The Wall Street Journal via MSNBC offers this precis of the most
recent volleys in the shared source/unAmerican GPL saga. While
remaining gentlemanly about the whole thing, it takes some recent
Microsoft claims to task and even takes up for the GPL by offering
counterexamples of successful companies that provide proprietary
software for Linux without endangering themselves and includes a
quote from the FSF noting that GPL violations aren’t instant cause
for legal jihad.
“Indeed, many of the nation’s biggest companies,
including International Business Machines Corp. and Oracle Corp.,
regularly release proprietary programs that work with Linux, and
Tivo Inc. built its Tivo digital video recorder on top of Linux.
What’s more, some other open-source software, such as FreeBSD and
Apache, are distributed under an entirely different license than
Linux, and have virtually no restrictions on them at all. For
example, Apple Computer Inc.’s new proprietary Macintosh operating
system makes use of FreeBSD.”“Mr. Mundie said he didn’t have concrete examples of companies
being harmed by Linux or the GPL license. He conceded that some
companies might indeed be able to use Linux and not risk their
other intellectual property, but said doing so would require “an
army of lawyers” because of the complexity of the GPL. He also said
it was too early to conclude that using Linux was entirely safe for
companies, since many of the issues haven’t been tried in a
courtroom. “Time will tell,” he said.”
News value? Not that Microsoft has something wrong, but that the
Wall Street Journal and MSNBC are saying so to the extent any
reporter practicing the traditional US variation on objectivity is
free to say so.
Work continues apace on reviving nofud.linuxtoday.com, by the
way, at which time the readers who have a violent opposition to
anything Microsoft on these pages and an even more violent
opposition to creating an account and setting the Microsoft filter
‘on’ will get a bit of a respite.
Some browsers under Linux don’t like MSNBC, so here’s a link to
the body
of the story