NOBODY can forget how Bill Gates openly complained about the patent system back when Microsoft was small, bemoaning the fact that it was helping monopolists such as IBM. To quote Gates: “If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today’s ideas were invented, and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today."

"Neither IBM nor Microsoft should deserve our trust; both are old guard monopolists looking to exploit everything they can for money, even if that means 'stealing' -- to use their own words -- Free software."Nowadays Microsoft together with IBM still lobbies against 35 U.S.C. €§ 101 and for software patents at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). They both also lobby for software patents at the European Patent Office (EPO), in effect harming not just Free software but all software developers that are small. They want a shared monopoly; now that IBM owns Red Hat and has systemd in most distros (it's still hosted by Microsoft by the way) they might even get their way.

Neither IBM nor Microsoft should deserve our trust; both are old guard monopolists looking to exploit everything they can for money, even if that means 'stealing' -- to use their own words -- Free software. Remember how they responded to Stallman being canceled. They're in many ways two-faced hypocrites, who contradict even their own prior positions. Whenever that suits the agenda. ⬆

“As long as they are going to steal it, we want them to steal ours.”

--Bill Gates