I Suspect M$ That Has Broken The GPL

Doug writes "With all this recent heat from Microsoft about the validity of the GPL, I am drawn to wonder if they have if fact broken the GNU General Public License by stealing code from GNU software? You all know about how the thief always returns to the scene of the crime. If they hadn't done anything wrong this wouldn't be an issue. I wonder what it was that they horked..."

Comments

OK, so I used to work there...

[Anonymous Coward]

...and every few months e-mail from legal would come through reminding all employees to not even LOOK at GPL'd code.

Hard as it may be for Slashdotters to believe, there are too many people (and managers) with real, bona fide moral fiber for something like that to happen.

And even if there weren't people with morals, there are plenty of people there who are tired of Microsoft's legal troubles. The fear of most VPs is having a product recalled for legal reasons.

Doing something as stupid as using GPL code in a Microsoft product would, in Microspeak, be a serious CLM (Career Limiting Move) for a developer.

Furthermore, from a cultural standpoint, most Microsofties hold such disdain for GPL software that it would be too big a blow to their (rather large) egos to even consider using it in a Microsoft product.

Now, back to your regular April Fool's programming. Anyone listen to NPR's piece on Moon advertising?

Re:OK, so I used to work there...

[bluto29]

Whoa - OK, I agree that MS is rather careful. Serious questions for you: 1) In 1996, MS shipped the POSIX virtual environment from NutCracker, which can not, by any stretch of the imagination, be called "clean room code" WRT open source GPL products. In their zeal to avoid breaching the UNIX source copyright, the NutCracker team relied heavily upon open source for hints, pointers, behaviors, etc. Yes, they were also working to the IEEE 1003.1 spec, BUT they also wanted "UNIX" behavior. I know Pat Higby pretty well, and he is NO STRANGER to open source code. 2) MS has a huge team in India working on the services for Unix product line that runs on NT. Do you believe that this rather large team has no access to open source code? Who controls it? Is it the same manager in India who "controlled" the Excel team when a programmer put a mini version of flight simulator inside the shipping product? 3) What about the Interix product I mentioned above. The Interix team (prior to purchase by MS in June 1999) opennly stated, in writing, that the untilities shipped with Interix were based on open source. What happened to NEVER using open source? Serious comments, from persons with actual data, are appreciated. Opinions will go to /dev/null. -Bluto

Re:Microsoft driven bt morals too.

[Tony Shepps]

Bizarre, dude!

Taking a job isn't about ethics. It's about making a transaction whereby someone pays you do spend your time doing what they need to have done.

A company's actions don't reflect the ethical approaches of its employees. Haven't you ever been an employee?

It is NOT "perfectly OK" to spread FUD! That's just an unethical, immoral approach, on which we have lost the moral perspective because so many business majors have been taught otherwise.

It is NOT "perfectly OK" to embrace and extend. Standards depend entirely on the good will and cooperation of the developers. Crushing the standard in order to gain a better position for yourself is the moral equivalent of poisoning a stream to get rid of your waste.

Saying something is "true, as far as I can ascertain" is basically to nullify the statement. Ethics is clearly not the driving force of any company. You'll find out when you go to work for one.

If this is a 4/1 joke, you should know that making your joke realistic enough that it is not clearly a joke to a majority makes for a poor joke. If the majority are going to take your post seriously, then it demands a serious and studied reply anyway.

You clearly do not understand the GPL

[Brian Knotts]

You don't need to agree to the GPL to *use* the software.

You only need a license to *redistribute* the software.

From COPYING:

5. You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works. These actions are prohibited by law if you do not accept this License. Therefore, by modifying or distributing the Program (or any work based on the Program), you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so, and all its terms and conditions for copying, distributing or modifying the Program or works based on it.

Re:Microsoft driven bt morals too.

[unitron]

No matter how nice the people who work there might be, Microsoft probably won't ever touch any GPL'ed code for strictly selfish reasons, because they don't want to incur the least little bit of risk of getting into a court case where anybody outside of the company gets so much as a peek at any of their code for fear of the creation of a precedent. Once they allow any outsider to get a look at any of their code, it'll be easier and easier for other outsiders to come up with reasons that a court will go along with why they should be allowed access to that code.

Another reason is that if it would become public knowledge that they actually used the stuff they have been bad-mouthing, and that they thought it worth breaking the law to do so, it would be such a public relations nightmare that they dare not risk even the smallest chance of it happening. If you think the government's already in a good position to do to them now what they've been doing to customers for years, imagine the extra leverage to be gained if the federal courts caught them plagarizing outside code.

must be

[weasel]

Slashdot's idea of an April fools joke... one inane story after another with no links...

I "think" ?

[rkt]

So now stories come on slashdot just because someone starting "think"ing ? I think we are all Martians... and I also think think that Earth is actually flat... and I think in the parallel universe linux sucks.. and I think the movie Matrix should be given out free...

But who cares what I think... ?? Anyone ??

But it seems slashdot cares when someone points fingers at Microsoft....

I think this is an april Fools joke...

MY GOD IT IS TRUE!!!

[YoJ]

I thought this was a joke, too, but it's REAL!! Micro$oft really is stealing GPL code and using it in Windows! They are so evil I can't believe it! Look at this:

[nwhitehe@ip18] /mnt/cdrom/win95$ strings *.* | grep -i gpl | wc -l

9 !!!!!1!!??/!!!???!!!1

We need to come together as a community and tell Micro$oft what GPL is all about. Down with stealing intellectual property! Down with illegal copying! Except MP3's. And old DOS games. Those are cool. I played Leisure Suit Larry the other day, it was fun. I scored with a prostitute.

MICRO$HAFT IS 3V17!!!!!!!!1

April Fools? But where's the joke?

[DoorFrame]

Ok, so usually the point of April Fools jokes is to have a JOKE. There's usually a trick whereby somebody is fooled into believing something something that's not true.

But this is just boring. For some reason Slashdot has decided to flood us with inane crap all day. Not funny inane crap, just inane. Is anybody amused or laughing yet?

I'm kind of wondering if this is perhaps building to something. Maybe this is all part of a larger joke, a bigger better joke just waiting to burst from the seems of this site.

But I don't think so, I think they just think this is funny. It's not.

--

Short answer: NO.

[rjh]

Guys, please. This is the kind of paranoid delusional ranting that gives us all a bad name. Let's look at it from both a MS-is-the-Antichrist and MS-is-Just-A-Very-Ruthless-Competitor angle:

Bill Gates is the Antichrist:

If Bill Gates is the Antichrist, then don't you think he's read the Evil Overlords list? And somewhere on that Evil Overlords list, shouldn't there be I will be very careful to make sure all of the IP for my company's flagship products is on extraordinarily firm legal footing? If Bill Gates is the Antichrist, then you have to admit: he's a smart, wily, ruthless Antichrist.

The Devil doesn't need to break the rules. He's already the best in the world at cheating within the rules.

MS-as-Ruthless-Competitor:

If you believe this, then you have enough intelligence and reason to see how utterly absurd the question is in the first place. Bill Gates is terrified of the GPL; the company, as evidenced by Allchin's testimony, thinks it's unamerican, dangerous, and--worst of all--"stifling to innovation". Would Bill Gates really let any employee of his put anything in Microsoft code which "stifled" his company's ability to "innovate"?

... Good grief. I can't believe such a stupid question qualified for a Slashdot story. I'll just write it down to an April Fool's thing, but really, I don't see what the joke is.

I suspect that Microsoft is developing nukes.

[mwalker]

With all the recent heat from Microsoft above the top-secret R&D facility off the main campus, I am drawn to wonder if they are actually developing thermonuclear weaponry. You all know about how a massive infrared presence from satellite usually indicates a controlled test fission. I wonder what it was that they used as fissionable material...

....uh..... Right.

[Raving Lunatic]

You people have your heads up your asses. I was once directly involved (as a consultant) with a microsoft project through a fairly well-known consultancy, that used the sources for the GNU base utilities to construct... you guessed it: the base NT unix-like utilities. This kind of crap has been going on for the better part of a decade. And really, there's dick-all you can do about it. If I opened my mouth about this publicly, i'd seriously damage my career.

WHAT YOU SAY???

[edibleplastic]

'nuff sed.

I Suspect /. That Has Bad April Fools Joke

[MrHat]

...All your M$ are belong to us.
...For great justice.

Hey! Jamie!
1. Read the submission.
2. Follow the provided links. Read what those links point to. No links? Put it in the circular file. Or /dev/null. Or whatever you want to call it.
3. Read the submission again, checking for correct grammar and spelling. (Note that Commander "can't spell" Taco is not permitted to be in the room during this step).
4. If, after reading the submission, you don't wish you ended your life five minutes ago, then post.

That's all there is to it. I would have a real hard time bringing myself to post crap like this unless I had a 5% blood alcohol level and were in the middle of recieving oral sex. And I know nothing like that is going on in your geek compound.

Give both of our sets of eyes a rest. Don't post crap like this unless you plan to apologize profusely afterwards. God knows you'd demand an apology from Microsoft if they accused GPL projects of stealing code.


43rd Law of Computing: Anything that can go wr

MS (I hate them because they suck)

[NSupremo]

Normally, when someone steals code, it STILL WORKS after you are done.

April Fools

[Fervent]

And in other news, Steve Jobs was found to be stealing Cardigan sweaters from his local JCPenney's. And Linux Torvalds abducted several penguins from the front north Altantic.

Please...

Um, hello, grammar?

[AFCArchvile]

I Suspect M$ That Has Broken The GPL

That's about as grammatically correct as "Somebody set up us the bomb."

Is this an April Fool's joke?

[Eladio McCormick]

Now *this* is content free .

You know, back in my day, when we wanted to make up a false conspiracy theory, we did it the hard and right way, and fabricated evidence. Jamie, I'm sorry, but you lose.

The ethics of Capitalism??

[einhverfr]

yes, Microsoft and many other companies are driven by Ethics. I agree with you. THe basic case for Ethics goes like so:

There is one ultimate good, which is the life-blood of any business. It is called currency. Now many of you might be thinking I mean currency of information (i.e. making sure that your information is current) but I mean the old fashioned kind of currency-- profits. The greatest good is attained by attaining the largest sum of that ultimate Good (i.e. Money).

Not that this is a bad thing in and of itself. Money allows you to pay your employees so that they have time to help you change the world.

However, there is a problem that exists when companies are willing to leverage undue influence not to extend their profits but rather to crush competitors. This is an action which appears ethical when indeed it is not. For such behavior causes customers to begin to resent the "success" of the company which is not living up to its responisibility for fair play and look for alternatives. Hence the overall profit of the company is reduced in the long run.

4/1 troll theory

[perdida]

1) If I respond to this story on topic and sincerely, am I being trolled?

2) If I troll the story, am I trolling the story and being trolled?

Too confusing.. must go smoke a joint.

The Dark Side of the Force

[Shade, The]

What?! Linuxy software being turned to the Dark Side? Nooooooooo!!!
Cue Star Wars Scene:

Darth Gates: *wheezing noises* I am your father *more wheezing*
Tux Skyswimmer: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

You get the idea :)

M$ breaks GPL

[corphack]

That's an insult to GPL'ed code and GPL'd coders everywhere! Our code isn't that poorly crafted! To suggest that M$'s bugs are the result of their plagerizing the quality efforts of GPL coders is simply bad taste.

Microsoft driven bt morals too.

[ethics major]

As much as people like to think that Microsoft is a behemoth driven only by profit, the simple fact is that it does have an ethical position, and is driven by morals very fundamentally.

The reason for this is that MS is nothing more than the sum of its employees, being an Intellectual Property company.

The reason we all take jobs and the reason we all do anything at all is because of ethics. Its about duty, honour and responsibility.

The ethics of the MS employees will be expressed by the company as a whole at an emergent level.

I would hazard as follows: It is perfectly ok to spread FUD, to embrace and extend one's competitors, because that is what one's competitors would do to you. However, the GPL is an Ethical step too far, even for MS. Despite the fact that the GPL is itself designed to embrace and extend, MS is not about to start using GPL'ed code, not just because it is legally shady, but because it is wrong.

I have studied many organisations, commercial and otherwise, and what I say is true, as far as I can ascertain. Ethics is the driving force of any company, and though those ethicvs may leave much to be desired, they are still present.

Stealing the GPL is too much for MS.