Yes, you’re right. This is such an insanely wrong-headed piece of FUD that only Dr Roy “Ooh, me synapses ache” Schestowitz could possibly come up with it.
And he’s apparently been updating it for the last four years.
Now, Microsoft might be evil. USX might have been evil. Standard Oil might have been evil. But when the evil owner takes billions out of his shares to fund (in reverse order) the General Education Board, public libraries in the 19th century, and attempts (amongst others) to eradicate TB and malaria …
... Well, you have to wonder what Schestowitz really cares about. He’s got a doctorate in Medical Biophysics, and he really, really, cares.
He cares so much that he’ll let untold millions of people die rather than that medical science takes the filthy lucre off people like Gates, who should of just opened up the source to Word in the first place. So there!
As a bonus: List of Microsoft Sins
(I’m not entirely sure that one was serious.)
Comments
Hey, at least he might be remotely qualified to comment on this topic compared to his normal diatribes.
Roy is just paraphrasing Stallman, who had his own bashing to do concerning the Gates foundation. Thing is, the Gates foundation has done a ton more to help poverty than the FSF’s twisted notions ever have, and they resent it. More than anything, Gates has shown that money, not open source, is what improves the lives of the destitute.
As for that list of Microsoft sins… ha. It’s laughable. Especially with gems like: “Talking and behaving like drug dealers”. What the hell does that even mean?
You wanna talk about REAL sins of a corporation? Let’s discuss people like Royal Dutch Shell. According to Fortune, Shell is the largest company in the world; no IT company, even Microsoft, makes it on the top 10 list, let alone the top 25 list. Even Walmart beats Microsoft, while the other contenders are, understandably, oil, car and bank organizations: http://www.forbes.com/2009/04/08/worlds-largest-companies-business-global-09-global_land.html
Among Shell’s many crimes, they’ve violated embargoes, been war profiteers, helped the Nazis and done irreversible environmental damage: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_surrounding_Royal_Dutch_Shell#Use_of_forced_labour
While Microsoft is far, far from being innocent, the comparisons are astounding. There’s a big, big difference between “bribing bloggers with laptops to provide favourable reviews for Vista” (which isn’t even backed up with references) to “using forced labour during the Nazi period”.
Oops, made a couples of mistakes there: AT&T, Verizon and Vodafone do appear on that list, and General Electric takes the #1 rank, while Shell at #2.
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