Posted on 12/10/2006 2:19:05 PM PST by ShadowAce
What's confusing? You like free products from leftists so much you spend your time trying to claim they're not leftists, or are irrelevant, both of which have been easily disproven. Quite elementary actually.
No because as you know Gates only allows his donations to be used for contraception. Also as already stated above the Red Hat Linux code is 100% given to the Chinese for free, which is why they can legally rename Red Hat to Red Flag, which they can't do with Windows. Why do you keep asking the same questions over in defense of the leftist Stallman and the free Linux giveaways to China? It obviously couldn't be because you're actually concerned in the least about free tech transfers to China, or else you would be speaking out against them as I do instead.
Would you buy a new car if the hood was locked shut and only the manufacturer was allowed to open it? Well, that is what you are essentially doing when you buy software from MS. Stallman thinks you should be allowed to open the hood (or let a third party open the hood for you), and I agree. So even though Stallman is a commie, he wants to give you much more freedom than "capitalist" Gates is willing to give you.
Should you be allowed to buy software from Gates? If you are dumb enough to think its in your best interest, then of course you should be allowed to do so. What should *not* be allowed is the Gates and Co. to control standards for public exchange of information. That's like letting some company have a copyright on the English language.
By the way, your concern that open source will drive down the cost of commodity software is akin the the anti-globalist Left's concern that Wal-Mart is driving down costs too much. You have a lot in common with those losers.
As opposed to you loving paid MS software so much you claim the leftist gates is not a leftist..
I have very little if anything in common with leftists, conservatives don't believe in models based on "giving everything way" either in principle or in action. That's liberal thinking pure and simple, and what you continue to expose despite already leaving the converstation once supposedly.
I doubt you actually ever need to tinker under the hood of your O/S, but if you do, you don't need some O/S Stallman wants to put the "GNU/" in front of to do it.
http://www.opensolaris.org/
No I simply claimed he's not as far left as the greenie Stallman, which he obviously isn't by any sane person's definition. Nor was he raised in some foreign country by communists, nor is his product the standard software of all communist governments like Linux is. All of which you already know, of course.
Are you actually advocating OpenSolaris? If so, you should know that Scott McNealy called it "Sun's version of Linux." And do you honestly suppose that Sun would have opened up Solaris were it not for the pressure from Linux?
By the way, you seem awfully concerned that China could use Linux to get ahead of the US. That can't happen if we use it too. But if we're stupid enough to keep paying billionaires for a product that is inferior to what we can get for free, I'd say we'll get what we deserve.
Your understanding of basic economics is abysmal.
Of course not. As I already said, Sun has already laid of thousands and thousands of workers, and felt they had to release their own code just to compete. Microsoft released source code to the Chicoms too, but only in order to compete with Linux as well. Without Linux in places like China, they would have had little choice other than to accept closed source offerings from the U.S., but now, they get almost everything "free".
I'd say we'll get what we deserve...Your understanding of basic economics is abysmal.
Not surprisingly you'll take the lazy way out and just sling insults instead. You'll get what you deserve, definitely.
Oh, so Linux caused Sun to layoff workers. I'm crying for them. And Wal-Mart probably forced Sears and Kmart to layoff workers too. That's the free market, dude! Apparently you have a hard time with that concept, eh. IBM embraced Linux and is doing quite well, I understand. Or is IBM a commie company in your little fantasy world?
And on top of all the other nonsense you write, you seem to assume that if the Chinese didn't have Linux they wouldn't just pirate MS software on a massive scale. Do you actually think the Chicoms will vigorously enforce our copyright laws?
Internationalism certainly has its price, although you seem to be blind to it.
Do you actually think the Chicoms will vigorously enforce our copyright laws?
Much more, now that they are part of the WTO. Unless you'd rather us all be running a Chinese standard format anyway.
"Internationalism certainly has its price, although you seem to be blind to it."
If you're not a Leftist anti-globalist, you could have fooled me.
By the way, Linux actually *prevents* China from having a major advantage over the US. US companies cannot get away with pirating Windows and Office on a large scale, but Chinese companies can. That would give the Chinese companies a significant advantage were it not for the fact that US companies (smart ones, anyway) can use Linux.
Hence, your admiration, obviously. They would beat us on Linux too, you say, unless we do our best to emmulate them.
And what are you suggesting? That we should deliberately handicap ourselves with a Windows/Office monopoly tax so the Chinese and Indians can undercut our prices even more? Sorry, but I prefer minimize my taxes both to the government *and* to Microsoft. I think Bill and Steve will manage to get by somehow.
Here's something interesting...
Open up any copy of ftp.exe in Notepad and scroll down a bit.
It states Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California
Yep, my guess is they lifted virtually the whole TCP/IP stack right from BSD Unix...
That's interesting, but it's not illegal if the BSD license back then was the same as it is now. The BSD license basically allows anyone to copy and use the code without restriction, with the only condition being that they maintain the original headers (which MS apparently did in this case). I don't begrudge MS one bit for doing that.
But the idea that MS was on the cutting edge in OS design is just a pathetic joke. Heck, unix had a multiuser system a friggin' QUARTER CENTURY before MS had one! And I just read the other day that MS didn't even have subdirectories until around 1985, and they used the "\" character as a delimiter in a pitiful attempt to be different from unix (which uses "/", of course).
I already gave you a link to opensolaris, what's wrong, your memory is so weak you already forgot? I also recommend Apple if you don't like Windows, but appparently you're just not happy unless you're running Stallman's software.
Typical BS from you. Microsoft didn't "lift" it from anyone, they bought it from another company named Spider. You can read it here from one of the admins at freebsd.org, or try some actual research yourself instead of parroting the normal nonsense you hear from your uninformed buddies:
http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-newbies/2003-September/000808.html
Q: Is it true that Microsoft uses BSD's Stack?
A: No, it's not true. For a while we thought it was, but we proved to be incorrect. Microsoft's network stack was written by a Scottish company called Spider.
Have you walked into a kmart and looked at where the clothing was made? same place as Wal-Mart
"The BSD license basically allows anyone to copy and use the code without restriction, with the only condition being that they maintain the original headers (which MS apparently did in this case). I don't begrudge MS one bit for doing that."
Not saying MS did anything illegal--they crossed their t's and dotted their i's.
"
But the idea that MS was on the cutting edge in OS design is just a pathetic joke. Heck, unix had a multiuser system a friggin' QUARTER CENTURY before MS had one! And I just read the other day that MS didn't even have subdirectories until around 1985, and they used the "\" character as a delimiter in a pitiful attempt to be different from unix (which uses "/", of course)."
IMHO, you'd think that if MS was going to be the big innovator, that they wouldn't obviously try to copy or emulate things from other OS's...
Heck, even my little brother could tell the sidebar in Vista was virtually ripped from Mac OS X.
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