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Preston Gralla

Seeing Through Windows

Why do Linux and open source lovers give Apple a free ride?

65 comments

TAGS:Apple, Free Software Foundation, Linux, Mac OS X, Snow Leopard, Windows 7
IT TOPICS:Linux, Macintosh & Apple, Open Source, Operating Systems, Software, Windows & Microsoft

In its "Windows 7 Sins" campaign, the Free Software Foundation has labeled Windows 7 as "treacherous computing," and accuses Microsoft of such acts as "poisoning education." This is just the latest in a long line of attacks by open source lovers against Microsoft. But Apple is arguably even more closed than Microsoft, yet always gets a free ride from vociferous open source proponents. Can anyone explain this hypocrisy?

Computerworld reports that the group has

launched a campaign against Microsoft Corp.'s upcoming Windows 7 operating system, calling it "treacherous computing" that stealthily takes away rights from users.

At the Web site Windows7Sins.org, the Boston-based FSF lists the seven "sins" that proprietary software such as Windows 7 commits against computer users.

Nowhere does the group mention Apple. Yet in important ways, Apple is more closed than Microsoft. Apple controls not just software, like Microsoft does, but its hardware as well. Try to sell a non-Apple computer with Apple's OS on it, and you'll get hauled into court by Apple lawyers. Apple has also taken legal action against bloggers who report on upcoming hardware and software releases. There's a long list of ways in which Apple is far more closed than Microsoft.

Yet the Free Software Foundation, and many other open source proponents, conveniently ignore these facts, and regularly attack Microsoft, while giving Apple a free ride. Apple, after all, has the "coolness" factor in its favor, and it's fashionable and easy to attack Microsoft.

Ironically, only a few days after the Free Software Foundation lauched the "Windows 7 Sins" campaign, Apple made a big bang with the release of Snow Leopard. What does the Free Software Foundation have to say about this newest version of proprietary software from Apple? As of this writing, not a peep.

That's just pure hypocrisy. Until they start attacking Apple as vociferously as they attack Microsoft, they can't be taken seriously.

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Relax

Submitted by Anonymous on September 11, 2009 - 7:24 P.M.

Don't take the comments here seriously. Unlike Microsoft, the FSF actually does have paid shills.

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Not only that..

Submitted by Anonymous on January 29, 2010 - 10:40 A.M.

FSF-ites also see no hypocrisy in Richard Stallman taking money from Proprietary Software vendors (see the Corporate sponsors page on https://my.fsf.org/donate/patron/) so that a) he doesn't have to ever work again, and b) he can travel the globe giving the same speech over and over about how all those companies are evil.. want to kill children, poison whales, rape puppies etc etc. Using his specious and tenuous logic, based largely on analogy and hypotheticals.

Also if RMS' ludicrous ideals were enforced in any meaningful way, it would be impossible to make money as a programmer. It's cool that RMS doesn't think programmers should be able to afford rent or food, especially since his salary (if you can call it that, usually a salary implies WORKING for it) is guaranteed by IBM/Cisco/etc.

The long and the short of it is "free software advocates" spend a ton of time and effort trying to convince people that they should all be using a demonstratably inferior platform with a dearth of usable, functional and stable software. Why should anyone switch to Linux? There is nothing you can do with Linux that can't be done with Windows or OSX, but there is an epic list of things you can't do under Linux that you can do in Windows.

The delicious irony is that people who rail AGAINST linux are by far more informed than the people evangelizing it. People who have never used linux don't care about it. It takes years of frustration with ridiculous bugs and design flaws, years of trying to get some random piece of software to work, years of banging your head against the useless and egomaniacal community to really get the hate seething.

Sorry you guys, if Linux was gonna be anything meaningful in the desktop space, it would have happened back in '99 when you still had some technical merits above windows. Windows R&D dollars have gone a long way, Linux devs seem to just rewrite the same libraries and frameworks over and over.

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hypocrisy?

Submitted by ChuckL on September 1, 2009 - 12:37 P.M.

Why don't we just start at the beginning.

Apple introduced a self contained product. It was relatively complete, although it did have additional software that could be purchased and added to the system. All of these products were available on the open market. None of them were used to stop the sale of competitors products in any manner other than just being a better product.

Microsoft really came into existence by selling a product, that they did not yet own, QDOS, to IBM. IBM fixed the extremely buggy product, (alpha phase) and obtained all rights to the system for their own use and sale. Then IBM made a very dumb decision. They elected to NOT sell this operating system to others.

Microsoft did sell it to others, the computer OEMs. But they also broke the antitrust laws of this country by including in the sales contract a prohibition on the sale of any competitors product, or more specifically, required that Microsoft be paid even if a competitors product was installed on any computer sold by the OEM. This was followed by requiring the installation of Microsoft's buggy software along with the OS, which was still DOS at this point, and in which Microsoft included code that made the competitor's products, that could be loaded as bad as Microsoft's products. Microsoft continued to include code that caused problems for competitors with undisclosed APIs, to speed up their software, and require time consuming work arounds for the competitor's software.

There is NO HYPOCRISY in this at all. These are two completely different situations.

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Apple has less than a 10%

Submitted by KBC on August 31, 2009 - 9:52 A.M.

Apple has less than a 10% market share. The Free Software Foundation is going after the bigger fish, the one with the real monopoly over the computer industry.

It's easy to simply ignore or boycott Apple; they will always be a niche market. Microsoft, not as much.

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So, you've just confirmed

Submitted by Anonymous on September 11, 2009 - 7:37 P.M.

So, you've just confirmed the FSF's selective ideals.

Much like your selective ideals, you rail against Microsoft and proprietary software, yet you have an XP partition.

Did you get your check from the FSF yet? Paid FSF shill.

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You are a hooker.

Submitted by Anonymous on September 11, 2009 - 11:28 P.M.

You are a hooker.

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Hahahaha, then you are RMS's

Submitted by Anonymous on September 12, 2009 - 12:33 A.M.

Hahahaha, then you are RMS's Free hooker!

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I think Microsoft and Apple

Submitted by Magice on August 29, 2009 - 9:43 P.M.

I think Microsoft and Apple represent two totally different things in most people's minds. On one hand, we have Microsoft as THE (proprietary) software company, pioneer and most successful company using the model of proprietary software. On the other hand, Apple is generally seemed as a niche company producing mostly gadgets and toys; only recently has Apple gained mainstream support for their computer products.

Thus, when we attack proprietary software, the most obvious target is Microsoft. It is the creator and defender of this model of software, as well as the most vocal one attacking Free and Open Source Software. On the other hand, Apple appears to be much more reasonable. They are willing to use and release source code when it is convenient for them. From a point of view, Apple is a true Open Source software: when it is profitable to use Free/Open Source Software, do so (their kernel, Web rendering engine, etc.); when it comes to business core and money making, it is willing to lock its users down (much more than Microsoft, as you pointed out).

For this practicality, as well as its insignificance in the battle of Free/Open Source vs. Proprietary (again, until recently, it is just a niche company), most people don't really care about Apple. Therefore, it escape attacks from Free/Open Source advocates.

Luckily, many people start to realize the danger of Apple. I firmly believe that, soon enough, Apple will be in sight, and its practice will be scrutinized as carefully as any other companies.

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Magice, I think that you

Submitted by ChuckL on September 1, 2009 - 12:44 P.M.

Magice, I think that you have the wrong example. The problem is not that Microsoft is proprietary, but that they continually undermine all international standards, and while very supportive of their own copyrights and patents, have no qualms about using the intellectual discoveries of others without paying for them. They have lost many times.

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maybe

Submitted by Anonymous on September 12, 2009 - 4:52 P.M.

maybe it's because the other standards bodies just plain S_CK. Look how long it took to get the freaking Wireless N formalized. We should have just let the wireless manufacturers do this, it would have been done WAY sooner.

face it, FSF, GNU, whatever has done NOTHING revolutionary in terms of progress. It has been Apple and Microsoft doing there thing, with GNU/Loonix copying time after time.

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