Posted on 12/21/2005 12:39:30 AM PST by CAWats
Well, that's what the debate is really about, isn't it?
Gates and Allen wrote their BASIC interpreter running on an emulator (that someone else provided the code for)...
Paul Allen (of Micro-Soft) wrote the emulator and the extensions to the PDP-10 assembler to allow them to compile 8080 assembly code.
...on a mainframe running at Harvard (which gave Harvard a right to the code if it's sold commercially, not Gates and Allen)...
So after all these posts where you keep changing your story about who wrote what code, you've finally come around to my original post on this subject?
"At best, I think you could argue that they misappropriated Harvard's computer time running their 8080 simulator."
Which may or may not be true. I have no idea what Harvard's usage policy was for their PDP-10 in 1975. Do you?
...using the basics of the program that had been "borrowed" from other programmers.
"John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz invented BASIC for use at Dartmouth College. They made it freely available to everyone who wanted to learn how to program computers." TrueBASIC
So Gates and Allen didn't "steal" anything, with the possible exception of PDP-10 time.
Let's recap. You've claimed:
You've been wrong on so many points and your argument keeps changing. I feel I'm wasting my time posting to you since you obviously have no idea of the history of what you're complaining about.
Nope. Do you know what my usage policy is on my car? I doubt it. Does that make it ok for you to borrow it without my express permission? Not hardly. If you borrowed took it without my permission and I called you a thief, would it be out of line? I doubt many people would say so.
Yet you're attempting to hand wave what is now (and was then) a misapproriation of computer resources. If it was merely a personal project, no one would really much care. Taking university computer time and then selling the results of that use commercially has been a no-no at every university that I'm aware of since the 60s.
Basically, if Gates and Allen used the Harvard computer to work on their code, that code belongs to Harvard.
Gee, I wish I was rich, then I could steal and cheat and lie all I wanted to. And lots of people like you would be okay with it.
"They made it freely available to everyone who wanted to learn how to program computers."
And this somehow means that what Gates and Allen did was an original work? As I said, they "borrowed" it.
Lots of code was put into the public domain because no one sold software. No one. It was contrary to how the system worked. No one owned the code, it was just code. To take it and call it your own and then sell it would be nuts, since you could never really lay a claim to having been the sole writer.
At best, you can claim that Gates and Allen took advantage of the naiveity of the other coders. If that had been the end of the ethically empty actions of the controllers of the Microsoft corporation, I might even agree with that. But based on their long history of lying, cheating and stealing, I'm not disposed to give them the benefit of the doubt.
You seem to want to stand the truth on it's head just to keep Billy G. from seeming like the criminal that he is.
Well, that's fine with me. I'm sure there are people in the Chicagoland area that still think that Alfonse Capone was a swell guy for opening up all of those soup kitchens, and probably some old Russians that think that Uncle Joe Stalin was a great leader, but I doubt I'd want to associate with any of them.
But hey, you just go ahead and keep defending the indefensible. It's kind of amusing to watch your Clintonesque parsing to try to defend Gates.
Your post is so full of hyperbole on many fronts that I'm beginning to conclude that your main argument is rather weak and that you merely have an emotional stake in al this - an emotional stake that is void of logic or that causes you to stretch truth in an effort to make a point.
Tone down the over-statements and your artuments will hold more weight for us observers on the sidelines.
The DMA act (signed by x42) makes this a crime
mega dittos
"All fortunes start with a great theft" (true in Bill Gates case anyway)
Note the supreme court has not taken up this issue of legality of "fair use" of copying legit DVD that are brought for personal use. The supreme court have only ruled on commerical copying, which is priracy.
It will be interesting to see if the supreme court is insane enough to declare everyone under thiry years old a born felon on this issue considering the RIAA/MPAA has a "guilty and never proven innocent" stance on the subject.
I'm not all that concerned about where some people might land.
Bill Gates has been a thief, a cheat and a liar all his life. The evidence is there if you want to find it.
If you are the kind that worships at the altar of Gates, Allen and Co,...
...the kind that thinks that the crushing of Stac Software via baseless lawsuits is just good business, ...
...the kind that thinks that viciously attacking the open source movement and funding spurious SCO lawsuits while at the same time giving away your source code to the Chinese Communists is perfectly ok, ...
...the kind that thinks that having money forgives all your crimes, ...
then where you land is pretty much already predetermined, isn't it?
Now if I said, "Remember kids, when you buy a PC with Windows on it, you're funding the Chinese Communist takeover of the world!", that would be hyperbole.
At least, it would be today. Of course, those people who thought Joe Kennedy was a nut for supporting Hitler were pretty much shouted down too.
How'd that philosophy work out for them?
Come on Knitebase admit it. You are just jealous of Bill LOL.
As I've explained before: Gates and Allen didn't use existing BASIC code to create Altair BASIC they wrote a 8080-specific implementation of an "open" language specification. That is not theft by any stretch of the imagination.
Anyway, it seems that you're being deliberately dense about this. I'm not interested in trying to educate you any longer.
What part of "I don't know precisely what Harvard's computer use policy in 1975 was, but since the 60's commercial use of university computer time has been against policy at every university that I'm aware of," didn't you get?
You're not trying to educate anyone. You're simply trying to gloss over the ethical and moral shortcomings of Bill Gates.
If that was the only unethical thing he'd ever done, I might even buy it. But considering the long list of his other nefarious actions, I'm not willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.
He's a thief. Deal with it.
Yeah, that's it.
Deep down in my heart I wish that I had so much money that I was able to lie, cheat and steal and people would still worship me.
Well, maybe not. I, after all, have a conscience.
Correct, but an inferior federal court has ruled on MPAA v. 2600, confirming that the code necessary to exercise those fair use rights can be made illegal. Eric Corely (a.k.a., Emmanuel Goldstein) didn't appeal up because of strategic reasons. Being a known hacker, he wasn't a very good poster boy for the case, so a bad precedent could have been set at SCOTUS not on the law but because of who the defendant is.
Let me guess the 9th Curcuit...
Anyway, after that bill Bush signed into law a year or so ago on tort reform, federal lawsuits have to be taken to the courts local to the defendant, meaning the MPAA/RIAA is unlikely to get a judge that they have bought and bribed.
So Linus wrote Linux when he was 10 years old?
"They will kill the software industry in the USA unless they're stopped."
Hmm. Software industry, healthcare industry, pharmaceutical industry, tobacco industry (not too concerned with that one, though), all detrimentally affected by lawyers (and I'm sure I missed several). You gotta love lawyers. And by love, I mean hate.
This is typical of fanbois around the world. We are confronted with a world where one's preferred solutions are playing second fiddle to something that is obviously (in the fanboi's mind) inferior, so we must come up with an explanation for why such an inferior product has surpassed our obviously (in the fanboi's mind) superior product. So we have all sorts of theories about how the evilness/immorality/deviousness of the competition has, in fact, allowed them to triumph. I.e., the only way a better product can lose in the marketplace is when the lesser products "cheat" somehow, and the fact that such things have happened repeatedly throughout western history without any "cheating" is simply ignored.
When the best man loses, it's because the other guy cheated, and the fanboi's mind will permit no other explanation. Notice the similarity in tone and rhetoric to the fanboi, and, say, Louis Farrakhan, with all sorts of oddball conspiracy theories, presented with all the requisite bile and venom, to explain why The Man holds black people down - when The Man isn't busy holding Linux down, that is.
It stopped at the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals.
Anyway, after that bill Bush signed into law a year or so ago on tort reform, federal lawsuits have to be taken to the courts local to the defendant, meaning the MPAA/RIAA is unlikely to get a judge that they have bought and bribed.
I think the copyright cartel has realized that, thus their current campaign of extortion, "Pay us $3K now and we won't file a suit and ruin you with $100K+ in lawyer fees." They have basically admitted it is extortion, refusing to back down on an obviously erroneous threat for the explicitly stated reason that it might encourage others to fight.
Actually they are also caught tampering with wietnesses.
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