I’ve been hearing from a guy at work over the years about Bill Gates’ philanthropy and how I shouldn’t be such a Microsoft-hater since he’s obviously such a good guy as a philanthropist. Today when I read that one of my heros Richard Stallman was asked by the BBC to write a column about Bill’s recent step down from M$ and that he was less than generous to old Billy boy, I had to do some investiGate-ing. Stallman’s article is mainly about how…

…the legacy of Microsoft is one of illegal monopoly for which they have been prosecuted and convicted three times (the second of which GW Bush let them off). If you missed the recent OOXML debacle at ISO, Stallman mentions that as well. The thing that got most people’s hackles up though was that Stallman referred to an LA Times investigation which suggests that Bill’s philanthropy is fairly self serving. The article claims that Gates foundation gives away *just enough* to avoid paying taxes, (it’s something more than 5%) in order to give AIDS medicine to people in Africa while investing 90% in oil companies that in some cases directly threaten the African population and pharmaceutical companies that are working (and lobbying) to keep medicine costs as high as possible in Africa. Currently the foundation has more money than the GDP of 70% of the world’s nations.

The article was slashdotted, and the normal back and forth ensued. Stallman was called a communist of course, but the greatest argument to the contrary was made by someone who, in broken English made the case that under the Soviets the people didn’t own the tools to do their work, that the tools were owned by the state - just like how you don’t own Windows or Photoshop, you lease them from the great corporate entity. The point being that Open Source software (which may or may not be free) is the only truly capitalist, free-market type of software. Microsoft is much more like the old Communists than Linux!