If you’re like most people, you have neither the time nor the
patience to plough through the quagmire of corporate rhetoric at
http://www.microsoft.com/Business/Licensing/SharedSource/.
Fortunately, what Microsoft is actually saying, beneath all the
obfuscatory verbiage, is very simple. Here’s an executive
summary:
Software users and programmers of the world, have we
got an offer for you!
- First, we’ll let you pay us for the privilege of seeing the
source code to our software, bugs and all. - Then, we’ll use your work to raise the price of our next
release. including anything you contributed. You won’t get paid for
your creative work, and you’ll have no rights in it. If we’re
feeling nice, maybe we’ll give you a discount on the next release.
Then again, maybe not. - Oh, and by the way…if you try to use any of what you learned
from helping us fix our bugs for your own purposes, we’ll sue your
ass off and smother you in lawyers.
Such a deal!
We here at Microsoft call this “protecting intellectual property
rights in order to create a sustainable business model”. Um, that
would be our intellectual property and our
business model. You surely weren’t thinking we cared about
your business or your rights, were you?
What’s ours is ours. And if you cooperate on “shared source”,
what’s yours will be ours too!
Have a nice day — and remember (eyes misting, hand held to
heart) we’re doing it all to support “innovation”. —
<<a href=”Eric S.
Raymond>
—
The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to permit
the conquered Eastern peoples to have arms. History teaches that
all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms
have prepared their own downfall by doing so. — Hitler, April 11
1942, revealing the real agenda of “gun control”