Open Source Software vs. Microsoft Empire
Introduction
“I think that to try to own knowledge, to try to control whether people are allowed to use it, or to try to stop other people from sharing it, is sabotage. It is an activity that benefits the person that does it at the cost of impoverishing all of society. One person gains one dollars by destroying two dollars’ worth of wealth. I think a person with a conscience wouldn’t do that sort of thing except perhaps if he would otherwise die.”
-- Richard Stallman[1]
Richard Stallman, the best-known figure of free software movement professes an absolute refusal of any notion of commercial software. His idea is revolutionary but straightforward: software should be free, period.
Background Information
In 1970s, the software was firstly subjected as intellectual property. Stallman felt if the software-based computing idea was treated as an intellectual property and controlled as proprietary, then he as a hacker[2] no longer could read the source code, find the problem, and fix the problem in the MIT lab community. It would be a major drawback to the freedom in technology from social and moral perspective. So Stallman quit the job in MIT and found Free Software Foundation[3] in 1984 as a nonprofit organization that provides various types of software such as: GCC compiler and Emacs editor. He created the General Public License (GPL)[4] as a legal document to prevent free software from being turned into proprietary. GPL is also known as copyleft[5]. To most of Stallman’s supporters and open source hackers, “non-free software is a social problem and free software is the solution.”[6]. The main theme of free software is the moral freedom – the cultural and legal freedom to ac...
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... 1999, “Social Intention, Implicit Practice, and Materiality: The Socio-Cultural, Economic, and Technological Context of Free Software”, at http://www.healthhacker.com/biella/techculture.html
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Richard Stallman, 2002, “Software patents – Obstacles to software development”, at http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/stallman-patents.html
Biella, “Reconfiguring Philanthropy: Free Software Volunteer Labor and the Global Network”, at http://www.healthhacker.com/biella/ssrc.html
Sudeep Gu, 2002, “Is Microsoft Harming the Computer Industry?”, at http://www.mackido.com/History/MSMonopoly.html
Rob Enderle, 2003, “Japan Strikes Against Microsoft with Open Source”, at http://www.technewsworld.com/perl/story/31522.html
The notion that software should be free is one that is highly critiqued within the technology industry. Free, as in the idea that users can obtain the source code for any given program, and modify and redistribute it as they like. Currently most all software produced is proprietary in nature. Corporations pay developers to create proprietary software that they then obstruct (so that no modifications can be made), and sell (to turn a profit). Richard Stallman has been fighting the idea of proprietary software, and specifically software ownership, for decades. Stallman holds the stance that software ownership is a detriment to society, and stifles innovation, education, and social cohesion.
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- When he writes: "Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then? I think we should be men first, and subjects afterward," he is saying that it's more important to develop a respect for the right, rather than the law law, because our obligations as people are to do what is right
Adas, Michael, "Machines as the Meaure of Men: Science, Technology, and Ideologies of Western Dominance", Cornell Univ. Press 1989, pp. 1-35.
"Microsoft Corporation, is a multinational computer technology corporation with global annual revenue of US$44.28 billion and 71,553 employees in 102 countries as of July 2006. It develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of software products for computing devices. Headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA, its best selling products are the Microsoft Windows operating system and the Microsoft Office suite of productivity software, each of which has achieved near-ubiquity in the desktop computer market. Microsoft possesses footholds in other markets, with assets such as the MSNBC cable television network, the MSN Internet portal, and the Microsoft Encarta multimedia encyclopedia. The company also markets both computer hardware products such as the Microsoft mouse as well as home entertainment products such as the Xbox, Xbox 360 and MSN TV" ("Microsoft").
‘Acts of whatever kind, which, without justifiable cause, do harm to others, may be, and in the more important cases absolutely require to be, controlled by the unfavorable sentiments, and, when needful, by the active interference of mankind. The liberty of the individual must be thus far limited; he must not make himself a nuisance to other people.’
Sandler, Ronald L. Ethics and Emerging Technologies. New York, NY: St. Martin's Press, 2013. Print.
In 1994, Marc Anderseen invented a new way to search and retrieve information from the Internet: the Netscape Navigator. Netscape’s rising sales and the phenomenal growth of the Internet make its shares go through the roof and even before the Company had any profit; it was valued at $2.7 billion. However, the scenario didn’t go that well for so long and a very powerful and ambitious man came into the picture. Bill Gates put 2,000 of his best programmers to create a browser of his own: The Explorer. The battle of the browsers officially started; Microsoft’s share of the browser market increased from 2.9 percent at the end of 1995 to more than 40 percent by the end of 1997, while Netscape’s market share fell to 54 percent.
The Suppression of Ideas “One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”
I believe that Microsoft has the best intensions for society, because they are constantly developing the software market into a more competitive and challenging industry. Microsoft’s success as a company is partly due to its commitment to making the best product possible and strategic business practices. The first reason Microsoft is not a monopoly is because of the standardized quality of its OS. Second is the intelligent business practices Microsoft has engaged in through many of its business partners. The legal issues of the alleged antitrust accusations from the department of justice are just totally overrated.
The Web. 07 February 2014. This online article was useful for my research because it showed how over use of technology impacts people.