratic system where monarchs got to say who could do business with whom and where and when. The establishment of the United States happened as a reaction to monopolies and other trade restrictions. Unless one claims the Authors of the Constitution of the United States were communists, nothing that is anti-monopoly, like Free Software, can be called "communist".

Therefore, the true communists are people who would treat information -- speech -- like property, people who use the term "Intellectual Property". These are the people who wish to assert Feudal monopoly privileges in order to gain an unfair market advantage and charge unreasonable fees for their services. This are people who want the state to enforce their predatory taxation on society. Bill Gates is precisely this sort of communist, and his attempts to bring 1984 to our desktops (no, I am not inclined to provide a list. There should be no shortage of evidence on the net for the curious) is precisely the opposite of Freedom and Free Software.

Communists are people who do not believe in Free Software.

Ugh I know this is flame bait but I have to say it as it's on topic.

I still don't see the harm that Gates brought to the computing industry with Microsoft. They brought a unification to the desktop and IT that simply didn't exist before, and pushed for standards that made it easier.

And even now there are still problems with all of this. Look at the browser market. Even if IE were not involved, you still have the problem that Firefox, Opera, and Safari render pages differently. Their performance is also very different. So say, a website that you write for one may be great on performance but when launched in another browser be completely and utterly poor.

Even setting "standards" for rendering don't resolve that, as exactly "how" those standards are implemented are left up to the developers. Then you still have the issue that Safari is the most common browser used on Macs, and that's certainly going to heat up as Safari 4 makes its rounds.

Either way, Microsoft tried to reduce this as much as possible. And they succeeded. Despite the fact that millions of people don't know how to use the computers they use every day, they still use them and have access to them. You can still get an education with them.

There are points where IT nerds don't want to learn anything new anymore--it's just at a much higher point than the average person, but still exists...

Oh be creative! Free software is, as far as the whole of society is concerned, much cheaper than proprietary software, because society only has to pay to solve (the software portion of) a particular problem once. Therefore, if problems are solved using free software instead of proprietary software, society will have a lot of money left over to spend on fixing disease, starvation, etc.

But we don't even have to argue about free vs. proprietary software in general. This discussion is about free software versus Microsoft software, and it's fairly well-established that Microsoft software has a much higher TCO than best-of-breed free software.

When you consider how much money Microsoft drains from various countries' economies, it's easy to see how the money could be put to better use.

Careful. Ask that around here and you're bound to get a few hopelessly ignorant responses from people who honestly believe Gates has done more harm than Hitler, and his giving away of billions in charity is all a ruse to solidify his ill-gotten position of power.

I've heard RMS when he's come to give talks at my university. I admire his dedication, sure, but anyone who tries to claim that he's done more good in the world than Bill and Melinda Gates is just painfully out of touch. There are more pressing concerns in the world than software, and no, getting rid of proprietary software won't magically fix disease, starvation, etc (cue the "but we empower nations to fix their own problems with free software!!!" responses)

Is Stallman so desperate to make Mr. Gates out to be the bad guy that heâ(TM)d sink this low?

I don't see any "low sinking" about it. First of all, the money Gates is so charitably donating, is money he acquired from an illegal monopoly, so it is reasonable to follow where it is going.

Second, there is a good argument to be made that foundations like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation are harmful and are mainly entertainment vehicles and tax shelters for the rich.

Third, why shouldn't Stallman comment on this stuff? He started the Free Software Foundation out of social consciousness and civic concern; of course, he would comment on other social issues and may well take action, even if they have nothing to do with software.

And why should Stallman be "desparate"? Free software is doing better than ever before, while Microsoft just keeps failing in everything they do.

The rest of the NeoSmart files contains more bullshit. For example:

Stallman somehow neglects to mention that â" regardless of whether morally acceptable or not â" Microsoft had the legal right to demand payment in exchange for their software.

There is no "neglect" about it. It is not at all clear that Gates had that legal right at the time; in a sense, Gates helped establish that right, to the deteriment of us all, according to Stallman's reading.

I don't agree with what Stallman says, but he is at least consistent and logical. NeoSmart is a bunch of bullshit and FUD.

Is Microsoft getting so desperate that they have to step up their bullshit and FUD machine another notch? I guess it's a good sign.

See here

I think it's idiotic for these project leaders are attaching their pet causes to software with bunch of contributors. It should be a rule to keep one's politics separate from such projects.

I can assure you that you will need new accounts if Sandvine or anyone else sets their PR firm on you. Five years worth of good reputation can vanish in as few as five posts. Once they have you posting at -1 they can keep you there with very little effort and no one will notice. A new account fixes that and drives them wild, kind of like free speech on the internet obsoletes the MAFIAA business models. The fix for a non neutral net won't be nearly as easy.

See, this response is flawed. Monsanto does own their seeds because they invested a lot of time and money in the traits of those seeds. Nothing is being stolen from the farmers...they can use the same old seeds they have been using for thousands of years. You, person who thinks scarcity is artificial, have never lived in a world in which you must fight for your food or you must kill in order to stay alive. Business must make profit in order to enrich your life. DO not expect freedom of existence without a fight for it...you must earn it.

Now at the same time, Monsanto does not get to fly those seeds over random farms and drop them and then sue those farmers, thats bad business, so don't think I love this company, but dammit you fools, don't think some scientist in a lab didn't work their ass off to create this amazing thing. And dammit, they better make some money, otherwise all that scientist can do for a living is steal shit from you...course you live in a world in which there is no scarcity, so no one would ever steal from you.

MrMage writes ""Florida parents don't have much faith in evolution. Only 22 percent want public schools to teach an evolution-only curriculum, while 50 percent want only faith-based theories such as creationism or intelligent design, according to a new St. Petersburg Times survey. "I have a very firm religious background," said Betty Lininger of Lecanto, who is raising her 15-year-old niece and thinks public schools should teach intelligent design but not evolution. "I can't just shove it out the door.""

Sure evolution is a theory, but to disregard it for faith, in public schools? Where does the rest of the world stand?"
http://www.sptimes.com/2008/02/15/State/Public__Faith_trumps_.shtml

Stony Stevenson writes "IT workers who specialise in free and open source software are earning more than the national average for IT, according to the results of Australia's first open source census. The average full time salary of respondents to the Australian Open Source Industry and Community Census was between $76,000 and $100,000, but the 10 percent working on open source full time were earning almost three times the national median."

Technical Writing Geek writes "If sales were indeed lost to piracy, then why hasn't this become a line item on the books and therefore tax deductible? Seriously, if all this intellectual property theft is theft in any conceivable way, then take the IRS deduction based on the press announcements and see how far you get.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2704,2251579,00.asp"
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2704,2251579,00.asp

Rob Weir has an interesting article comparing the viciousness of RTF and OOXML: 'The [document format standard] concerns of 2004 (or 1995 even) are very similar to the concerns of 2007. Novell is not complaining here about Microsoft's control of the binary DOC format. Instead, what Novell complains about is Microsoft's control over the document exchange format RTF used in those days to exchange data between word processors. "RTF is defined as whatever Word saves when you ask it to save as RTF." This should sound familiar. OOXML is nothing more than the preferences of Microsoft Office. Whenever Word changes, OOXML will change. And if you are a user or competitor of Word, you will be the last one to hear about these changes. The coding of Office 14 a.k.a. Office 2009 is well underway. Beta releases are expected in early 2008. But are file format changes needed to accommodate the new features being discussed in Ecma? No. Are they being discussed in ISO? No. Are they being discussed anywhere publicly? No. By owning the "standard" and developing it in secret, in an Ecma rubber-stamp process, Microsoft rigs the system so they can author an ISO standard with which they are effortlessly compatible, while at the same time ensuring that their products maintain an insurmountable head start in implementing these same standards. Is this how an open standard is developed?'

ndelta writes "It appears that some guys over at ps2dev.org have accessed the PS3 RSX through the hyperviser. They have a video of a demo up on youtube and some packages available."

An anonymous reader writes "The author of the original KDE 3.5 vs KDE 4.0 memory comparison, which indicated that KDE 4.0 used less memory than the KDE 3.5 series, has come out with a more accurate benchmark. In reality, KDE 4.0 uses 110 MB more memory than KDE 3.5.8. This was no surprise to many KDE developers, who saw many mistakes in the way the original results were obtained. However, given the new composite window manager, Plasma/Oxygen bling, and numerous new features, the extra memory consumption is probably well worth it!"
http://www.jarzebski.pl/read/kde-3-5-vs-4-0-round-two.so

Apparently Hushmail has been providing information to law enforcement behind the backs of their clients. Billed as secure email because of their use of PGP, Hushmail has been turning over private keys of users to the authorities on request. Yet another reason to use private hosting.