07.19.13

The Foot in Stallman’s Face: Bill Gates Still Redefines Free Software

Posted in Bill Gates, FSF, FUD, GPL at 4:53 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

“There’s free software and then there’s open source… there is this thing called the GPL, which we disagree with.”

–Bill Gates, April 2008

“They’ll get sort of addicted, and then we’ll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade.”

–Bill Gates

Summary: The ongoing war by Microsoft and its proxies against software freedom, which gives more value to the world’s industry than the FUD would have people believe

There is another reason to abandon the term “Open Source”, which left the term “Free software” more vulnerable to abuse by bad people, makers of proprietary software. Here is Bill Gates’ latest attempt to run over Free/libre software, characterising his trap as “free”. To quote a Romanian site:

Bill Gates had a very interesting opening keynote speech at the Microsoft Research Faculty Summit 2013, explaining that he was grateful for the existence of free software, when asked about patents and their influence on technology.

“Thank God for commercial software. It actually funds salaries, gives people jobs. And thank God for free software, it lets people get things out there, you can play around, build on. The two work very well in an ecosystem,” stated Bill Gates during the Q&A.

This is nonsense, as anybody with a clue knows that commercial means not proprietary and Free/libre can be used commercially, paying wages to users and developers.

A lot of this kind of attacks on Free software usually goes back to Microsoft and its proxies. Right now we have Black Duck, a company created by a marketing guy from Microsoft, throwing around some numbers, looking for sites that will print them. Here is one:

Missing Open Source Licenses May Cost Channel $59B

Open source consulting firm BlackDuck says up to $59 billion may be locked up in open source projects with no explicit license. Is that lost revenue for channel partners and software companies?

Here is the press release. What nonsense. Trying to quantify code in terms of revenue is not the only silliness; it is the idea that money is being lost as a result of having no licence. Similar propaganda was previously used to describe FOSS as a jobs destroyer, as if people are writing software with such aims. Some tried to portray FOSS as a cause for losses in the industry, not a saver of money and elevator of productivity (which in turn makes room for more hirings per given budget). This is the type of propaganda we are up against and we keep seeing it brought up also in public talks.

Here is another new example of Black Duck being used to reinforce FUD — namely the idea that Free software is about cost, not freedom, and that it is chosen for price, not other qualities. Watch how the Black Duck-run Future of Open Source survey [1, 2, 3, 4] is being used to spread misconceptions. This new FOSS-hostile article (“The Hidden Cost of Free”) says: “Bottom line, open source may be “eating the software world,” but not all of it. For ISVs and other software development professionals, open source is a no-brainer. We use it in development and in our commercial products wherever and whenever it makes sense. It is free, after all, and the quality is second to none, as this year’s Future of Open Source survey reinforces.”

Black Duck reinforces all sorts of proprietary software talking points. Black Duck is, after all, a proprietary software company.

“This is the type of propaganda we are up against and we keep seeing it brought up also in public talks.”Speaking of FUD against FOSS, the latest Android security fear-mongering comes from a Microsoft partner created and managed by a Microsoft guy (who hopes to turn Android perceptions into Windows perceptions when it comes to security). To quote the company’s description: “He is also a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) in Visual Developer Security, a frequent speaker, press resource, and is featured regularly in the Associated Press and global security media.”

“Bluebox was founded in mid-2012,” it says, and it was groomed by the Gartner Group (currently fully dedicated to Android FUD and monetisation attempts, akin to Black Duck).

The war on FOSS is very real and Microsoft partners are trying to remove the F from FOSS or altogether make it proprietary. A few days ago we showed how three Micrososft-controlled entities threw around (or under the bus) and blurred out the FOSS identity of Zimbra (here is more on that); we should also pay attention to the hallmark of effective FOSS FUD because it’s quite consistent. As explained a week ago by Eben Moglen at the EU Parliament, the GPL brought enormous value to the industry, more so than Apple and Microsoft combined. Unfortunately the video is only on YouTube, hence embedded below.