Z:gnu-www-ja-rms-nyu-2001-transcript--014cfe-There's another more important/en

There's another more important and more substantive issue about what IBM is doing. They're saying that they're putting a billion dollars into &ldquo;Linux&rdquo;. But perhaps, I should also put quotes around &ldquo;into&rdquo;, as well, because some of that money is paying people to develop free software. That really is a contribution to our community. But other parts is paying to pay people to write proprietary software, or port proprietary software to run on top of GNU/Linux, and that is not a contribution to our community. But IBM is lumping that altogether into this. Some of it might be advertising, which is partly a contribution, even if it's partly wrong. So, it's a complicated situation. Some of what they're doing is contribution and some is not. And some is sort is somewhat, but not exactly. And you can't just lump it altogether and think, Wow! Whee! A billion dollars from IBM. [Laughter] That's oversimplification.