| RMS responds to Bill Gates' attacks on the GPL |
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By atai, Section News
Posted on Thu May 2nd, 2002 at 07:14:25 GMT |
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RMS has written a response, published in ZDNet UK and mentioned in ZDNet, a "mainstream" computer industry news site, to the latest attacks on the GPL from Bill Gates. My favor line in the article: "We say, "share and share alike." Gates, despite completing kindergarten, has still not learned to share."
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| It is interesting to see RMS and Bill Gates, the opposing ends of the software spectrum, now directly face off. This is the evidence of the declining energy in the proprietary software industry where one company has managed to conquer all and left no opposition, and the increasing impacts of the GNU GPL, the community and software built around which have become the number one competitor to Microsoft. This contrast is so sharp, like white and black, and it is more ramarkable when one considers that, once upon a time, both RMS and Gates were in similar situations: both went to Harvard, the differences being merely two years, and when RMS was hacking on the first Emacs in the MIT AI Labs, Gates was working on Basic in the computer center at Harvard. Then they went opposing directions. But considering RMS's The GNU Manifesto and Gates' An Open Letter to Hobbyists, it is inevitable that their paths will cross again in a struggle that will determine the nature of the software field itself. |
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