Dvorak On Microsoft/Novell Deal

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."

Comments

Meta-flamebait

[2.7182]

I have come to think of any Dvorak story posted by Slashdot as meta-flamebait. They know it is just going to cause the comments to degenerate into a total circus of hatred.

Re:Meta-flamebait

[number6x]

I think its more that Dvorak is almost completely clueless, but is very well spoken and is a good writer. He sounds competent to the PHB's, but to anylone who is familiar with the GPL and open source, he sounds like a complete ignoramous. All GPL'd code must be copyrighted. The GPL cannot be applied to public domain software, and it cannot make proprietary code into public domain code. Just read the GPL. The GPL and Copyright go hand in hand. So no matter how well he writes, he just comes off as an idiot. Since so many paople take him seriously, this leads to the flame wars over the well written non-sense he prints.

Re:Meta-flamebait

[jsebrech]

I have come to think of any Dvorak story posted by Slashdot as meta-flamebait. They know it is just going to cause the comments to degenerate into a total circus of hatred.

They're not just flamebait, they're flamebait on purpose. The purpose of the dvorak flamebait articles is generating clicks on the articles in question, and generating the ad revenue linked with those clicks. This has even been admitted by dvorak (or one of the dvoraks, since it's likely to just be a name they assign to writers), and this admission of guilt has appeared on slashdot.

The key thing to learn about this is to never, ever, browse to a dvorak article, because that is exactly what they want you to do.

I call bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

why are we publicizing this FUD?

[dAzED1]

yeah, because Oracle cracked Linux. So did Veritas (which I was personally running products from on Linux servers as much as 5 years ago).

Bullsh*t. By putting this on the front page of /. taco, you're merely assisting MS's propaganda machine further demonize the GPL and Linux in general. I don't suppose you made charitable donations to SCO too, did you?

Dvorak once again shows his cluelessness

[GauteL]

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.

It's the Dvorak Clown!

[DittoBox]

John C. Dvorak has weighed in on the recent Novell-Microsoft pact. Among his insights [...]

That's not a group of words we see very often when coupled with that man's name.