Slides Of Microsoft Anti-GPL Advocacy 451
An anonymous reader links to these slides outlining Microsoft's position on Free software licenses, in particular the GPL, writing "Regarding the latest memo from MSFT, the current politics is to be against 'copyleft' type licensing... Protecting freedom is fundamental for Free Software and MSFT knows that. They don't want licenses that protect our freedom." Makes an interesting companion piece to the anti-OSS memo mentioned the other day.
It's a bunch of freakin jpg's (Score:5, Insightful)
Kidding aside..
It's just a bunch of jpg's on a non MS site. Just pointing out the obvious, what verification do we have these came from M$?
Please tell me and don't mod down, I think I have a very valid question here.
Re:It's a bunch of freakin jpg's (Score:3, Interesting)
Freedom without truth?
Are you sure that you have freedom? or are they lying to you?
Re:It's a bunch of freakin jpg's (Score:2, Funny)
did't you see the little "Microsoft" logo's on the pages?! It must be from Microsoft...
Re:It's a bunch of freakin jpg's (Score:2)
It's just a bunch of jpg's on a non MS site.
Just find your local script-kiddie and ask.
I recommend http://www.microsoft.com/products/bob/sneaky-hidd
Re:It's a bunch of freakin jpg's (Score:5, Funny)
Verification? If you can't trust something you read on Slashdot, posted by an Anonymous Coward, then who can you trust?
(</joke>, for the sake of the moderators)
Re:It's a bunch of freakin jpg's (Score:2)
Uh ... hello! It was posted on /.! It MUST be true. ;)
Re:It's a bunch of freakin jpg's (Score:3, Informative)
well, it's an obvious hoax, isn't it? I mean, I would expect a presentation from MS to be with full-color, animated ppt slides and not something B&W that looks like it was made with wordpad!
</t-i-c>
No, I agree.. no real evidence it actually came from Microsoft, and if it did, so what? No real surprises here.
Re:It's a bunch of freakin jpg's (Score:2)
Nobody from MS has disowned the slides.
None of this is proof (what kind of proof do you want, anyway?), but in my opinion these slides are probably authentic.
Re:it's hard to get presentations like that. (Score:3, Insightful)
Frankly I didn't find anything in those slides that is any different from what they openly state as their company's position towards GPL. Which means if it is a fake its a fake which accurately represents Microsoft's public position. I don't see why they have any reason to deny it if those slides were their's.
From Academia to Consumer (Score:5, Interesting)
Apparently the Industry (a.k.a. Micro$oft) want the finding and development to go through the industry first.
One motive: MONEY
Re:From Academia to Consumer (Score:2)
Oh, and that "$" instead of an "S" in Microsoft is really mature.
Re:From Academia to Consumer (Score:2, Insightful)
No, there's nothing wrong with a company wanting to make money - BUT -
Companies don't have some right to profit - the norm is for them to fail. Very few profit. Why should they be propped up rather than just allowing them to fail? If they can profit then let them - if they're trying to sell ice to eskimos^Winuit, let them, but don't support them when they plan legally-mandated polar-ice-melting so that they can do so!
To labor the point a little more - don't let them give Einstein a lobotomy so that little timmy can get relatively higher grades.
P.S. I find the $ in Micro$oft to be a good conversation-starter, which then allows me to lead into why ms is bad for the consumer. I don't care if some teenager thinks it's immature, or some astroturfer says it's immature. It's not. You legitimise someone by using the name they choose for themselves rather than naming them with a derogatory name. I choose, quite deliberately, to insult Microsoft.
P.P.S. If there was nothing wrong with financial profit at any moral cost, then the $ would be a compliment, not an insult. Clearly, even you feel that there IS something wrong with that, since you're objecting to its use.
So I hereby declare "inconsistency" on you. Closely followed by "probable shenanigans".
Why not $un or Net$cape as well? (Score:4, Insightful)
No one is suggesting propping up a company at the expense of another - certainly not in this thread.
Please lose the $, or use it evenly:
$un
Net$cape
$ear$
$BC
$pirit
$am$ Club
$heraton
etc
Re:Why not $un or Net$cape as well? (Score:2)
Why? All those companies are not evil. They don't make their money unethically, they are not run by morally corrupt people, they don't have a history of stealing, lying or cheating, and finally they don't call me communist or cancerous.
If and when they act as evil as M$ I will refer to them in an insulting wat. Until then I will respect their the names they have chosen for themselves.
M$ is an evil company run by evil people which commits acts of evil. Using the $ in their names and not in other comanies names is very consistent if your rule is only insult evil comanies.
Re:Why not $un or Net$cape as well? (Score:3, Interesting)
But when has Microsoft the company ever called YOU - Malcontent - "communist or cancerous". I dare say never. They may, as a corporate entity, publicly disagree with a license (let's remember, it's GPL licensing they have big problems with, not you personally) which you think is the bee's knees, but they don't personally attack YOU.
You're suggesting there's no moral corruption at the top of Sears or IBM or WalMart or any of the other dozens of companies much larger than Microsoft? MS is the pinnacle of evil incarnate?
You're just not as involved in the other industries to see how large companies stomp over small ones all the time, regardless of industry. WalMart certainly has plenty of complaints against it, but they're selling Linux online, so maybe we should be nice to them?
Re:Why not $un or Net$cape as well? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why is viral any less loaded than cancerous? The GPL certainly does not behave as a virus, considering it only comes in when it's invited.
Re:Why not $un or Net$cape as well? (Score:3, Interesting)
Because it's genetic, not viral.
The GPL only affects derivative works. That's genetic, not viral.
The GPL requires "consensual derivation" before it replicates. That's genetic, not viral.
The GPL transfers a single "genome" (aka the license) from the parent to the child. That's genetic, not viral.
A virus is something that infects a host, harms or kills the host, and spreads between hosts without asking either host permission to do so. The GPL does none of these things. The GPL is most definitely not viral.
Re:Why not $un or Net$cape as well? (Score:3, Interesting)
"You're suggesting there's no moral corruption at the top of Sears or IBM or WalMart or any of the other dozens of companies much larger than Microsoft?
No just not as much. Wally world is a very evil company (in different ways then M$). Their own employees sued them and won for making them work overtime without pay. This is why I will never walk into a wallmart store as long as I live and there are many people who feel the same way. I have never heard anything bad about sears or IBM. So I am
"MS is the pinnacle of evil incarnate?"
Yes pretty much. Worse then wallmart, worse then enron even (that's a close call though) definately up there with qwest, worldcom and the rest of the sleazeballs.
Re:From Academia to Consumer (Score:2)
It's really sickening how people get screwed over by big corporations and then even cheer them on because "it's their godgiven right to make money any way they can". No it isn't they have to play by some rules too, at least if their customers come to their senses and don't buy their products if they are screwed over by their business practices.
The important part is telling the people how and by who they're screwed, and that they can do something about it. The equation 'making money = good for business' has two sides, if people react appropriately to bad business practice and boycot then it becomes 'bad business practice = bad for business'.
Are slashdotters that gullible? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Are slashdotters that gullible? (Score:3, Insightful)
Do we really need another story about it?
LATS (Score:2)
The slides are a dumbed-down, idiot's version of the longer discussion and look to be developed for marketing presentations - probably directed toward upper management types considering the pros and cons of the issues. The slides present a view that the GPL is probably good for some (individuals, small developers) but bad for business and "innovation."
One implication is that if code is GPL'd, companies can't grab it (e.g. government produced data and software) and then proceed to profit freely from releasing it through closed licensing schemes protected by the DMCA. Innovation seems in the context to consist of taking ideas and data from tax-dollar funded sources (academia and gov't) and passing it on to the customer, efectively making the user pay twice for the right to use the product. There is nothing revolutionary or self-evidently out character for MS in the slides except perhaps an unusually "liberal" view of OSS, and a blundering failure to appropriately present the "ecology" of innovation
Not about freedom? (Score:2, Insightful)
They want a liscense that protects their freedom to charge for their work!
Indeed, this is why MS has a long history. . . (Score:3, Insightful)
Shoe? Meet other foot.
KFG
Good slides (Score:4, Insightful)
Naturally, they don't like the fact that they can't take something under the GPL and integrate into their own products, like they have with BSD-licensed code. And, on some level, they have a very good point about products of research that are released under the GPL. The only value they have to any company working on a closed-source product is as an example, while a BSD-style license would have allowed them to take the existing code and adapt it.
In this aspect, the GPL actually harms interoperability and if the purpose was to give the research results a wide impact, releasing them under the GPL would be counterproductive.
I live under no illusions that all software will one day be open source, and perhaps it would be a good thing for people to think an extra time about the consequences of their choice of license.
For standalone programs, the GPL makes a lot of sense, but perhaps BSD-style licenses are more appropriate for prototypes and example implementations. Perhaps also the operating systems themselves, but that's a harder call.
Re:Good slides (Score:3)
So there's value for a variety of licenses. Which is good, because we have a lot of 'em.
Use BSD when the majority of time spent was in coming up with the requirements/design. Use GPL when the majority of time spent was in coming up with the implmentation.
Re:Good slides (Score:2, Insightful)
Microsoft is lazy, they want free code but they don't want anybody else profiting from it.
Re:Good slides (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually the GPL doesn't prevent companies from using the covered IP in their products. What it does do is force them to negotiate a suitable license from the original author of the covered IP (if they don't want to give away their own IP, that is). The big advantage to companies of the BSD license is that they can use the covered IP without negotiating with the original author and probably having to pay for the IP they use. That's the heart of MS's position: they want to be able to use everybody else's IP for free while still forcing everyone else to pay to use MS IP.
Re:Good slides (Score:2, Informative)
The story of these slides (MS or not), is that software funded by tax money, or are research done "for the general technological advance" should maybe be released under a more relaxed license, rather than a political licence.
The outstanding phrase of the slides is: "GPL -- good the individual, bad for the industri", saying that: it is good for privately developed software to demand a giveback of co-developers if they add to your software, but projects that has been paid by everybody, including the industry, should be usable in a way that makes sense to more than the OSS crowd.
You don't loose anything by MS downloading software developed by DoD or NASA or whatnot and put in their own software, since the development is already paid for, and you can download it too.
I don't mind that people release under GPL and consider it to be reasonable that others should give back if they release derived works, it is fine. I prefer to release software under BSD or the dual Perl AL/GPL, since it makes better sense to me, and that is fine with me that other people "steal" the code since my concern is that my code gets used even by MS. So be it.
But tax paid code (or industrial funded code) is really a different story.
Re:Good slides (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is it a different story? The taxpayers paid for it, precisely why should a business be allowed to profit from it without paying royalties back in one form or another? What MS is asking is to be allowed to reap the profits while letting the taxpayers foot the bill. Sorry, that's not kosher in my book. And yes, we did lose something when MS used software developed by the DoD and NASA without paying: we lost the funds that went into developing it and that aren't being recouped.
And it still comes back to, if the stuff was put out under the GPL, the company can go back to the agency that did the work and negotiate a license other than the GPL.
Personally I think something along the lines of the LGPL, or a modified BSD license which requires that the software being used and any modifications/enhancements to it be made available under the terms the original software was gotten under, would be more appropriate than the GPL. It still boils down to, a private company should not be able to take taxpayer-funded property and use it to make a profit without some of that profit going back to the taxpayers in some way.
Re:Good slides (Score:3, Informative)
If John Smith releases product Foo under the GPL. It becomes successful over a few years and Fred, Bob, Jay and Jake all submit changes.
Does John Smith still have the right to sell a license to the Bar company for $X? Somehow I don't think he does.
That's the heart of MS's position: they want to be able to use everybody else's IP for free while still forcing everyone else to pay to use MS IP.
No, that's really not the heart of MS's position. Most companies realize that there were a variety of acts(look up Dole-Bayh) passed by Congress in the 1980's that encouraged research firms to license their work to corporations, so as to build up a synergy of research and implementation. I'm sure Microsoft would gladly pay a licensing fee to get their hands on innovative research. It wouldn't be the first time they've paid someone for their technology, would it?
What they don't want is for that research to have been released under the GPL such that the work is now potentially tainted by other people's contributions such that they cannot legally buy rights to it from the research group without putting themselves at risk to turn over the work that they created.
You don't seem to understand that this debate has nothing at all whatsoever to do with money. Money is a symptom, not the disease.
They're simply concerned that technologies will be chosen as standards which are not available to everybody on reasonable terms. What's interesting about this is that the Linux Community and Microsoft are both concerned about the same thing.
People on
You want the same things, just two different sides of the coin. If you'd quit whining about how evil Microsoft is you'd probably realize this and could work together to establish it.
But as long as you keep fighting Microsoft, they are going to fight back. You try to force source code to be released under the GPL, then Microsoft is going to patent things to prevent you from using them.
Re:Good slides (Score:3, Insightful)
That's precisely what LGPL is for, but LGPL is also on Microsoft's shit list (c.f. their infamous specification download licensing restrictions). Compare and contrast:
Now, how exactly does BSD help interoperability? We had to guess that Microsoft was using the BSD TCP/IP stack, then we had to guess about the changes that they'd made. But it became an open secret that they were using it back in the day (I don't doubt it's been cleanroomed now), so it's not as though it would harm Microsoft to say that they were using it, and to say exactly what version, and with what modifications. We could argue that their improvements (i.e. bug fixes and optimisations rather than protocol changes) are valuable trade secrets, but remember that they got the source free and gratis and that they used it to make a lot of money. They can't afford to give a little back? Even to the extent of just saying "The Microsoft TCP/IP stack is based on the FreeBSD TCP/IP stack version 1.foo, with the following differences..."?
I believe that the only real reason that they prefer BSD over LGPL is that it allows obfuscation and protocol changing behind the scenes, i.e. to reserve the right to harm interoperability if it becomes convenient for them to do so. Sure, they didn't, but then again, they haven't made the source available, and they haven't cornered the server market yet either. Would you bet your life that there aren't proprietary extensions lurking in there just waiting on the day when they can afford to turn them on and cut off non-Microsoft clients from Microsoft servers? Seriously: bet your life on it?
All that said, you're de facto correct. The only reason Microsoft chose BSD TCP/IP was because of the license. But that's their irrational childhood trauma issue, and it's up to us to patiently council them until they get over it. There is hope though. Given that they're making noises about shared source now, I wonder how long it will take for them to realise that LGPL, used judiciously, can be used by them as well as against them.
first 4 slides: Source Licensing & SoftwareInd (Score:4, Informative)
Slide 1: Title of the presentation with Microsoft logo
Slide 2: The Software Ecosystem
The flow of shared knowledge goes in a circle.
Diagram shows customers to government to academia to industry and back to customers.
Slide 3: The Business of Software
subtitle: Source Code Licensing
another diagram showing the interactions between source code - Core IP on the left and business model with usage rights and binaries on the right. Arrows showing development, support, deployment, and audit connect the two.
Slide 4: The Open Source Software Model:
complex mix of elements
has produced some great software
has both benefits and drawbacks like any model
Diagram showing "development model" surrounded by "philosophy", "business model" and "licensing"
Finally, somebody please mirror these images, the bandwidth on that site is getting sucked dry.
Slide 9+10 (img_0223r.jpg) (Score:2, Informative)
Source Licensing Debate (continued)
Slide 10:
Areas of Concern
Box to the left of text contains 4 boxes saying:
General Public License (GPL)
Ecosystem Health
Commercial Software
Government Policy
Re:first 4 slides: Source Licensing & Software (Score:2)
Finally, somebody please mirror these images, the bandwidth on that site is getting sucked dry.
Do a gnutella on Microsoft Slides.
Here are my three favorite quotes.... (Score:2)
-> Not mentioning the benefit that (only) open source is free-as-in-beer.
Photo #22 (bottom): "Open standards have become a point of confusion".
-> So the correct thing to do is use Microsoft's proprietary standards?
Photo #24 (bottom): "All software companies must carry significant legal overhead to protect against GPL infection".
-> Otherwise all companies (not just software ones) must carry significant legal overhead to protect against BSA raids.
"90% of politicians give the other 10% a bad reputation." --Henry Kissinger
Mirror (Score:4, Informative)
Bandwidth sponsored by danish research funding...
Another Mirror. (Score:2)
My Thoughts (Score:3, Interesting)
We all know MS is bad and they are hard at work on Evil Master Plan v1.0, but where I seriously see Linux going in the next few years is gaining ground on other unix vendors. At my workplace we use AIX and Solaris running Apache and a large number of Java Apps. There is no reason we could not use Linux. I am told making the switch is in the project plan for within the next 5 years.
I am looking forward for linux to become the definitive unix because at that point we can really start inovating and changing the commands we all know and love. For instance, besides for backwards compatability there is really no reason why no two console tools can't support the same set of regular expressions or command line options that are standard (maybe -V is always version and -D is always debug, etc). I'd also love to see something along the line of perl6's attributes for return codes for commands, e.g. after running cvs update it would be cool if it not only returned 0 for success, but if there was some way to tell if it actually updating any files (I know I can do this by parsing its sysout, but I'm trying to make a point that commands could return more complex structures that we could programatically interrograte).
I love grep, sed, bourne shells, and the gang but it would be very cool if the typical command line experience was a little more cohesive.
I've used linux and various unixes for about 5 years now and fee pretty comfortable, but maybe this is where we could really shine.
I realize there are plenty of efforts to modernize shells and command line tools, but I don't forsee them making much ground as if linux was drastically different from what I used at work, it probably we be a plaything at home, rather than a platform for study and to increase my skills.
It seems clear to me that the command line is superior to gui in terms of speed and efficiency for knowledgable users. What I'd like to see now is a set of tools (and shell) without such a drastic learning curve and also without loosing the power that unix has.
And yes, I realize that this is probably an impossible dream as OSS was forged in chaos. But who knows, stranger things have happened.
Re:My Thoughts (Score:4, Funny)
Man, I remember when computing was easy and they only had "Hey, I Think Being A Little Evil Can Make Us Money 5.2(TM)"
I guess it just shows, version numbers don't sell. Year numbers don't sell. But cool letters equal cash!
The Lost Art (Score:2)
Re:My Thoughts (or ramblings) (Score:2)
My understanding is that the Linux threading model (pthreads actually map to processes that share memory space instead of "true" kernel threads) doesn't really work well with Java, since it's easy to generate Java threads, they map to processes, and you swamp the computer. The next Linux (2.6 or 3.0 whatever it's called) I believe has better threads, something more like kernel threads. Please someone corect me if I'm wrong, I'm interested in this too.
but it would be very cool if the typical command line experience was a little more cohesive.
I love the command line too, but there are limitations. The data is constrained to be a stream. All data has to be marshalled and unmarshalled to the constraints of the the streams. The only "metadata" organization you can have is whitespace and maybe some headers. These are constrained to be in the same stream and need to be extracted from the normal data. Pretty much the entire reason for awk is parsing the output of commands and rearrange them to be the proper input for other commands. Having all these commands constrained to streams makes for a lot of interoperability but you lose a lot of context. The simplicity of a stream is somewhat countered by the occasional need to use another tool (like awk) within a pipe. I wonder what an XML-aware toolchain would look like. Would having the extra context of XML input/output improve certain tasks (after the learning curve) or would the complexity be too heavy for even power users to use on any consistent basis? Might be an interesting research project for some school.
The other major limitation of the pipe heavy shell is that the pipe has no knowledge or control of internal program state. You can control initial program state (inputs, command line args) but thats it, everything else is pretty much controlled by the program's internal state machine, and not by you. Again awk helps a little - a pipe friendly program that allows programming looping and conditional constructs, but you're stil limited. AppleEvents are very interesting. They allow you to pass data, structured data, from program to program, and allow the script to interact with the programs internal state while it's running. I'm sure VBA is something like this as well, but I have no experience with it.
I'm not sure if Linux can ever have this. Too many disparate developers. No one to really "bless" a single scripting language, so there are multiple. Linus has repeatedly said he doesn't really care about the userland, so it won't be from him, maybe RedHat will bless something. But that still doesn't mean developers will use it. Both Apple and MS have certification programs. To get an Apple/MS logo, you have to submit it, and follow some APIs, including AppleEvent or VBA compatibility. Linux doens't have that, won't have it any time soon, and probably never will.
Re:My Thoughts (Score:2)
It seems clear to me that the command line is superior to gui in terms of speed and efficiency for knowledgable users. What I'd like to see now is a set of tools (and shell) without such a drastic learning curve and also without loosing the power that unix has.
There's a delicate balance here. To change command-line switches or return codes potentially affects thousands of shell scripts which depend on the current behavior. To do so also would probably reduce the productivity of the thousands of unix gurus who already have all command-line options for various tools committed to memory. And that's not to be done lightly. To paraphrase the old quote, "Unix is user-friendly. It's just picky about who its friends are."
Now admittedly, I'd like it if every command-line util in the world supported "--version". But I wouldn't go so far as to standardize on "-v" or "-V" for the same thing, since that's used for various different things for various tools.
As an example of this, I'm bummed that someone (RedHat apparently) changed the default sorting order for "ls". Used to, things were sorted by ASCII value, which meant dotfiles were first, then files starting with a capital letter (like Makefile or README), and then finally regular, lowercase file names. In recent releases of RedHat, things are now case-insensitively sorted and include dotfiles in with the regular files (e.g. ".zebra" is now listed between "zartan.tar.bz2" and "zephyr.txt"). This annoys me to no end.
Eventually I was able to determine that adding -v restores the historic sort order (among other things), and so I made it the default. Nothing in the documentation hints that "sort by version" also does an ASCII sort, whereas normal sorting does not.
Anyway, mastering the unix command-line is a long road, and you continue to gain power for years and years. It does take a while.
Maybe a solution would be to make an environment variable called USERLEVEL=novice, which makes the switches more standardized but breaks backwards compatibility. Or a command-line switch called --novice which does the same thing.
Imposing the GPL is like imposing free speech (Score:5, Insightful)
There is an old saying, a nation can't be half slave and half free - but only all slave or all free. Unfortunately, alot of people don't understand this about copyright controlls. They think that choosing a software license is like going to the store and choosing between pears and apples or between painting your room yellow or pink - that it's just about preference. Well, it is not, and it is so fusterating to see how people refuse to consider the long term consequences of their own belief systems.
The simple truth is copyright controlls are untenable without massive free speech restrictions like the DMC0A (and beyond), and information is so easy to manuipulate and change form - that it can't be controlled unless all of it is controlled.
Re:Imposing the GPL is like imposing free speech (Score:5, Insightful)
sorry about my spell'n
Re:Imposing the GPL is like imposing free speech (Score:2)
If you want to see some *really* intense debate on the subject, you should check out the last few day's worth of posts on the kernel mailing list. It's freakin' rare when RMS responds to (perceived) trolling.
Re:Imposing the GPL is like imposing free speech (Score:2)
Re:Imposing the GPL is like imposing free speech (Score:3, Funny)
your spell's is sorry
Re:Imposing the GPL is like imposing free speech (Score:2)
What they are doing is saying "I wrote this. I've opened it's source so that others can use it. However, if you want to do so, you have to play by my rules."
Microsoft is saying "We wrote this. We keep the source closed and if you want to use it, you have to play by our rules."
This whole "viral" thing is misleading. Nobody just wakes up with gpl code in their project and goes "damn, now i have to gpl it if i want to distribute it." If you dont want to gpl code you intend to distribute, build your own library or look for one under a license like the bsd license. Just dont cry because the mean programmer wont let you use his code.
Personally, i find it incredibly hypocritical of Microsoft to complain about gpl not letting them use other people's code while they continually obscure file formats and communication protocols specifically to not allow people to interoperate with their code.
I guess "it's our code. we can do what we want with it" is only an acceptable answer when it's coming from their lawyers.
Re:Imposing the GPL is like imposing free speech (Score:2)
Microsoft can choose whatever licenses they like, but nobody should be under any obligation to buy their stuff.
Re:Imposing the GPL is like imposing free speech (Score:2)
One of the freedoms we have to accept is that MS is allowed to express their views on GPL.
Re:Imposing the GPL is like imposing free speech (Score:2)
So are we to assume that a license that sidesteps the entire not-free-as-in-beer market system is going to help the markets take care of themselves??? There IS no "market" for that kind of product, except in terms of mindshare versus commercial (aka market system) products.
The GPL, it is all about me ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The GPL, it is all about me ... (Score:3, Insightful)
First off the number of software companies vs other sectors is really small
RMS has used this argument to further the idea that the rights of proprietary developers are unimportant. It's essentially "might makes right" or "Proprietary software company rights aren't important because they are a minority". Placed within a larger political context, this argument not only falls apart--it becomes quite dangerous. Just substitute "black people" for "proprietary developers".
(self interest argument)
I have no disagreement with this. I've held my nose and used GPL'd software at times for this very reason, but when several roughly equal alternatives exist, I shun the GPL'd one because I disagree with the long term goals of the Free Software movement.
Furthermore do I want to sit at home each night and write some code for MS so that they might be able to sell it back to me and or overcharge my company for it. No thanks I will choose the GPL!
The problem with this argument is that it places undue emphasis on the problem of "exploitation by closing the source" (EBCS) which is really not a problem at all. Why is it not a problem? Because the relicensor can't take anything from you--they can only withhold their own work. If I take BSD and repackage it without making any changes except closing the source, this will be seen for what it is: wholesale appropriation of BSD. It won't sell because it's actually less valuable than the original BSD due to not having source.
However, if I add something to a BSD distro that makes it more useful, then I can close the source and if the change is valuable enough to offset the loss of source, I will be able to sell my distro at a higher cost based on the value I've added. I could have used the OSS development model too, but it was my choice. Competitors are free to emulate my changes too and make their changes proprietary or open. The original developer loses nothing--they still have the base source.
So, that argument falls apart because there really is no such thing as EBCS unless your were planning to charge fees for the right to license your GPL'd software under a proprietary license. But then, if you are doing that, you are not really a GPL advocate.
Let us assume for a moment that EBCS is a problem. Is it the only problem? Of course not. There are many other ways to exploit somebody. The classic definition of slavery is being compelled to work without getting paid. The only thing missing with GPL coders is the compulsion, so it's more like voluntary servitude. It makes no difference whether you enjoy the work, or if the work is Open Sourced or not. The fact of the matter is that you do work, and corporations reap the benefit on all those Linux servers. The GPL doesn't protect anybody from that form of exploitation, which (if we assume that proprietary developers are a minority) is a much larger problem than EBCS. For a more succinct version of my rebuttal to your post, see my .sig.
Continuing Returns on Public Investments (Score:3, Interesting)
To me, the citizen, GLP'd research/programs/code/technology/whatever ensures that imrpovements in the whatever are kept in the public domain, which benefits those of us that made the investment in the whatever in the first place. As a developer, if I'm going to be contributing to an open source project, I'd rather have it be a GPL or LGPL'd one to make sure that my contributions stay with the project and aren't taken into something that I don't approve of. Now if it's something that I'm writing for myself, I'd rather have the option of dual liscencing the project to allow me to choose the best usage for my project at that time, while still keeping it available for others to see and use, as I allow.
Different schemes for different purposes, but if it's public financing that helps create something, then the public should have continuing access to that something inperpituity.
Re:Continuing Returns on Public Investments (Score:3, Interesting)
No, it ensures that GPLed research remains under the GPL.
The GPL is not public domain.
Public domain is the real "free software."
Tim
Viral license?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Totally regardless of whether or not the GPL is viral, isn't this the description that Microsoft came up with?
I'm confused. Who first described the GPL as viral? MS? RMS? Somebody else?
Re:Viral license?? (Score:2)
And I told MS it was viral ... I never knew they'd put it in a leaked presentation.
Re:Viral license?? (Score:3, Interesting)
If you use GPL code, your code must also be GPL. That *is* a set up for viral propogation. And that is the way it was intended to work.
Re:Viral license?? (Score:4, Interesting)
I know what you're trying to say, but the metaphor is lacking in a number of key points. First off, the very word "viral" brings to mind illness, disease, and a variety of other unpleasentries. This is why MS decided to describe the GPL in this way. Welcome to marketing 101.
A virus is some foriegn invader to a system that lives off the host, and thus weakening it. Rarely is a virus invited in, as it's method for propogating is to be hidden in some other form unrecognized by the host.
Software that exists under the GPL does not hide what it is. It can't find its way into proprietary code unless it is specifically invited into it. It is its own host, not requiring another for its survival. Certainly the code is trapped within the license once placed there, but so is proprietary licensed code. The primary difference is that one is trapped in the public domain, the other in the corporate.
I don't have a better metaphor to contradict the whole "viral" thing. I do know that the GPL does not in any way exhibit what we would think of as viral though. Just like with proprietary software, if you want to utilize it within your own code there is a cost attached. To use Microsoft software, you'd pay a licensing fee. With the GPL you pay with providing your efforts back to the community you got it from.
The only purpose behind calling the GPL a "viral license" is to attempt to put a negative spin on it. The term is but one salvo from the MS marketing arsenal designed to attack that which makes us strong. Allowing the term to stick to any OSS license would be suicidal from a public relations standpoint.
Re:Viral license?? (Score:2)
Viral in this instance is meant only to mean contagious and infectious, but without the negative side effects, as odd as that may seem. That something that we want linux and the GPL to be.
Re:Viral license?? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Viral license?? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Viral license?? (Score:2)
As long as MS is on the attack against open source and GPL it's OK for people to fight back.
Microsoft and Sun are much more "viral" (Score:5, Insightful)
You can look at the GPL and write your own proprietary implementation. But a lot of source code from companies like Microsoft and Sun software is licensed under agreements that "contaminate" you; that is, you can't develop a competing implementation because the presumption will be that you copied stuff from their source code. They also contain lots of other clauses that "infect you", like with an indefinite possibility of getting dragged into a law suit between Microsoft or Sun and a third party.
guy with camera at MS remains unquestioned (Score:3, Interesting)
And so this article *really* lends credence to the anti-OSS memo. ;)
Aren't some of these articles and whole lot of fun?
Re:guy with camera at MS remains unquestioned (Score:2)
From the quality of the shots I think it is plausible that they were taken by a concealed camera. If this was a gov't hearing, it's not impossible that other groups were present, perhaps open source advocates.
The culprit? We may never know...
Is this a sign? (Score:2)
If you want to flame the guy who wrote this (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
MS wants even more freebies from the gov. (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm quite open to the idea that governments should consider creating software under X11/BSD-style licenses. But I think working with software under Microsoft/Sun-style "shared source licenses" is completely unacceptable because those kinds of licenses favor a single vendor; this should not only be discouraged, it should be made illegal: no government sponsored researcher should be permitted to create software under such agreements. The GPL may not allow commercial use of software developed by researchers, but it is equitable and fair to all commercial competitors.
Strawman (Score:2)
Now, I gather in the US, the present legislation means that publicly-funded software development must be placed in the public domain, which would seem to exclude the GPL.
The question though, is much more fundamental; should publicly-funded software development be "public domain"?
On one hand, people have paid the taxes that funded the development, so they should get all the benefits. The most efficient way of doing this is to make the software Free and make sure that derivative products stay Free. And, as a bonus, it doesn't even stop proprietary software manufacturers from learning from it.
On the other hand, proprietary software manufacturers pay taxes too, so they should have the same rights.
On the other, other hand, most corporations of Microsoft's size actually pay very little in the way of tax, and will employ embrace-and-extend strategies given half the chance. Eventually, this screws over the state and therefore the people as a whole.
For these reasons, it's my belief that publicly-funded software development should be licensed under GPL-like licenses, unless there's a compelling reason not to do so. And the original developer and a proprietary software manufacturer are always at liberty to agree a mutually agreeable alternative license if the main license doesn't suit the latter party.
An example of code which should probably be released under a LGPL or weaker license would be software to handle a new file format or a new network protocol. In these cases, it's probably more efficient to license it under a more PD-oriented license such as the LGPL or BSD license so that the code may be re-used and the likelihood of incompatible deviations from the reference implementation greatly reduced. In brief; "use the right license for the job" - even RMS wrote something along these lines, but I can't seem to find it right now...
--
The GPL is not the only OS license! (Score:2, Insightful)
Open source developers simply have to choose an appropriate license for their project when they start. And if they find out that they chose wrong there is still the possibility to change the licensing terms. A very prominent example for such a license change is the Wine project [winehq.com] that changed it's license from X11-like to LGPL recently.
If a company finds an OS library useful for their own project, but they cannot use it, 'cause it's GPL, they can still contact the author and ask for different licensing terms. They'll probably have to pay for that then, but they'd have to pay for a commercial product, too. So even GPL'd libraries are not really a hurdle for commercial software development. A good example for such dual licensing is ReiserFS [reiserfs.org], which is published under the GPL, but sold under different licensing terms to companies that want to use it commercially.
TCP/IP Slide (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm wondering if this translates to "We are concerned, because we can't charge people royalties for every packet they send." I would have loved to have heard the commentary that went with that slide.
Re:it's a strawman (Score:3, Insightful)
The fact that Microsoft is a monopoly is the only reason that they can play a lot of their predatory games. One could argue that Microsoft in particular should be denied the use of taxpayer funded software as a penalty for monopolistic abuses, or one could argument that whatever use they do make of it should be monitored for monopoly abuses. But this applies only to a monopoly, which Microsoft happens to be.
In fact, it is unfortunate that Microsoft's name is used in this argument. The licensing of government software affects anyone who may want to use it, not just one company. Anti-Microsoft arguments, however valid, really add nothing to the debate over what is the best license to use for government subsidized software.
Note how MS lies to push its case (Score:4, Interesting)
Primary research results placed under the GPL are precluded from commercial use.
Of course, lots of GPL software is used commercially - many (I think a majority) commercial web sites use Apache, many use Linux.
What the GPL prevents is piracy by companies like Microsoft - they'd like to take free software, and incorporate it into a slightly-incompatible product, which is then "their Intellectual Property". IMHO this is real piracy.
Freedom goes both ways... (Score:3, Insightful)
Something about the tone of the article really bothers me, though. I mean, MS doesn't like GPL, so what? Part of the whole GPL debate is about 'freedom'. Okay fine. You want freedom? Okay you have freedom. MS also has freedom to make it's case against GPL. You can have niether or you can have both. Learn to live with it. People/companies will make their choices.
you don't have to (Score:3, Insightful)
A Study of Patterns in Freedom. (Score:3, Insightful)
THIS IS WHAT I BELIEVE TO BE the issue here with objections to the GPL.
I don't think the powers that be, namely Microsoft, believe that the individual has the right to create software, manufacture it, and then NOT COMPETE on the same terms as Microsoft does.
(i.e. freely distribute it.)
They are trying to convince us that, only Academia, and Industry can be the focus of great ideas, and therefore they should only be the ones that decide how we are to value Intellectual Property legally.
I think this is VERY similair believe it or not to what the RIAA is trying to fight.
Think about this:
A independant band, decides it wants to make music and sell it on the internet, with no distributor. (They build a web site and sell there own music through P2P technology.)
No Recording studio. (i.e. they hook up a bunch of Mac OS X machines with Cubase and make there own recording studio...)
Enter the RIAA. They see the internet as a possible tool for making them irrelevant, therefore they lobby and inact laws to make it illegal to use P2P technology to distribute Music over the internet.
With such technology illegal, they can preserve thier tight hold on distribution, and insure no indepedant bands become to widely popular or compete with thier distribution network.
----With a twist
Independant software developer, Linux Torvalds, builds and designs an Operating System kernel, and publishes it directly on the internet.
(He decides he will distribute it for free and NOT sell it.)
He has no research facility, he uses no Academic or Business computing facilities to make the software, instead, he uses and builds his own tools and buys the required hardware himself...(or uses his Dad's computer at home.)
10 years later, after giving it away...enter Microsoft.
Microsoft decides this software will destroy its distribution and control over the entire US software industry. They lobby to enact laws including the DMCA, to stop free software.
They begin Marketing and FUD campaigns with there customers to educate them why it is better to pay for software, and to make illegal not to pay for software, and only software built through IP property sources such as Academia->Industry->User.
More importantly, they say that this change toward OS will destroy the future economy. The facts in the internet boom do not bear this out by the way.
I would like to remind people here, that the internet boom was due to ENTIRELY FREE SOFTWARE released under the GPL: (i.e. the orginal CERN HTTP server and Web browser...)
Did the last 5 years destroy the US software industry? In 1998 for example, did you find it HARD to feed and clothe yourself because this software didn't go through Microsoft's slide presentation of ACADEMIA->INDUSTRY ?
I am starting to see a pattern, all of it do to the internet. Which, I hope everyone can see here is ACCLERATING the pace of technology through:
Sharing information for free. Free OS's accelerate the use of software, making it penetrate new markets much more quickly as there is no cost barrier.
A good example of this is web server/web browser software. They are free, and they created a HUGE demand in hardware, short term anyway, both for servers and of course for workstations to run browsers adequately.
I believe, information sharing for free generates FAR MORE revenue opportunity than through what Microsoft has proposed in those slides.
However, that opportunity is now no longer centered strictly around the manufacturer of the software.
I believe that we are at the tip of the iceberg here. I further believe that eventually, software ALL software will be so easy to produce due to tool advancements, better education that it will, like hardware become a commodity item.
In the end, these slides represent the fear of the software industry. That is, that software, I mean software that drives the revenues or the control of government, will no longer be ONLY AVAILABLE through research institutions or industry.
In fact, software will be very prevalent and easy to come by and cheap to come by, through the internet. For free or at very low cost.
So what will happen 10 years from now?
Here are my predictions, and I am gearing my company up for this NOW:
1) Most if not all software, will be sold on a labor basis, not on a shrink wrap basis.
That is, you hire someone to write your software because all of the software for doing business is basically free. (i.e. you use open source business apps which are standardized and since everyone uses them, it is easier to exchange documents with your vendors over the internet. If they don't have the software they can just download it.)
2) Shrink wrap software will exist, but it will be for vertical niche's, and highly focused.
(i.e. Mathematica for example).
But, in the end, software that has built billion dollar industries, will become free. The reason is the internet allows people to organize, much as what a company does for profit, but at a much lower cost. Which is an interesting thought?
What will happen to companies if the internet is ultimately allowed to evolve through the free use of information? Perhaps, dare I say, companies will become obsolete? After all, why pay a corporate board to organize people to produce information, like software, when the internet can do it much cheaper!
Finally, gaming will be one of the last strongholds of mass market shrinkwrap software.
Even there, you won't actually buy the software you will be provided the software with a monthly subscription which may include a internet connection with the game believe it or not.
3) Linux WILL BE ON THE DESKTOP. In your server room, and well if it isn't...
The sheer pricing pressures you will experience in trying to compete with your competitors who don't have those sorts of costs will compell you to load Linux or be pushed out of your own market.
-Hack
Re:Note that Free != freedom (Score:3, Insightful)
No, it doesn't kill diversity. It kills MS's "embrace and extend", and *that* kills diversity.
Re:Note that Free != freedom (Score:4, Insightful)
How is this possible? Closed source software never allows you to even see their source code, much less modify or redistribute it. Further, more and more closed source license even limit how you can USE the software. They often don't allow you to even install the program on more than one machine at a time.
The GPL places NO restrictions on how you can use the program. As long as you don't redistribute, you have complete freedom to make any changes to the program to suit your needs. You can make unlimited personal copies and run on all of own machines.
Only when you decide to redistribute a GPL'd program does it limit your freedom. Commercial software never allows you to redistribute it.
So please tell me one instance where a closed source application has even a single freedom that the GPL doesn't already give you.
Re:Note that Free != freedom (Score:2)
closed source != commercial
Please be specific when posting a difference in opinion.
Re:Note that Free != freedom (Score:2)
> closed source != commercial
Fine, but how does this give you more freedoms? You can't make changes since you don't have the source, so it doesn't really help if you can redistribute or if you didn't pay.
Re:Note that Free != freedom (Score:3, Insightful)
Since you don't care about source code, I can only assume you're not making derivative applications. So what freedom is the GPL taking from you?
Re:Note that Free != freedom (Score:5, Insightful)
Okay, maybe I'm dense, but how does your line of reasoning go? The only restrictions I see in the GPL are that 1) You have to make your source available under the GPL if you make a modified version and you choose to distribute that version to the public, and 2) programs that use GPL'ed code fall under the GPL.
That's it. You can use the program on as many machines as you want, give copies to your friends, all legally. You can even make modifications and keep the source to yourself, so long as you also keep the binaries to yourself. There is nothing in there to prevent you from being selfish. Heck, for most purposes you don't even have to accept the license. You can decline the GPL and still use the program all you want, you just can't legally modify it.
Compare this to Microsoft's licensing policies. Let's take a specific example: Windows 98 OEM version. That Windows disc that came with your computer can only be used legally on your computer. If you replace, say, the motherboard, it's not the same computer anymore, and you no longer have the right to use that copy of Windows 98 on any computer at all. Similarly, if you sell the computer that the disc came with and build a new one, you cannot use it on the new computer, even if you wiped the old one clean before you sold it. And there are lots of other restrictions, too -- read through a Microsoft EULA some time. If you actually take the time to understand it, you will find that there are about a zillion restrictions on how you can use the program. And of course you are not allowed to modify it, and couldn't if you wanted to, unless you are a wizardly programmer who can read binaries and reconstruct the original source code from them.
Compare this to the GPL, where there are only those two restrictions, and they only apply to developers. And the GPL is probably the most restrictive open-source license: others, like BSD-style-licenses, or the Zlib license, place effectively no restrictions at all on your use of the program. So, please explain to me: how is it that you have less freedom with open software than with closed?
I must conclude that this AC is a troll. Dang. Oh, well, I've got karma to burn.
WRONG (Score:2)
Re:The "Go Public Domain!" bit (Score:2)
However, I'm not a lawyer (obviously) -- it would be nice to hear from someone a little more versed in this kind of thing...
Re:The "Go Public Domain!" bit (Score:2)
Re:Note that Free != freedom (Score:3, Insightful)
By contrast it's child's play to make closed software unavailable, even if it is to some extent accessible. One result can be that the dominant form of software can be completely unavailable and still block out other software from getting serious mindshare.
Is war peace and freedom slavery, too? I'm sure many people will read your remark about GPL having 'much less' freedom and nod foolishly because that's what they want to believe, but in a practical sense only the GPL is really effective in competing against closed software. And what is wrong with competing against closed software? I thought that was the whole point for the proprietary guys?
Re:Note that Free != freedom (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, there's just one basic requirement. Now, a requirement, restriction, licensing term, whatever you want to call it, is why it is not free is the sense of public domain. Free software imposes its own sense of copyright, but it is still copyright, and they will sue you for infringing on it. I only understood this when I realize copyleft is just a politicized synonym for copyright.
See GNU license [gnu.org]. (" To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions that forbid anyone to deny you these rights." -- mild doublespeak, no? To protect your freedom we must limit it by requiring you to acquiesce to this license.) Notice that the document invokes that hoary old term "copyright" more than a dozen times.
I'm not critizing free software -- really I think it's quite clever, inspired even -- but I believe it is merely a form of licensed software with really liberal "fair use" provisions. The copyright's holder's right to force you to comply persists throughout, so I think the political pitch is slightly misleading. I don't think it's some gross violation of freedom, but then neither is "closed" software -- if you don't like it, write your own "free" or even (gasp) public domain software.
you don't get it (Score:5, Funny)
Don't you see, man? They're eeeeevil. So evil that anyone who alleges that they did something evil is automatically right. So evil that when they release good software we must overlook the fact that the software is good and instead focus on how they are bad.
Microsoft operates the world's largest kitten and puppy grinding facility! Fact!
Re:you don't get it (Score:2)
Nah you are confusing them with Bill Frist who has admitted taking cats from shelters in Boston and then using them for vivisection [go.com].
I could not see anything in the presentation that told me anything I did not know already. Microsoft has told everyone that they do not like the viral clauses in the GPL.
The same information is available on the Microsoft Web site. So forget the cloak and dagger stuff folks, the presentation may well have been made outside Microsoft. Looks to me as if the JPGs are simply scans of a leave behind.
Microsoft is scared of open source the same way the US is frightened of an imminent invasion by Cuba. Cuba may have embarrassed the US in the past and the US may spend a ridiculous amount of time and effort railing aginst Cuba but that does not mean they are frightened of Cuba. All it really means is that the US is understandably concerned when a bunch of crazys are getting drunk on their self inflated rhetoric.
On the freedom side I find the discussion frankly appauling. The chopped logic sounds very similar to the propaganda the Communists used to put out. Once people claim the right to define freedom for you you can tell that they are really about ramming some ideologically driven bullshit down your throat.
Re:Jesus Christ.... (Score:3, Insightful)
> GPL'd software isn't "free", it comes with strings
> attached. What's wrong with pointing that out?
The GPL is one of the few licences that enforces a user's freedom, rather than the developer's. The BSD licence maintains a developers right to take and use code, the GPL keeps maintains a user's right to look inside the code they are using.
> Microsoft doesn't really need to any help to
> make OSS advocates look stupid, the overeager
> religious zealots do that job just fine.
Microsoft dislikes the GPL so much because it gives freedom to users rather than developers.
Re:Nonsense (Score:5, Interesting)
Read the interview with a former microsoft developer [kuro5hin.org] on kuro5hin for an insight into maybe why this is so.
Executive summary: Microsoft employees are arrogant assholes. (insert sweeping generalization disclaimer here)
Quote from interview: Microsoft constructed an enabling environment for socially obnoxious behavior: it was welcomed and rationalized into positives. If you were late for meetings it meant you were busy doing important work, if you were extremely confrontational it meant you were passionate about your job, if you required subordinates to work long hours it meant you were committed to the product, if you turned down everyone you interviewed it meant you weren't soft, and so on. ... And some of that behavior trickled out into meetings with customers and partners, where they were correctly seen as negatives and helped foster the anti-Microsoft attitude. But since Microsoft kept hiring and promoting obnoxious people, they kept being obnoxious.
Now this is just one former employee's opinion. But in sales meetings I have had with Microsoft, (I'm an IT manager for a 13,000 user college), I've seen the same attitudes.
Re:Nonsense (Score:2, Insightful)
Microsoft's worst (alleged or proven, I don't care) dirty trick, IMHO, was Windows telling me that Digital Research DOS was incompatible. That kind of behavior made me a happy OS/2 user for years until I had it pounded in my brain (by IBM, nonetheless) that IBM really is a big, nasty corporation.
I actually don't see anything wrong with MS's attitude toward OSS or Shared Source. They're afraid of the GPL for the same reason that Apple (all worship Apple, benevolent charity and protector of good!) built OS X on top of BSD. Microsoft--get this--is in it for the money. Just like RedHat is. If RMS could sue Microsoft for having GPL'd code in the NT source base it would really cramp MS's style. That, frankly, is frightening to anyone who doesn't totally subscribe to RMS' goal of eliminating software copyrights wholesale.
As for the interview with the ex-developer (NB: here I go again with ad hominem arguments) don't you think that it's a little easier to criticize Microsoft after you've worked there 10 years? MS probably made that guy filthy rich. Give me millions of dollars and I'll gladly drive the high moral ground in my brand-new gold plated gas guzzling SUV.
This is not to say there are no "arrogant assholes" at MS: the interview appears to be written by a prime example. Many sales people (your contacts) also fit that bill. This is merely to point out that MS, as a corporation, has similar goals to those of most corporations. (Similarly, Slashdot, like Usenet in the grand old days, is filled with self-righteous idiots. Oops, ad hominem again! Or is that ad homini?)
The GPL protects the developer ... (Score:5, Informative)
What make you think (Score:2)
Re:GPL hurts open source (Score:2, Insightful)
Microsoft's licences also mostly prevent people from writing commercial software (or any other software) and using Microsoft's existing code in their code. Believe it or not, Word isn't released as public domain.
GPL gives you a lot more freedoms than Microsoft's licensing does. If you feel it's still not enough then I have sympathy with that, but suggesting that Microsoft have a point about the GPL license being restrictive is absurd.
Re:but gpl is not free as in freeom (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, I'll give you this, but really the restrictions harm nobody but greedy people. It's the developer's freedoms (greedy developers) that are infringed. That's the whole point. From the point of view of the user or a civic-minded developer, there are as many freedoms as any other licenses, but with more benefits (as in the benefit of being able to use other's modifications). From any perspective aside from that of a greedy business, the GPL is superior.
So it could be argued that GPL is not suitable for certain things. STuff like protocals, audio/video codex, and device drivers.It could be, but I sure won't do it. Perhaps a BSD licensing for core protocols right now is important, because as you say, it is necessary to get commercial interest to get a sufficient "critical mass" to make something like Ogg a standard. Okay. Right now.
But that's only because right now there aren't enough free software users to be able to call the development shots with our force of numbers. As the free software pool grows, the harder it is to re-write that code base. That means that commercial interests will have to be able to make a *really* impressive application to expect people to pay for it. And that's in the best interests of the users as well.
As far as poor BeOs not being able to use linux drivers in their OS... huh? Why should they? If they want to use, they have to share. What's wrong with that? And if they can't build a replacement OS that has the broad range of features and compatibilities as linux, or other free Operating Systems, then more the fool them for trying to get into a dying business model. Maybe they should have found a business model that leveraged free software rather than trying to compete with it. Let Be be a lesson to other commercial software companies.
We sometimes have to remind ourselves that the entire computer industry would not be where it is today without the openness of computer programers back in the early days. This open spirt existed way before any GNU license existed, and that was good enough for us then, good enought now.Absolutely! Now you are sounding like a free software convert. Oh. Wait. You mean public domain. Yeah... you are right. In some ways, this would be ideal. In fact, I would imagine that most free software people would rather not have to copyright software and just let it be in the public domain. But the problem with that is that when that used to be case (your "early days" of the computer industry) commercial entities would rape the public domain software by taking the software and modifying it in ways that locked you into a vendors product, be it hardware or software.
Thus, it became necessary to protect ourselves from greedy and unethical businesses. *That's* why there is a GPL. Yeah, it would be nice to imagine that all software could be free. Really free. Public Domain. But history proves that greedy people can't stop using public domain software to take away users freedoms. So users have to take matters into their own hands.
To clarify, I think Microsoft biggest fear is to be in a world where all code is saturated by a gnu encumberance, and one could not modify any code without being forced to publish the modifications.Absolutely. And they should be, because that's how it's going. They are greedy monopolists locked into a dying business model -- that of extorting their customer base. Good riddance, I say.
A world so utterly GPL that it collapses upon itself into stagnation.I'm not sure this follows. In fact, I'd argue that because of the large base of GPL code from which to build, it allows for people to innovate more easily. The infrastructure is already there, and someone with a great idea sitting in front of a computer in the Congo can implement it. Without a huge company behind them. Then we'll see stuff *really* start happening.
Don't waste your tears on Microsoft. As they sow, so shall they reap.
Re:A tad blurry (Score:2)
That's okay, the logic was just as blurry.