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Microsoft and the GPL
rleyton wrote in to tell us about yet another Microsoft related GPL story. He says "The Linux Journal has an interesting article analysing why Microsoft is attacking the GPL. It makes for interesting reading, and ends with a comment on the possibility that Microsoft will be seeking to pursuade the U.S. Government to forbid distribution of federally funded software under the GPL."
I do agree with the author's conclusion - I think a serious lobbying effort is now or will soon be underway to bar institutions receiving federal funds (read: universities) from releasing GPL'ed code.
Significant kernel and userland code has and continues to come from coders under gov't employ or grad students. Most of the Linux network drivers were written by Donald Becker of NASA, and the copyright is in fact assigned to the US Gov't, administered by the NSA (!).
It's true that currently, most code produced directly by the Federal gov't must be released without copyright. But it's also true that this code can be relicensed and distributed under the GPL (it's public domain, remember?), and it's also true that not all institutions that recieve federal funds are required to release code to the public domain (think universities).
Now, MSFT doesn't have a prayer of getting a bill blocking the GPL passed on its own, but it might be able to slip in a rider on some other bill.
My nightmare is MSFT sweet-talking the gov't on the issue with the siren song of licensing revenue. You know, sort of like how universities already do with patents, where they take public cash for research and sell to the highest bidder?
Watch out.
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
just curious...
does anyone actually believe that microsoft attacking gpl could have any impact whatsoever, besides making them look like a whiney gorilla?
Yet I'm quite sure that if RMS uttered the following, Microsoft would be crying Communism.
It's not what Microsoft executives say that surprises me anymore. It's that most media just print it as if it was coherent.
Peace PatientZero
Freedom to fear. Freedom from thought. Freedom to kill.
I guess the War on Terror really is about freedom!
As I have pointed out in a paper I wrote a few years ago (www.seiferth-ryan.com) the Government doesn't directly distribute ANY GPL. It must be released by a third party usually an individual since few organizations until the last few years released anything GPL'd. Federally funded software is most generally distributed without a copyright of any kind (Title 17, Section 105).
Furthermore, storing or distributing any files in a proprietary file format should be forbidden for all government offices. They should only be allowed to use a given file format if full specs for the format are publically and freely available and are unencumbered in any way by patents or other IP law.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
What Microsoft doesn't want you to understand is that by playing their rational game, you lose, they win.
Doing business is much like playing games. No wonder some praise Go or other strategy games for learning business tactics. It's not just business, but all competition, such as evolution, is much based on "games".
Game theory is a branch of mathematics that deals with identifying winning strategies and situations in games, such as business.
Drama theory is a generalization of the game theory that takes into account irrationality. Irrationality, in this case, means just short-term irrationality. On long term, or on another scale, it's very rational.
Drama theory gives explanations to why people get mad, envious, revengeful, bullying, and what not. These are usually considered very negative aspects of life, and I'm not trying to say that they shouldn't be, but their function really is just level the playing field when you get stuck in a losing situation. They are rational at some level.
Revolutions, violent demonstrations, and wars (''war is just a continuation of politics'') are examples of trying to change the rules. Others more accepted ones are boycotts, work strikes, and so on. Religions are not usually rational - but amazingly they are often helpful to the followers. Even if a certain God of Vows (such as Mithra) doesn't exist, believing in his powers and making business deals or marriages in his name helps in building a strong society. Irrationality pays, big.
Microsoft wants businesses to play by the traditional rules of the business game. Supporting the proprietary business model may be rational in many cases. But the problem is that Microsoft has attained a game-theoretically sustainable winning position. You can only win by changing the rules, which may require slight "irrationality".
It's perfectly rational to get red mad at Microsoft, and give up short-term business opportunities, to perhaps be able to compete in a healthy market later.
Microsoft is also trying to talk generally about the ''best'' business model for software industry, although Linux and Open Source movements are an ad hoc response of the IT world to combat specially against Microsoft's unhealthy monopoly. The rationale for general context is completely irrational and irrelevant for the current specific situation in the operating system industry.
GPL means changing the rules, especially for this particular situation. It means starting a revolution, which may in some cases mean giving up the proprietary model even where it might have been useful otherwise. The target is Microsoft.
This is what Microsoft is afraid of.
This article really misses the boat.
If we backstep 3-5 years, we see a different computing environment. Microsoft OWNS the desktop and office. UNIX OWNS servers.
Then, we look back another 15 years. CP/M is the best OS available. Microsoft buys DOS for $50000, ports BASIC to DOS, and undersells CP/M by a substantial amount, and owns desktops.
Then, to 1995. OS/2 comes out. Windows 95 comes out. OS/2 is good, Windows 95 is junk. Windows 95 sells for under $100. OS/2 sells for a few hundred. Microsoft owns graphical user interface environments. Mac could have owned it, but they made the same error made by CP/M and IBM - they went after the high end.
The low end takes over. This pattern has repeated itself over and over.
Back to the mid to late 1990s. Microsoft was concerned. As networking became more relevant, they needed a network presence. Hence Windows NT. It rapidly looked like NT would take over the low end server market. It didn't matter that it sucked badly compared to UNIX - it cost a third of UNIX. The low end would rule again.
However, as NT was starting to make ground, enter linux. UNIX admins EVERYWHERE set up linux boxes to do server tasks for free instead of tolerating NT. This ate into Microsoft's market.
Microsoft would OWN the low end server market today if it were not for open source OSs, primarily linux.
And now Microsoft is attacking the GPL. They are attacking it because it owns markets that otherwise would rightfully belong to Microsoft, following the age old rule that the cheaper system wins independently of function. They can now see the writing on the wall. Linux (and *BSD) has eaten the low end server market, and Microsoft is not getting it back. You cannot undersell free, and Microsoft has never won by competing on quality of software.
This is alien to their entire business strategy. They make crappier products, sell them cheaply, provide no support, and own the market. Once they own one market, they leverage into other markets as strongly as possible.
This strategy today makes them a PROFIT ABOVE TAXES OF A BILLION DOLLARS A MONTH. And Microsoft wants more. If they could merely keep new quality software out of the GPL, they have a chance.
The GPL, you see, does not prevent a business from using software. But it does assign the IP to the open source community. And that scares Redmond to death. Open source has already eaten markets Microsoft had earmarked. They are now worried about the home base - the main monopoly, the billion dollar a month monopoly.
Now THAT is something to worry about.
The GPL is based on copyright law. They could change copyright law, couldn't they (hell, the do every time disney asks them to)? I'm sure dubya wouldn't mind helping out if one of his big business buddies asked him to. Something along the lines of "copyright law applies as long as the work in question is purchased, if it is given away free then the owner forefits copyright on the work." Also the GPL has never been tested fully in court and M$ have access to a LOT of lawyers.
In addition to that you said yourself that you installed everything, that's uneccessary (I do it too, so if I learn about a new tool I don't have to bother installing it), but you are given complete freedom to install just the OS or the OS plus any extra software you want (that is provided that is).
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
Bill Gates, "The ecosystem where you have free software and commercial software--and customers always get to decide which they use--that's a very important and healthy ecosystem"
... which is why Windows XP will come bundled with a browser, media player, fire-wall, email client, and ISP.
_f
Tha ability of GPL'ed software to outlast companies and organizations that create them is an interesting feature to focus on. Because of this capability, GPL software would seem to have more chances to "get it right" than Microsoft's traditional competitors.
** The opinions expressed here are my own, and do not reflect those of my employers - past, present, or future**
The thing I don't quite understand is why they haven't done this in the past. I mean - all it would take would be for them to violate the GPL in some little application they release and then get taken to court by some developer.
Of course if the GPL is upheld and a case like that gets kicked all the way up to the Supreme Court then they really would be up a creek (if the Supreme Court upheld the GPL), so that might be a good reason not to. And maybe that's what they're afraid of.
I think they've already played out that scenario and looked into the GPL and they have good reason to think they would lose (in spite of all their lawyers).
So barring that what can they do? They could try and blacklist GPL programmers and call us all socialists or communists or something =) Unfortunately for them, McCarthy already tried that and look where it got him.
They could go after the developers by persuading Congress that GPL programs are written by hackers and that it is illegal to write software with a compiler which doesn't embed some unique id into the binary which allows the developer to be tracked down.
I don't know - what's the worst possible thing M$ could do that would cripple Open Source? M$ is trying to discredit and destroy a philosphy, which is historically a lot more difficult to do than going after an individual or a corporation. Even countries that have used much more extreme measures than anything M$ has tried have failed when it comes to that.
ARRRGH. C'mon people. Ask yourself, and really think about this. Do you really think that most people are going to switch to Linux, if MS continues with it's smarttags, self-avoiding cookies, subscription models, and forced registration?
I am so sick of all the "linux will win out in the end" fervour. It's not happening anytime soon, guys. Market penetration and an established userbase are working against you. Look, I firmly believe that any MS server platform is and will continue to be utter SHITE. But, most people that use computers are not even interseted in the damn things. It's just part of their job. They go home and vegetate in front of the TV. They are office drones and are concentrating on the BBQ this weekend, not contemplating the IPO of Mandrake. Mandrake what? All they know about Linux is the FUD they will hear about from major online news feeds, and sorry to say, but for the majority of computer (L)users, /. is not their source for news that matters.
They have no idea what the GPL is. Or what a BSD license is. --Now, this next part is crucial-- if they see the words "linux" and "virus" in the same sentence, you can bet that their 6'oclock-news-conditioned brains are going to latch on to that real tight. All the discussion on these MS topics for the last while has been never-ending posts about how wrong MS is and endless justifications about how much better Linux is than windoze. That's nice, but the users DON'T KNOW THAT. Let me state this another way, with extra emphasis -- MOST PEOPLE ARE COMPLETELY IGNORANT ABOUT THEIR COMPUTER. (In fact, 90% of respondants to my fictional survey said they find computers downright uninteresting.) File that away in your brain for future reference please. Because although we are knowledgeable and they are not, they pay our salaries, they make the bulk of the purchases, they run the companies we work for.
Those bad hackers use Linux, hippies use Linux, RMS never showers, chicks dig Windows, Linux is a virus, GPL kills the U.S. economy, GPL kills market innovation, Linux is bad for the ecology, Linux-distro IPO overvalution burst the .com bubble. You name it, MS will say it, people will eat it up. If not MS, someone else would. Hell, I wouldnt be suprised if MS went to court ( on a pretense just to test the GPL in court) and argued that Linux is leveraging it's "free" ( as in beer) status and bundling everything under the fscking sun into its OS, and is therfore anti-competitive to the software industry as a whole.
So the ultimate test is this:
Until Linux as easy to install, use and has the applications that we all know and love (or hate), and is no more confusing or intimidating as Windows, AND have a defensive marketing strategy to fend off whatever crap MS or whoever else is threatened by Linux, OSS, GPL, or whatever, then maybe you have a chance of making MS eat our collective shorts. In short, until the OSS movement IS Microsoft.
P.S. Has anybody used XP yet? It looks like an OS for toddlers. Big, gawdy Fisher-Price/Tonka Truck icons and buttons. Very non-intimidating, and I'm using the professional beta. They really dumbed the OS down. I wonder what the final "server" release will be like? *shudder*