Re: Bill Gates in the news: Deja vu

[Alexandre Garreau]

Le vendredi 21 mai 2021, 22:15:40 CEST Akira Urushibata a écrit :
> When people see opinions on any contested subject the typical initial
> reaction is: "which side is this commentator on?"  In rare cases
> someone may comment from a position outside the firmly established
> camps.  Those who have grown used to the framework of the debate may
> have trouble digesting the unconventional message.
> 
> As I wrote, I can see that the recently surfacing scandalous stories
> concerning Bill Gates of Microsoft are similar to those cast upon
> Richard Stallman of FSF some two years ago.  I wonder why this is so.
> I would like to examine this issue objectively.

Stories about sex, and more importantly sex and young people tends to 
shock people, I think that’s it, nothing more.  Epstein shocked and made 
(understandably) crazy a lot of people, that ramifies to almost every one 
having any form of indirect relation to him.  Sensationalism is not good, 
but the fact serial rape shocks people is good (unlike the genghis khan 
epoch, where a serial rapist and murderer in every place he stepped across 
a whole continent was seen as honorable… and sometimes still is (but same 
goes for other like napoleon, who’s another mass murderer still presented 
positively in his country))

Since both bill gates and rms are famous, there are people having interest 
in both disparaging rms and disparaging bill gates.  About bill gates, 
he’s so powerful and rich that he must have some objective (related to 
their objective interests) enemies (at least among competitors!), while 
for rms, it’s because he openly, widely and very visibly defends extreme 
viewpoints on his ideology, and that ideology hurt proprietary software 
business, so he must have even more objective enemies, even in his own 
“side”.

If Bill Gates looses any good reputation, that will harm his business 
(which is good) but wouldn’t stop it (so it’s insufficient and a bad 
strategy, in many ways).  While if rms looses good reputation, he doesn’t 
has a profitable business to be hurt, but the free software movement 
reputation, ideology and struggle will be partially hurt (I’ve seen many 
people supporting the anti-rms campaign mostly not even because of rms 
himself, but because to them he represents some kind of obnoxious, purist, 
extremist and single-focused librist they despise and are tired of).

But while I wouldn’t want to waste time on inventing lies about bill 
gates, I wouldn’t either defend him, he’s just “yet another billionaire” 
capitalist, that’s what come with fame and power, I never personally talk 
to him, know nothing I appreciate about him, and he mostly does wrong.  So 
well…

For rms it’s different, although he’s often busy, he’s definitely 
approachable, have many personal features that makes him interesting a 
worth a (or many) talks, he does mostly useful and relevant political 
advocacy, and he’s not really powerful, or a real capitalist (with venture 
capital etc.) or what

So to me the case is pretty different, but that’s according my personal 
jugement and values