Interesting People mailing list archives
IP: Once more into the breach!: Good Morning Silicon Valley Thu May 17 12:30:26 EDT 2001
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Fri, 18 May 2001 09:01:16 -0400
Once more into the breach! Representatives of the open-source movement Wednesday took issue with <http://www.siliconvalley.com/docs/opinion/gmsv/archive01/morn05032001.htm>Microsoft's recent criticism of the <http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html>GNU General Public License, lambasting <http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/craig/05-03sharedsource.asp>its Shared Source initiative in a caustic <http://perens.com/Articles/StandTogether.html>open letter to the company. Dismissing Redmond's recent assertions that free-software licensing undermines corporations' intellectual property rights and is generally "unhealthy" for the software business, the letter's authors -- among them <http://web.siliconvalley.com/content/sv/2001/05/03/opinion/dgillmor/weblog/torvalds.htm>Linux creator Linus Torvalds, Open Source advocate <http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2001-05-02-019-20-NW-CY-MS>Eric Raymond and Free Software Foundation guru <http://www.gnu.org/gnu/linux-and-gnu.html>Richard Stallman -- suggest instead that the GPL is unhealthy only for Microsoft's monopoly. "It's the share and share alike feature of the GPL that intimidates Microsoft, because it defeats their Embrace and Extend strategy," the authors wrote. "Microsoft tries to retain control of the market by taking the result of open projects and standards, and adding incompatible Microsoft-only features in closed-source. Adding an incompatible feature to a server, for example, then requires a similarly-incompatible client, which forces users to "upgrade". Microsoft uses this deliberate-incompatibility strategy to force its way through the marketplace. But if Microsoft were to attempt to "embrace and extend" GPL software, they would be required to make each incompatible "enhancement" public and available to its competitors. Thus, the GPL threatens the strategy that Microsoft uses to maintain its monopoly." Harsh words, and ones that have inspired little more than a laconic response from Redmond, which <http://www.zdnet.com/enterprise/stories/linux/0,12249,5082985,00.html>responded to the letter with a single terse sentence: "We appreciate the dialog on this issue -- it's exactly the type of discussion Craig was hoping to foster."
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- IP: Once more into the breach!: Good Morning Silicon Valley Thu May 17 12:30:26 EDT 2001 David Farber (May 18)