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Dvorak On Microsoft/Novell Deal

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the they-all-wear-party-hats dept.

zaxios writes, "John C. Dvorak has weighed in on the recent Novell-Microsoft pact. Among his insights: 'Microsoft has been leery of doing too much with Linux because of all the weirdness with the licenses and the possibility that one false move would make a Microsoft product public domain at worst, or subject to the GPL at best.' But now, 'the idea is to create some sort of code that is jammed into Linux and whose sole purpose is to let some proprietary code run under Linux without actually "touching" Linux in any way that would subject the proprietary code to the GPL.' According to Dvorak, it's only a matter of time before Linux is 'cracked' by Microsoft, meaning Microsoft figures out a way to run proprietary code on it."

2 of 218 comments (clear)

  1. I call bullshit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    He has no idea of what he is talking about. Of course one can already run proprietary code in Linux. Many libraries are available under the LGPL instead of GPL. This deal does not change much to that fact.

  2. Dvorak once again shows his cluelessness by GauteL · · Score: 5, Informative

    1. Use of a bit of GPL code mixed with proprietary code does not mean that All Your Code Are Belong To Us, it means that Microsoft would have to remove the GPL infringing code, and possibly pay damages to the copyright owner.

    2. Nothing at all is stopping you from running proprietary code on a GNU/Linux system, as long as the GPL license on the GNU/Linux parts of the system is honoured. You can easily use the Linux kernel, the GNU Tools and put a proprietary graphical system on it or just running proprietary software packages. Apple uses quite a few GNU tools, yet keeps Aqua closed, and lots of vendors have released proprietary software packages for Linux.