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Richard Stallman: “Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer Still Spineless and Greedy” (Regarding Censorship)

Ballmer money
Steve Ballmer in Windows 1.0 advertisement



Summary: Microsoft's support of censorship is denounced by a proponent of freedom of speech

YESTERDAY, Richard Stallman wrote that "Microsoft executives tried to excuse Chinese censorship by saying it is "limited" and that wizards can get around it. It is true that wizards can get around the censorship, especially if they have help from western friends. But only a tiny fraction of Chinese internet users know how to do that; as a result, Chinese censorship achieves its goal of suppressing political opposition in China." Stallman filed this under the title "Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer: Still spineless and greedy"



“This whole storm that led to Stallman's remark started when Chinese crackers exploited Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE).”A writer for the New York Times previously called for a boycott of Bing. Censorship in China was the cause.

This whole storm that led to Stallman's remark started when Chinese crackers exploited Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12]. Microsoft's close relationship to the Chinese regime and Bill Gates' apologism (anti-Google tour) are almost a denial of the atrocities and violations of human rights (Tiananmen Square Massacre for example).

In other news, Microsoft's search bribery [1, 2, 3, 4] for Bong [sic] (or equivalent identities of Microsoft's poor and biased "search") is expanding to more areas:

Microsoft Rewards Bing Map Users



[...]

The company will give you a chance to win a $100 gift card for taking it for a spin.


It is rather clear that Microsoft is trying to exploit greed. Microsoft also offered IE "bribes" in Australia (to urge people to ditch Web browsers like Firefox). The idea was that only those surfing the Web with IE might come across an award somewhere. Microsoft was slammed for doing this.

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