Ballmer Calls Linux "A Cancer"

davidebsmith writes: "In an interview with the Chicago Sun-Times, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer says that Linux and the open source movement is "good competition" because it will "force [Microsoft] to be innovative," but calls Linux "a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches." He also says that the inclusion of IE in Windows has been "great ... for innovation in the software industry" (except for Netscape) and that MS's new copy protections are just "bumps in the road" to "help customers understand when they are crossing the line . . . so they can't do the wrong thing." And he says a few more amusing things, also."

Re:This word

To Moderators: This moderation you use...(+1, Funny)...I do not think it means what you think it means.

Re:Damn...

I'd love to see someone on slashdot actually prove his statement wrong.

It's simple, actually. If I write some code to sell and I only need ( read: want ) a tiny bit from, let's say, a GPL'ed library, well then, I should just go ahead and write that little bit myself. End of problem.

On the other hand, if I want to use a large amount of GPL'ed code and add my little bit and sell it as mine, well, it's not really mine at all. Hence I shouldn't be allowed to sell it. If there were a way to buy the code, then doing this would be OK. But there isn't.

And that's it. Q.D.E.

-JD

Cancer-like properties of Open Source

The distinguishing trait of cancer cells is that they have disabled the cellular machinery which puts a brake on their reproduction, so that they can reproduce without limit.

Now look at RMS's three freedoms: the freedom to read the source code; the freedom to modify the source code; and the freedom to share the sources and binaries with others (yeah I know that's not exactly it, but I like the read-modify-share acronym).

So, whereas closed-source software has limits on its reproduction, open-source software is explicitly designed to reproduce without limit, just like a cancer.

Of course, unlike a cancer, open-source software helps your system live longer!

Re:This word

I just looked up "innovate" in my handy-dandy MSWebster dictionary and got:

in-no-vate (IN no vait) vt. - to take an idea from another company (cf. Apple)

Re:Damn...

You're kidding right?

There's plenty that's "free" about the GPL just not what some people want to be free (i.e. free to exploit).

You are free to read the source code.

You are free to wall-paper your house with the source code.

You are free to recite the source code.

You are free to compile the source code.

You are free to copy to source code to another media.

You are free to give a copy of the source code as a Christmas present.

You are free to modify the source code.

You are free to learn from the source code.

You are free to tinker with the source code.

You are free to charge a fee for transfering the source code. Now this of course does not mean that you are free to do these things in anyway whatsoever. (i.e. you may not be allowed to recite the source code over an illegal FM transmitter. Nor are you violate the terms of the GPL). Nonetheless, only a shabby miscrosoft-like absence of logic would allow the conclusion that there is nothing free about the GPL'ed software.

What's funny is that the napster-kid mentality and the anti-GPL mentality seem to be essentially the same. "I deserve to be able to profit from someone else's work."

Re:This word

The word has become quite arbitrary at Microsoft.
I'm hungry. I think I'll go innovate a sandwich.

--
Forget Napster. Why not really break the law?

Let's not jump to hasty conclusions

Chances are, it's a quote taken out of context or a wholesale fabrication by a reporter. Microsoft didn't get where it is today by putting its collective foot in its mouth like that, so when you hear a quote as absurd as "Linux is a Cancer" (which Microsoft itself knows to be a falsehood), take it with a grain of salt.

FUD is your enemy, but don't compound the problem by restorting tooFUD yourself. Microsoft still deserves the benefit of the doubt, and we should always take a careful investigatory approach whenever we wish to report news that may be damaging to the reputation of either party. That's the approach Microsoft has historically used (see mindcraft and others), and it's the least we can do too.

Re:From the interview

If you accept the incorrect usage of "open source" to mean "GPL'd code" then this statement makes perfect sense.

I'm afraid it still doesn't. Or rather, it makes sense but just isn't true. Anybody -- Microsoft, OpenBSD, whoever -- can use and modify GPL'd code to their heart's content, and it won't "infect" their other code at all. Ballmer claims that if a company uses any open source [GPL'd] code, that company has to make all of their IP available. That's simply not the case.

That said, I agree that it's good that all goverment products are in the public domain. That's a great way to do this -- it just isn't a reason for the goverment (or any company) to not use open source / Free software.

Re:From the interview

The slipery slope comes when you are talking about research at state universities. Should a grad student be able to release his/her research software under GPL, or should they be forced to use a BSD-style license? Of course, the stipends and cost of computer time for a few CS grad students doesn't add up to much in the grand scheme of things..

Re:He's got a point.

Hold on a second.

I assume you're speaking of the US government. Among the things that government is tasked with is to promote the general welfare and to secure the blessings of liberty. That means that they have a legitimate role to play in the creation of public goods. Public roads, public health, and now, public computing infrastructure. There's nothing wrong with private companies making money doing things _for_ the government, but when the work is done, the results belong to everyone. If that means that the opportunity for a person or a corporation to make money providing something which serves a public interest is lost, then so be it.

The legal fiction that corporations are "people" who pay taxes and merit governmental protection is nice and it's one which has served the economy well in the past (discussions about its present state are deferred to other /. stories) but when there is a compelling public interest to be served by government spending, the loss of a corporation's ability or even a private individual's ability to make a profit in that arena is just too bad. Ideally, a compromise is reached wherein the public interest is served AND a sufficient profit can be made privately that the interest is served inexpensively by the most economically efficient body which competes to provide the interest.

I suppose what I'm trying to say is that the kind of software that I'd expect the government to fund is critical infrastructure: BIND, TCP/IP, and so forth. And that kind of software should be made available at no cost, either under a free license or by release directly into the public domain. I wouldn't expect the government to gut Intuit by releasing a free Quicken knockoff.

So, what if TCP/IP were GPL'd?

Ballmer's point is that the GPL is not a "free" license in this sense. What if the government-funded TCP/IP development had been released under a license which prevented its use in any product which wasn't released as GPL'd code?

The GPL restricts how code can be used, and government code should be provided without restrictions.

This has nothing to do with "corporations" or their legal status. Let's not blur the issue. This is about how everyone's money is being used to develop code that not everyone can use.

If we're all going to pay for it, we should all be able to use it.

Re:From the interview

"Public domain" makes it available only to the first generation of people that touch it. It allows corporations to turn it into "Proprietary Software", which in effect means that the from that point on, the software is no longer "freely available to all".

The problem here is that the "it" you're talking about no longer exists at that second generation. If a developer takes public domain code and uses it as a foundation of or a component of their own work then I don't understand how you can expect to have a claim to free access to the work they did. Any value that a developer is able to add to or extract from a piece of public domain code should be theirs to license as they see fit. He who does the work (or funds the work) should have the freedom to set the license. The GPL eliminates this freedom by requiring GPL on both derivative works and work which incorporate even small portions of GPL'd code into their codebase.

Public domain is, and always remains public domain and "freely available to all". There's no way to remove something from the public domain.

I want publicly funded software to remain publicly available and free to all. I don't want Microsoft or any other corporate entity to swallow it and never let it see the light of day again.

Please explain how using code makes it unavailable.

I do not believe that we, the people, our government, should be obliged to give anything for free to corporations.

I have no idea what your mini-rant on coporations has to do with this. GPL code is equally inaccessable to anyone who wishes to do non-GPL development. That can mean a multi-billion dollar corporation and it can also mean me in my bedroom trying to develop software as a sole proprietorship. Hell, it can even refer to a non-profit organization or an open source developer like the Apache Foundation.

I think your distaste for corporations is clouding your judgement on this issue.

Re:From the interview

If you accept the incorrect usage of "open source" to mean "GPL'd code" then this statement makes perfect sense.

I presume that what Ballmer meant to say was "The only thing we have a problem with is when the government funds GPL'd work. Government funding should be for work that is available to everybody."

This is an understandable viewpoint. GPL'd code is not accessable to everybody. It is only accessable to developers who are willing to release their code under the GPL license which excludes large portions of the community. Government-funded GPL code is inaccessable to the Apache Foundation, it's inaccessable to the OpenBSD developers, and it's inaccessable to any commercial developers who are working on closed-source products.

If tax dollars are funding a project, then the results of that development should be available to everyone and not just people who use one particular license. This is the rationale behind the laws which prevent the government from enjoying a copyright on the data it produces.

Government code should be public domain, not placed under a restrictive license like the GPL.

A Cancer? But Ballmer's Got the Cure!

The licensing could be a bitch, but check out their cure!
http://bbspot.com/News/2000/12/ms_cancer.html [bbspot.com]



Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.

Outlook Express

I heard you can't get catch cancer from computers unless you have Microsoft Outlook installed.

Sue for defamation

If another company was lying about my product in order to hurt my business, I'd sue them for defamation.

Microsoft is lying about Linux in particular and GPLed software in general, and the FSF ought to haul them into court over the issue. Sure, the GPL is viral, but simply writing software to run under Linux does not compromise your IP rights unless you use GPLed code to do it, which is certainly not necessary.

The other thing that strikes me, as it usually does when the GPL comes up, is how distributors of closed software are quite insistent that you must respect the terms of their licenses, but bitch like spoiled children when an open developer insists that they respect the terms of his. Closed source developers need to clue into the fact that they can't have it both ways. If you want to protect your own intellectual property, you must refrain from stealing others. It's like arguing that because some women are prostitutes, it's okay to treat all women like prostitutes, and it reflects pretty much the same personality type.

Nuff said.

--

Say the same lie often enough...

And people start to believe it.

This propoganda tactic was in use before World War II, and apparently, it still works.

Even in politics, say the same lie often enough and it gets believed. President George Bush (Sr.) would dismiss civil rights legislation as a "quota bill." Now, President Junior does the same thing, saying that his "Lets Give Lots Of Money To The Rich Guys" tax policy as "favoring the poor."

In the high-tech area, we're hearing Allchin, Mundie, and now Ballmer repeating that "open source is not available to commercial companies."

This is a lot of horseshit. It's available to anybody and everybody. However, if you don't want to use it, then don't.

The GPL license (which the GNU folks will repeat over and over is NOT OPEN SOURCE), is a license to use a piece of software. It is no different than the license in which a person runs Windows, Office, or any other Microsoft product. One can say that using the same reasoning, Microsoft software is not available to commercial companies. Of course, that is, commercial companies that do not wish to abide by Microsoft's licenses, which is much more stringent with regard what you can and can not do than any interpretation that I've ever heard of the GPL.

If you don't like the license, don't use it. Microsoft has that right with regard to the GPL. However, Microsoft is not every commercial company. There are many companies, including IBM, Sun, RedHat, and others, that are only too happy to abide by the GPL.

But you have to give the Microsoft flaks du jour credit for continuing to play the "most so-called journalists are so f*cking stupid that they don't know the GPL from TNT" card.
--

Only a slight twist on the truth...

The only thing we have a problem with is when the government funds open-source work. Government funding should be for work that is available to everybody. Open source is not available to commercial companies. The way the license is written, if you use any open-source software, you have to make the rest of your software open source. If the government wants to put something in the public domain, it should. Linux is not in the public domain. Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches. That's the way that the license works

Open source is not available to commercial companies. Hmm. Linux is Open Source right? I use Linux here at work - for a commercial company.

The way the license is written, if you use any open-source software, you have to make the rest of your software open source. Maybe I read the GPL incorrectly, but, um... Isn't that the point? (On another note, our company uses Linux, but releases closed-source binarys of our primary product. No problems with that!)

Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches. Again, thats rather the point, but it does not "attach" itself to everything it touches, Q3A is not GPL'ed but it runs on Linux just fine.

But then who am I kidding right? This is Slashdot. We all know this (Apart from the newbies and trolls). I am just preaching to the Choir. What I am interested in is the exact gist of these comments. What is Balmer trying to accomplish here?

We know he mentions competition (to keep the Justice Dept. off of his back) and Microsoft is consistantly trying to poison the GPL, but not Linux... I think MS is more afraid of the GPL than anything else, if they can disparage the GPL, they can (they believe) damage the free software movement. I don't think that they will be sucessful, but they will through this strategy keep Linux off of the desktop (but not servers) for some time to come. (At this stage, IMO Linux is not ready for the mainstream desktop user, and maybe it never will be, thats not a bad thing though.)

Anyone else have a take on what they think Microsoft is up to?

Re:Damn...

Oh, please... they could have "embraced and extended" Kerberos even if it was GPL. There is no indication that they used any code from available BSD licensed implementations, and there's every indication that they have competent enough developers to read the bloody specs and roll their own.

Please don't spoil an otherwise good post with FUD like that.

Letter I Sent To The Sun-Times

I take issue with several sophisms that Steve Ballmer attempted to promulgate during his interview with the Sun-Times, printed on June 1st.

Ballmer claims that "Open Source is not available to commercial companies. The way the license is written, if you use any open-source software, you have to make the rest of your software open source." This is an out-and-out mistatement of what open source licenses do. In order to keep Sun-Times readers well-informed, perhaps an examination of the essentials of the two most popular open source licenses would be in order.

The BSD license, originally created to cover software released by UC Berkeley, essentially requires only that you retain a notice attributing the original source of the software. Thus software under the BSD license is very close to the public domain -- all you have to do to use it in any way you wish is to appropriately credit the original author. You don't even have to post this credit in a prominent place (like the about box or documentation of a program). It only has to go in the code, and users might even remain unaware that a program uses BSD licensed software.

One good example of this can be found in Microsoft's own Windows NT and Windows 2000. The IP stack -- an essential portion of the networking code -- is actually taken from code released under the BSD license. Microsoft has thus taken open source software and succesfully incorporated it into one of their flagship products -- all without resulting in any loss of intellectual property on Microsoft's part.

The GNU Public license, originally created at the Free Software Foundation, is stricter in its requirements than the BSD license, but nowhere near as restrictive as Ballmer suggests. It is true that if you take code from
a piece of GPL'd software and release a derivitave work based on that code, then you must release that derivitave work, with source code, under the GPL.
The GPL makes this requirement in order to ensure people will always be able to freely use, inspect, and modify software released under the GPL. Software released under the GPL cannot be made proprietary.

However, there is NO provision in the GPL that states you must release ALL your software under the GPL. Non-derivative works may be released under any license the copyright owner please. Thus, a company such as Corel can distribute their own version of the popular GPL'd operating system Linux and simultaneously sell their Word Perfect Office Suite in the traditional proprietary manner. They are not required to open source all of their products -- not even their version of Word Perfect that runs on Linux -- because these products are not derived from GPL'd software. This example neatly refutes Ballmer's assertion that "Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches." The GPL applies to and affects only software that is derived from other GPL'd software, allowing companies handle the distribution and licensing of their proprietary software in any way they see fit.

It's worth noting that Corel and Microsoft itself are only two of many corporations and small businesses who are succesfully incorporating open source software into their operations. AT&T, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and Sun have long used similar strategies. AOL, EBay, Red Hat, VA Linux, and others are among the growing powerhouses that have learned to harness and profit from the increasing popularity of open source. Far from being a cancer that is unfit for business use, open source has proved to be a boon for those who understand it.

The verity of these points is obvious to anyone who has spent suffecient time familiarizing themselves with the essential facts about various types of open source software. Either Ballmer is simply uninformed about his competitors, or he is taking advantage of his opportunities in public forums such as the Sun-Times to intentionally mislead people about software which is competing (quite effectively) with Microsoft's own products. Given Microsoft's history, which do you beleive?

Sincerely,


--

Re:Interesting philosophy...

MS liscensed Spyglass Mosaic with the terms that Spyglass get a percentage of the profits of selling IE.
MS gave away IE for free.
Profits to Spyglass? $0.

Bashing GPL, not Linux

If you are correct that M$ is bashing the GPL and not Linux (which they are, but the question is are they attacking GPL directly, or only using it to indirectly attack Linux?) then it is quite interesting.

M$ has many lawyers. Why would they attack the GPL unless it looked rigorous enough to hold up? Possibly the only attacks would also destroy the validity of their own licenses. No matter, it means that even though there has not been a legal challenge of the GPL, Microsoft is afraid to be the first.

In a nutshell, that's a damned good thing. If even M$ is afraid to attack the GPL on legalistic grounds, nobody should, and that means that that particular argument (no legal test yet) is now pointless (if it ever had weight to begin with).

BTW, anybody have any idea which projects M$ is specifically bitching about the US (presumably) gov't funding that they can't use? Sure, there is SELinux, but what about the Navy development of that automated ship? I certainly can't use that. IBM can't. But anyone can use SELinux.

I know. It's typical M$PR. Anybody have Ballmer's phone number? Or how about the phone number's of some major investment houses? I mean, how can you put mutual fund money into a company heading by someone who is either: a) an idiot or b) morally bankrupt?

Well, the CEO is supposed to say things like that

Let's take a look around at the other big companies. Oracle has an egomaniac for a CEO. Apple, yeah, ditto for their CEO (or whaver Jobs' title is these days), whom it's apparently not safe to be with in an elevator.

The companies that have the biggest following of loyalist fans also have these sort of banana-republic dictator personalities running the company. In order to gain new territory, you sometimes have to rally the troops (employees) and your allies (investors) by making bold, outrageous statements. Usually it's limited to something like, "we're going to make a lot of money this year," or "our new product is The Next Big Thing."

CEO's are really politicians. And like everyone in power, they know a little secret: the masses don't want to hear the truth. People enjoy being lied to, and deluded, and misled. There's so much evil, selfishness, and contempt in the world that the masses don't want to hear it. An investor doesn't want to hear that another stock they own is going to tank. They want to hear that their stocks have all gone bullish. Customers don't want to know that they've purchased another mediocre product. They want to beleive that it will actually work as advertised, and cure the common cold.

Repeat after me. It's propoganda. It's not the truth.

Linux shifts the economy from product-based to service based (since the product is free + your time). IBM sells services, and they like Linux. Microsoft sells products, and feels their bottom line is being threatened. They have a right to make a product, and people have a right to buy, or not to buy, their product.

Insight into M$ Worldview

Linux is a cancer to M$, because it puts code out of M$'s reach and requires (certain, obviously not all) additional code to do the same.

A cancer is a malformation of growing cells within a body. If it is its own organism, it isn't a cancer; at worst it's probably blue-green algae.

So if Linux is a cancer, what is the body?

When I read the interview, they imply that the body is corporate software companies, specifically what we often call "closed source".

We don't think that Linux is in that body.

My guess is that M$'s problem is that Linux is eating at the body of possible code to write. That noosphere of possible code looks limitless to some; to Microsoft, it looks quite limited. And they want to own nothing less than the entire noosphere. Other companies are writing code; that's alright, M$ will buy them out sooner or later. When the faceless horde of OSS makes software, they are the cancer that eats away at the limited noosphere. OSS is stealing code and locking it away from Microsoft, who has manifest destiny over the entire noosphere.

Heaven help us all.

Re:From the interview

Well, that's exactly the way I feel about patents for government funded research. Why the hell should the people who created the RSA algorithm be allowed to patent their publicly funded work then only allow one company to use their algorithm?

The difference is with the GPL you can't corner the market. Your code can be forked, incorporated, enhanced or whatever by anyone as long as they make the code available to anyone who needs it.

Revoke the Bayh-Dole act first and then we can talk about no funds for GPLd software.

heh

Just remind him what Denis Leary said...

No cure for cancer.

--
Gonzo Granzeau

He's right, but he's stating it wrong....

Actually, what Ballmer is saying (in an inflamatory, and overly-broad way) is that the US government should not modify or contract modifications to GPL (or other GPL-like) licensed work, and I agree.

Woah up there, folks. First off, I write a fair amount of GPLed code, so don't assume that I'm an anti-GPL person.

I do, however feel that the government should not be allowed copyright to its works (which has always been upheld in this country).

Since the basis of the GPL is the control that copyright law allows, I don't see how the government can be allowed to distribute their modifications to GPLed programs any more than they could distribute their modified version of Harry Potter. In the Harry Potter case, they are given no permission to do so. In the GPL case, they are, but only under a provision of law that does not extend to them.

Now, why is Ballmer WRONG? Because there's plenty of BSD-licensed and public domain code out there. BSD is clearly and open source license, and honestly I think Ballmer has chosen Linux as a target because he doesn't want BSD in his sights. There are several reasons for this: 1) he knows that the BSD camp is much more conservative and it would be harder to make wild half-truth claims about them 2) he is not technical and the word on the street (let's not fight over this, kids) is that BSD is faster and more stable than Linux; he likely believes this, right or wrong 3) if the debate is between Linux and Microsoft in government roles, BSD may never gain much more ground than it has now in that sector, and given the licensing, this is in MS' favor.

The only counter-argument I see to the government/GPL case is if the government can contract to an external company to make changes to copyrighted works, and have the original copyright hold. I'm not even remotely a lawyer, so someone else will have to speak to that one.

Either way, it's a cheap shot to just jam this into an interview as a sound-bite, and while I'm not losing any respect for him over it, that's only because there was none there to begin with.


--
Aaron Sherman ([e-mail])

He's no John Madden

Hey, there are meatheads in the world who don't know when to shut up and then there are those who don't know when to shut up and really make asses out of themselves, only they don't stop and it gets kind of funny actually, and they sense this, and go further, but now it's just clowning and pretty soon it won't be funny any more so they stop.

Well, I guess except for the funny part, maybe Ballmer is a John Madden.

The only thing we have a problem with is when the government funds open-source work. Government funding should be for work that is available to everybody. Open source is not available to commercial companies.

Uh... Riiiight. So, er, that's why we need to fund closed source work that's not available to anyone? Or else, you mean that you support government funding for the BSDs?

Seriously, the two-install thing is going to be a MAJOR hassle for a lot of folks. Sure rules out XP for scientists in Antarctica. "What do you mean you don't have a phone? Can't you go over to your friend's house?" As well as for students, people testing it, etc, etc, etc. Nice way to shoot yourselves in the foot, losers. I can't wait to answer the calls from relatives looking for computer support. "You can't? Twice? That's because they FUCKED you! What can you do? Throw it out."

Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.

Since when are 9x and NT forks?

Win95, Win98, WinNT, Win2000, WinXP are forks? I don't think so. This is pretty much the same as saying:

FreeBSD 3.0, FreeBSD 4.0, Linux 2.0, Linux 2.2 and Linux 2.4 are forks. If you are going to respond to him then you could at least get YOUR facts straight!!

Win9x has never been a fork on the NT project. While the FreeBSD analogy above is a little out, Win9x is really a version of Win3.0 with a whole stack of 32 bit junk tacked in wherever possible. You'd be much closer calling Warp and NT forks of each other, or even OpenVMS and NT forks. Hell, even Linux+Wine is probably closer to NT/2000/XP than Win9x is!!!

License issues

. The way the license[gpl] is written, if you use any open-source software, you have to make the rest of your software open source

That's pretty much what Mundie said. Seems that that's the Company Line. And I think RMS, O'Reilly, et. al. addressed that pretty well.

Sad

Clever set up. First he complains that people don't respect Intellectual property enough and need reminding. Then he whinges about his (totally false) lie that open source makes all other software open source due to Intellectual property issues.

Nice example of telling a bare faced lie for spin purposes though, pretending that he does not understand there are -different- types of open source licence. Almost makes me believe he realli -is- stupid.

EZ

Re:Which license, Mr. Ballmer

You have some BSD code in some of your products and gladly adhere to the BSD license, don't you?

<flamebait>

Of course they do - there's no work involved in adhering to the BSD license. It's a perfect fit for a company whose attitude toward "intellectual property" (a misbegotten term if ever there was one) is roughly, "What's mine is mine, and what's yours is mine."

</flamebait>

Seriously, though, Microsoft knows that BSD-licensed stuff will just keep on keepin' on (ripe for their picking) for a while, since it's still under the radar for the most part. It's GPL-licensed software (which they can't co-opt without giving their users the code) that they fear. Of course, the GPL is about freedom for the user, which is what Microsoft really fears above all.

Standard BSD disclaimer: I don't have any problem with the BSD license. Even the FSF defines it as a Free Software license. If an author wants to release their code into the wild and has no qualms regarding what happens after that, more power to that author. I just wanted to point out that Microsoft doesn't care about user freedoms, only their own freedom to use and subsequently lock up any code they see, and the BSD license plays right into that, for better or for worse. Now flame away...

Real Life imitates the Internet

Haven't we learned not to feed trolls? I hope that the Free Software luminaries give this guy the response he deserves this time: none at all.

By stooping to his level, we're playing their game. It is obvious to me, at least, that when you play Microsoft's game, they win. Instead, the good team should be pondering a way to force Microsoft to play a different PR game--probably one that starts off with "we don't think his ideas merit a response. He is clearly another empty mind pursuing another of Microsoft's intense PR campaigns that sound newsworthy but don't move forward the debate over intellectual property in this country one iota. We'll let our software do the talking."

Re:Say the same lie often enough...

Now, President Junior does the same thing, saying that his "Lets Give Lots Of Money To The Rich Guys" tax policy as "favoring the poor."

This is the big lie that liberals keep repeating, desperately hoping to convince taxpayers that the government can spend their money better than they can. First, the government cannot "give" tax cuts to anyone, since it's not their money to begin with. All they can do is take less. Second, the tax reductions are greater on a percentage basis for the poor. For example, the 15% tax bracket drops to 10%, a 33% cut; while the top 39.6% bracket drops to 35%, only a 12% cut. Yes, the rich will still save more in absolute dollars, but that's because they pay so much more.

The crux of your argument is correct, that Microsoft is blatantly lying about the GPL and clueless reporters are not calling them on it. But introducing partisan political commentary only confuses the issue and annoys half of the readers. (Yes, I know I've annoyed the other half now...)

Intellectual Property Is a Cancer. GPL s the Cure

In my opinion, the real cancer is intellectual property. It's a cancer to society because it forces people to compete against one another for selfish motives as opposed to bringing them together. It forces us to constantly reinvent the wheel, so as to get around someone else's IP. It's an immense waste and duplication of effort.

In my opinion, the only property worthy of the name is tangible property. If you can't lock it up or build a fence around it, it does not belong to you. Once you release something like music, ideas, software, novels, etc..., you cannot prevent people from copying it and using it for their own benefit. An example is Brazil where patented aids drugs are copied to save lives. Tens of millions of copies of Windows are being used free around the world. There is not a damn thing MS can do about it.

The wonderful promise of GPL is not that it's a cancer for IP owners, it is the cure for the cancer that is intellectual property. Software and other ideas should be a way to increase the value of tangible property.

The wealth of the earth is the earth and what it contains. The only way to ensure that people get a fair