Last month RMS and Miguel had a disagreement. Only now have I had the time to write out my thoughts.

First, I can agree with Miguel when he says

but I take issue with the second half of his statement,

I have no doubt that Microsoft’s employees are trying to steer the company towards being a community citizen. But Miguel has an implicit trust that shareholders will not take back that steering wheel and drive in the opposite direction. That is where I oppose Miguel’s optimism.

Microsoft shareholders have been sitting on a goldmine for the last 20 years. Sure, Microsoft has been making reasonable products over the years, but it’s profitability is primarily due to the great waves of money in the world economy, generated by ever-increasing public and private debt. The population spent money they did not have for any nifty software feature. Microsoft developers benefit in this environment of free money because the shareholders find it’s easy to be altruistic when profits are high. I even contend that free software has had a hard time competing because money itself is (apparently) free.

The good times for Microsoft will not last. I believe the next decade will show how cruel the shareholder can be to “open source”. There are two main forces at work which will make the Microsoft shareholders act much more ruthless, and probably more shortsighted.

1. A poorer user base: Money will be tight, either because of domestic inflation, or lack of liquidity. Microsoft faces an unrelenting barrage of competition from Free and Open Source software. People and corporations will have a greater incentive to use free software to reduce their spending.

2. Profitable innovation is reaching it’s limit: The success stories of the last ten years depend on massive user bases: 10 million, 100 million or more. Each individual user only contributes pennies, if even, to overall revenue. Revenue per user is only going to go down further. I do not want to go into detail about why I believe this is true, but generally the software industry had matured: Software for the commoners has been built, and software niches are filled.

Microsoft is stuck between this innovation limit, and Free software’s relentless catch-up. Microsoft will feel the squeeze and start acting like most corporations that see their business model die: Sue.

I suspect that this fear of mine is just like Stallman’s, and I do not consider it irrational. Microsoft has every right to protect it’s patents. From the shareholder perspective, it must protect it’s patents when net-losses threaten the company.

Miguel says:

Miguel has fallen for the classic work-with-them-instead-of-against-them. Just like the environmentalist employed by a big oil corporation; he is told that he will help the company along the right path. But really, his employment/involvement is spin for advertisement, and for government tax rebates. The company would do the same without the environmentalist’s help, only now the environmentalists have one less advocate.

Microsoft will have done fine without Miguel. But now Microsoft can now advertise Miguel to the Open Source community, and hopefully Microsoft has distracted Miguel enough from being a competitive threat.

Open Source, which I define as Open Source *not* including Free Software, is sold to the public as a compromise between the GPL and proprietary licensing. Really, Open Source is an advertising scheme used to acquire important tech-savvy users which install software on the majority of our machines. Open Source has the secondary goal of gaining some free debugging. Both goals include not giving back.

Open Source Profiteering is pragmatic, effective, and efficient at bringing products to market, but this is a short sighted goal. Open Source has it’s place, it is necessary, does some good, and it is what I would do if I ever released software people wanted. That does not mean I have to like it: I like steak, but I don’t like the thought of chopping up cows.

First, Stallman is sometimes wrong, after all he is only human. But to say he is conjuring bogeymen is misleading. Stallman is only issuing warnings of possible problems. He advocates actions that should be taken to avoid those possible problems.

Stallman is thinking long term, which is necessarily hard to be accurate. Stallman may misidentify the benign as threats (like with .Net, maybe), or he may identify threats as benign (I personally wanted something like GPL v3 back in the 90’s). Miguel does not attempt to see the long term, nor appreciate the difficulty in doing so. When Miguel hears warnings about .Net, and Microsoft, but Miguel “knows” there is no danger over the next year, he simply assumes Stallman is fear mongering.

Stallman is not motivated by profit, and Miguel does not understand this. Miguel assumes his goals are shared by all others. When Miguel says:

Miguel assumes the opportunities he finds, and the constructive solutions he invents would be lauded by any reasonable person. Miguel is wrong. Opportunities are defined by goals. Constructive solutions, any solutions really, are defined by goals. Miguel’s goals are profit. Miguel’s found opportunities and creative solutions are of no interest to Stallman.

Stallman is not a salesman. If Stallman was sent to Africa he would not see the shoeless as “hopeless” situation, nor as an “opportunity”, because both perspectives require a profit goal. Stallman would probably walk shoeless with the natives, and eat some good food, and maybe teach them to make their own shoes.

Miguel’s perspective is that of a short sighted, pragmatic, profiteer. As such, he makes a few wrong statements and conclusions:

1. Microsoft’s employees can control the company direction – No, shareholders control the company direction.
2. Stallman is pessimistic because he does not laud the “opportunities” and “constructive solutions” – No, Stallman simply does not share Miguel’s profit motivation, so those “opportunities” and “constructive solutions” are not.
3. Stallman is fear mongering – No, Stallman’s simply warning others of possible threats to Free Software.