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Originally Posted by Andrew Russell  Interesting side-thought about BG's thematic "nemesis": I think RMS is (also?) a lightworker - but he's fouling it up badly by trying to "infect" everyone with lightworker syndrome. |
I couldn't agree less. RMS's contributions are both numerous and timeless. Without RMS the entire world would be far far worse off.
In comparison, without Microsoft the entire world would be better off. If Bill Gates had not existed, a nicer person would have taken his place running the company responsible for the IBC-PC OS, and that person may have been less monopolistic.
Gates never actually created any technology. His role in Microsoft was essentially as a negotiator and competitor working to ensure monopoly.
Monopoly is a blindspot of capitalism - in a free market being selfish will benefit everyone
until someone achieves monopoly. This is why we have laws against monopoly but not against greed.
Steve Jobs never had a monopoly on anything. His control was control of his product, NOT control of consumers. Although right now he is trying to control consumers with the iTunes DRM issue. But in the rankings of evil billionaires Jobs certainly comes behind Gates just because Jobs never tried to attain monopoly. His focus was always on innovation rather than crippling the competition.
RMS, on the other hand, is the Mother Teresa of software. He has worked ceaselessly on technology for his entire life and gives it all away for free. There is no doubt that he is the most talented and selfless technologist of the information age. It's inaccurate to say he suffers from lightworker syndrome since he is still alive and contributing. If he died of starvation you might have a point. But if everyone developed software like Richard Stallman our current technology would be centuries ahead of where we are now.
The biggest issue with software is having it closed source as a rule so that others can't stand on your shoulders. People end up reinventing the wheel thousands of times over. On top of this, with today's corporate culture, corporations would sooner see a discontinued piece of software rot and vanish out of existance than release it to the public domain. Even if there is no remote possibility of that code being used to compete with current products, corporations will not release it. Why should they? It will only benefit society as a whole, and the corporation is incredibly selfish as a rule.
Anyway I guess I could go on for hours so I'll stop here. People have the right to be selfish, but I wish they would choose not to be.
