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[ox-en] Why is Microsoft Attacking the GPL?



Hi Stefan,

Bryan has missed out one important (IMHO the most important) result of
MS' FUD campaign: the splintering of the Free Software/Open Source
community.

If you examine MS executives' earlier statements about Open Source
software, most (not all) of them fail to clearly distinguish between
the GPL and other Free Software licenses, lumping them all into one
category and damning them.  Now, I don't know whether this is
deliberate or accidental, but the effect it is having at the
grassroots is that the non-GPL license advocates (of which the BSD
license advocates constitute the largest part) see this as unfair,
since, as Bryan pointed out, MS' basic grouse is with the GPL.

The BSD advocates are hence tending to take attitudes ranging from,
``Yeah, we must do something about this'' through ``We are safe, so
let's not get excited'' ultimately to, ``MS is right, the GPL is a
virus, and this is a good time to kill this heathenish license once
and for all''.  I've seen enough about this on mailing lists which I
subscribe to to be extremely concerned at the trend things are taking
within the Free Software community.

I fear that the GPL/GNU/Linux advocates are about to be isolated in
their own community, ending up as a vocal group which slowly gets
silenced in the morass of FUD and license envy generated by both its
detractors as well as one-time supporters.

Regards,

-- Raju

"Stefan" == Stefan Meretz <stefan.meretz hbv.org> writes:

    Stefan> http://www2.linuxjournal.com/articles/currents/0032.html
    Stefan> Why is Microsoft Attacking the GPL?

    Stefan> by Bryan Pfaffenberger <bp virginia.edu> 27-June-2001

    Stefan> Microsoft sees a threat to its underlying business model,
    Stefan> which explains the virulence of this particular round of
    Stefan> FUD.

    Stefan> [snip]
-- 
Raju Mathur          raju kandalaya.org           http://kandalaya.org/
_______________________
http://www.oekonux.org/


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