Here's a more complete quote, for anyone interested:
"Teaching children to use Windows is like teaching them to smoke tobacco—in a world where only one company sells tobacco. Like any addictive drug, it inculcates a harmful dependency. (Bill Gates made this comparison in a 1998 issue of Fortune Magazine.) No wonder Microsoft offers the first dose to children at a low price. Microsoft aims to teach poor children this dependency so they can smoke Windows for their whole lives. I don’t think governments or schools should support that aim."
With a small issue that Bill Gates have never said it, the entire quote is by RMS. Bill Gates made a comparison on the fight against big tobacco and the anti-trust campaign against MSFT in the mid to late 90's in that issue, but this isn't even quote mining, it's a complete distortion of the facts.
Bill Gates said in an interview together with Warren Buffett that people in China who were using pirate copies of Windows would get "sort of addicted" and that Microsoft would "somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade." That's what RMS is referring to; it's not a fabrication.
RMS characterization of it is a fabrication. Gates did not make the comparison that RMS says he did.
RMS could have accurately described the characterization Gates made, and then launched into how that related to the criticism RMS would like to have made, but choose instead to be dishonest to get a little more rhetorical impact with audiences unfamiliar with the truth (or already committed blindly to the cause) at the expense of his credibility with others.
I disagree with your charge of dishonesty. Gates said that cheap copies of Windows would ensure that many people in China get "sort of addicted" to Microsoft technology. Stallman's "characterization" of the comparison says that Gates likened Windows to an addictive drug. That is not incorrect. Your claim that he is fabricating is itself a rhetorical point intended to discredit Stallman as a liar.
"Teaching children to use Windows is like teaching them to smoke tobacco—in a world where only one company sells tobacco. Like any addictive drug, it inculcates a harmful dependency. (Bill Gates made this comparison in a 1998 issue of Fortune Magazine.) No wonder Microsoft offers the first dose to children at a low price. Microsoft aims to teach poor children this dependency so they can smoke Windows for their whole lives. I don’t think governments or schools should support that aim."
http://new.bostonreview.net/BR33.6/stallman.php