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Round Table On Approaches To Source Code
Gandalf61 writes: "On siliconvalley.com, they've opened up a roundtable discussion concerning MS's Craig Mundie's recent attacks on the GPL. It's titled 'Code War,' and a panel of other-than-MS luminaries is on-board, and attacks on Mundie's the over-the-edge 3 May speech have begun. Mundie started the discussion, and one reply is now posted by a panel member, shredding the MS view of reality ... This looks to be fun." Since this submission rolled in, a number of posts have appeared in this moderated discussion set to continue for the next few days; RMS withdrew from the panel shortly before it began, though, and the result is a discussion which is engaging but perhaps not as fiery as it would be with Stallman in the ring. It's downright civil so far, in fact; hopefully it's a good environment for FUD-busting.
What about the Scheme license? That is GPL, with the exception that you can link Scheme in (and include the header files) without any need for your other stuff to be under a free license. In other words, if you make a change to Scheme, you have to release it under the GPL, but you can freely use Scheme even in proprietary stuff.
This would seem to fix Microsoft's worries. But it also makes it impossible to release a slightly incompatible Scheme (if MS really does "embrace and extend" they might be expected to try this). So I'd be interested to know whether MS considers the Scheme license to be a Pac-Man cancer or whatever. I'd even be interested to know what Brett Glass thinks of it.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
There are two issues here. First, a lot of people in the world community want to stop a major abuser. Who wants to be a dog on a leash, and change direction every time Microsoft yanks his chain?
Second, many people feel that open source software is just better. Who wants to use sausage software? If you knew what was in it, you probably wouldn't want it.
For me, the most important issue is not between open and proprietary software, it is between living peacefully in the world and abusiveness.
People say bad things about Microsoft on Slashdot, but the full truth is much worse. Microsoft is so abusive that I have never known or heard about anyone who understood the complete scope of Microsoft abusiveness.
Everyone who is knowledgeable about this seems to have a different set of Microsoft abuses to mention. Bruce Perens says in the SV.com Roundtable, "... you [Microsoft] have used your dominant position in the marketplace to force out competition through the
If Microsoft's main intention seemed to be to create good software, I think that most people would be less opposed to closed source. But Microsoft's intentions seem to me to be extremely hostile. If you follow the effect of their actions carefully, the company's main purpose seems to be to abuse its users. A case might be logically made that, for Microsoft, making a profit is secondary.
Bush's education improvements were
We're coders of the round table
We dance when e'er we're able
We do subroutines
And demo scenes
With perl code impecc-Able.
We dine well here in Camelot
We eat pizza's and coffee and read spam a lot