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Responses to ADTI Paper
Everyone and their brother has something to say about the silly and incoherent ADTI paper released yesterday. It doesn't even seem worth the effort to me - it's so internally inconsistent that I can't imagine it convincing anyone of anything. Nevertheless, David Skoll of Roaring Penguin has a good rebuttal, and Newsforge ? pointed out that the MITRE study that's been kicking around for so long is now public, and took a look at the differences between the two. Update: 06/11 18:43 GMT by M : Another rebuttal, by John Viega and Bob Fleck of Secure Software.
Wired has an article from almost a week ago titled Did MS Pay for Open-Source Scare.
Why does the author keep referring to the IP community and the "GPL community" as separate things? He even says that the GPL competes with US copyright law. This guy either has a fundamental lack of understanding about copyright or is a bald-faced liar. GPL'd software is IP as much as any proprietary software. GPL'd software uses copyright law as its basis, just as proprietary software does. The only issue here is the licensing terms. The only term that they take issue with is the fact that they can't simply steal the code and incorporate it into proprietary products because they would have to release the source to those products. That's their whole gripe.
They don't even consider the fact that most proprietary licenses are far more harsh than the GPL. In fact, you don't even have to agree to the GPL to use GPL'd software. If you don't agree, then basic copyright law applies. If you do agree, then you get additional rights, over and above what traditional copyright law allows, albeit with some obligations as well. I think that any claim about the restrictiveness of the GPL license is disingenuous at best.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
I was quoted in the document as a "programming expert". Er, not exactly. My specialty is installation programs and configuration management. Yes, I code, but in the open source world, I'm not an important contributor. Also, in my email exchange with Mr. Brown, I pointed out that I was not an expert in the GPL, yet he specifically cites me about aspects of the GPL. That particular portion was quite possible my least favorite of everything I wrote because I neglected to mention you only need to publicly release your own source code if you publicly release the binaries. This is a glaring omission and I must apologize to the Open Source community for my own stupidity.
-- Will program for bandwidth