Free Software Foundation chairman and all around computer freedom guru Richard Stallman has written an article for the BBC entitled ‘It’s not the Gates, it’s the bars’.

Latest examples of Microsoft's strategy, wherein it sends out affiliates to pretend to be FOSS people and then promote software patent deals, separation between Open Source and Free software, departure from the GPL, promotion of "open" core (proprietary) as "Open Source", and demotion of free/libre platforms like GNU/Linux along with free suites/formats like ODF

Many of these problems are with volunteer software in general, not Free Software in particular. Hobbyist proprietary programs are often hard to use for many of the same reasons. But the easiest way of getting volunteers to contribute to a program is to make it open source. And while thousands of people are now employed in developing Free Software, most of its developers are volunteers.

Richard M. Stallman is an American software freedom activist and computer programmer. In September 1983, he launched the GNU Project to create a free Unix-like operating system; he initiated the Free Software Movement; in October 1985 he founded the Free Software Foundation.

When explaining why Free Software is important, one question that often comes up is: “do I really need the software freedom?”

In one of my earliest blog posts here I called Richard Stallman, a father of the open source movement and almost immediately got a personal nastygram. From Richard Stallman. I appreciated it and have sought to be more careful. Stallman believes in free software, which he calls Free Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS). (It’s also called Free Open Source Software (FOSS).)

"In an exclusive interview with vnunet.com, Stallman discusses his views on free versus proprietary and open source software, social networking sites and privacy issues..."

"People are ignorant, but we already know that. As usual, I’ve read something really stupid on Twitter this morning. It said: I hope Apple will develop for everyone [every OS]. I think it would be one of the worst things to ever happen. Why do people want to install non-free software on free systems?

“Open Source” advocate: «...I associate much more with the "Open Source" (also as Richard defines it) camp, and am open to the existence and use of proprietary software...» --