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Originally Posted by yossarian  Although right now he is trying to control consumers with the iTunes DRM issue. |
You might find this
open letter by Steve Jobs interesting. It also clearly illustrates that often the thoughts are not what you'd expect, given the actions.
On the subject of releasing things into the public domain - you have to applaude John Carmack on this one for releasing all but the latest of his engines under GPL.
Anyway, Bill Gates or not, you can't fault Microsoft the company for not driving massive innovation in the software industry. Although they did very well with the whole DOS licencing thing, the main reason they were monumentally successful was their openness with developers in a time when other companies were charging through the nose to let developers onto their platform.
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Originally Posted by yossarian I couldn't agree less. RMS's contributions are both numerous and timeless. Without RMS the entire world would be far far worse off. |
I have no doubt that RMS has contributed much to the software industry - but if you follow his views on software to their conclusion, he would have it such that everyone had to give away their software (source and all) for free. Which is not a good thing if you're a developer (hence I say lightworker syndrome). It makes certain types of software unfeasible - the world is far better off with the current mix of open and closed source software.
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Originally Posted by Baltar It took Microsoft almost six years to make a major OS update. |
I don't think that was their intent. They kind of screwed that one up.
As to large companies developing loads of new stuff, I'm surprised you neglected to mention Google.