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Bill Gates is a horrible person. (lemmy.world)
submitted 8 months ago by to c/opensource@lemmy.ml
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So I just read Bill Gates' 1976 Open Letter To Hobbyists, in which he whines about not making more money from his software. You know, instead of being proud of making software that people wanted to use. And then the bastard went on and made proprietary licences for software the industry standard, holding back innovation and freedom for decades. What a douche canoe.

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[–] 29 points 8 months ago (5 children)

I really don't get how opinions on intellectual property and its "theft" turn 180 whenever AI is mentioned.

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  • [+] 43 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (3 children)
    [deleted]
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  • [–] 9 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    AI is theft in the same way that all private property theft. It isnt the piracy of media, it's the alienation of labor from its product, and withholding it for profit.

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago (1 child)

    Private property is not theft, it is exploitation. Marx already refuted this anarchist childish way of thinking

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  • [–] 0 points 8 months ago

    The exploitation of private property is derived from the exclusion of labor from its product - maybe you have a different understanding of what 'theft' means, but it's the principled exclusion of what labor produces from the labor producing it that is the basis of marx's claim of 'exploitation'

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  • [+] -6 points 8 months ago (4 children)

    All private property is theft? Lmao go back to your cave tankie

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  • [–] 8 points 8 months ago* (3 children)

    Sees an anarchist

    "Tankie"

    ???

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  • [+] 6 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 child)
    [deleted]
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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    Even libertarians, who are on the exact opposite side economically, agree IP is garbage made and manipulated to enrich the few.

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago

    It's a bit of a split among libertarians. Some very notable figures like Ayn Rand were strong believers in IP. In fact, Ayn Rand's dogmas very much align with what is falsely represented as left-wing thought in the context of AI.

    It's really irritating for me how much conservative capitalist ideals are passed off as left-wing. Like, attitudes on corporations channel Adam Smith. I think of myself as pragmatic and find that Smith or even Hayek had some good points (not Rand, though). But it's absolutely grating how uneducated that all is. Worst of all, it makes me realize that for all the anti-capitalist rhetoric, the favored policies are all about making everything worse.

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago (3 children)

    Anarchists believe that "all property is theft"? Lol

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago (1 child)

    private property, distinct from personal property.

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago (1 child)

    There is some disagreement between people who, for example, favor Proudhon versus those who favor Kropotkin over the ownership of personal tools that are involved in individual trade-craft. As with any ideology there are varying schools of thought but the common ideological baseline is that anything that requires capital investment should be collectively controlled and operated for the common good. A person's personal possessions including their home and tools required for self sufficiency are not considered "property" or a "means of production" by almost anyone.

    A good real world example is the FOSS community, most of us would be quite vexed to say the least if someone started changing stuff on our personal computers but we also actively share our code, experience, and knowledge with the world for free. Same goes for the open hardware folks, permacomputing community, and the open research community.

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    Yet none of that can be interpreted as "all property is theft" unless you redefine what "property" itself means which is a terrible strategy for advertising Anarchy.

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

    You know how the scientific definition of theory has a fundamentally different meaning as the colloquial meaning of theory? The anarchist definition of property is synonymous with capital while the colloquial idea of property is more synonymous with the anarchist definition of possessions.

    I am physically able enough and have the ability do almost all the necessary maintenance on my house, car, and other possessions myself. Of course everyone needs expert help from time to time, for example I can solder copper pipe but I don't want to risk a gas leak so I call a HVAC tech if I need a new furnace valve. However other than external inputs like water, power, gas, and internet service which intrinsically require collective effort, a single person (who is physically able enough) can efficiently maintain a modern house by themselves.

    A single person has no way of doing anything but very basic maintenance on something as technologically complex as a modern factory. Even if they were a master mechanic, electrician, calibration engineer, and every other diverse skill set involved in just maintaining a factory it would be impossible for them to run it as anything but an inefficient workshop without some sort of external labor. Things that intrinsically require collective effort to function should be collectively operated for the benefit of the community.

    The same is true for a large property like a mansion (which should not really exist beyond serving a purpose as a historical artifact), an industrial farm, a power generation facility, or a water treatment plant. If it requires collective effort to run and maintain to function it is capital, thus falls under "property" and should be collectivized.

    The fact that someone can own and profit off something while unable to maintain it or use it without collective effort solely for their own benefit and enrichment is theft. Without their workers they would have a decrepit building full of the rusting hulks of machinery yet there are factory workers in the US who have to sleep in their cars or work multiple jobs while the C-Suit takes home millions.

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  • [–] 4 points 8 months ago (1 child)
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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago

    Some people on the Left regretfully tried to redefine Private Property and split off some private property into "personal property" but since that's not how the language works it's caused endless miscommunication. By private property is theft he means Private Mean's of Production with the caveat that people essentially own their owns but homes can't be bought/sold/inherited.

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago (1 child)

    That's true in the same way that Trump's tariffs are paid by other countries. Which is to say: Not at all.

    Bill Gates was no billionaire at the time. His background was probably shared by almost all computer hobbyists at the time.

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  • [–] 5 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    Hardly. Bill Gates came from a wealthy family, attended a private school, and through it had thousands of hours of computer programming time several years before even the Altair 8800 came out. He had a personal connection to IBM through his mother, which is how Microsoft got the DOS deal. His circumstances were unique, and his success the result of a hefty dose of luck.

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago (1 child)

    What kind of person owned a computer as a hobby in 1976?

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  • [–] 7 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    One day chat got won't work without a paid subscription...

    Intellectual property as a concept is a cancer to humanity, and we'd be in a much better world without it.

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  • [–] 10 points 8 months ago* (2 children)

    This is why they want Wikipedia and internet archive, etc, killed off. They have it for their training data but they won't have a profitable model via paid subscriptions without a monopoly on information.

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  • [–] 5 points 8 months ago (1 child)
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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago

    Yes but we're in the bait and switch phase of it. They're pushing the AI responses at the top of search to cut down the through clicking to Wikipedia. They're trying to capture behavior by being the lowest effort route to an answer. They're gambling that people will forget these other sites and then stop donating. Then it's to the courts until they're too broke to keep the servers online.

    The information will still be free, but maybe obfuscated enough that most people accept [erratic] information as a service.

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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago

    "They" is the copyright industry. The same people, who are suing AI companies for money, want the Internet Archive gone for more money.

    I share the fear that the copyrightists reach a happy compromise with the bigger AI companies and monopolize knowledge. But for now, AI companies are fighting for Fair Use. The Internet Archive is already benefitting from those precedents.

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  • [–] 6 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 child)

    I'm on the side of abolishing intellectual property, with the caveats that commercializing someone else's work or taking credit for someone else's work should be illegal.

    If there wasn't a profit motive we'd get much less "slop art" and more challenging art made with passion. The slop would also be far less off-putting because at least the slop would be made with love for slop.

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  • [–] -1 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    the caveats that commercializing someone else’s work or taking credit for someone else’s work should be illegal.

    So, not actually abolishing IP, then.

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago (1 child)

    Commercializing means sell for profit. If a non-profit were to create a cracked version of Windows 7 with security updates and sell that for $200 an install that'd not count as commercialization. The idea here is that if Netflix took someone else's work and made a bajillion dollars off it they'd need to ask for permission and credit the original author.

    I don't know if something still counts as intellectual property if it can be infringed upon except by for-profit entities.

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago

    In the US, copyright is limited by Fair Use. It is still IP. Eventually, you'd just be changing how Fair Use works. Not all for the better, I think.

    Maybe one could compare it to a right of way over someone's physical property. The public may use it for a certain purpose, in a limited way, which lowers its value. But what value it has, belongs to the owner.

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