Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Gets Novell Docs Before OSS Community
flydpnkrtn sends in an InformationWeek article arising out of Novell's SEC filing yesterday, asking: "Is this just more Novell-bashing material? Or is this no big deal? And of course this type of thing runs contrary to the 'spirit of the GPL'..." "Under its controversial alliance with Novell, Microsoft is entitled to receive key technical documentation from the Linux distributor even if that documentation is not generally available to open source software developers, according to a Novell document."
...all this talk about the "spirit" of the GPL. It's so deliciously subjective. It allows the cultic whackjobs who advocate using this type of language to make up just about any kind of arbitrary, unwritten rule that they might want, and then claim that adhering to said rule is necessary to adhere to the "spirit" of the GPL.
That's the point of such language; to try and claim that the terms specifically set on paper in the license aren't all parties to the license have to comply with, but that there are a whole heap of additional, unwritten stipulations which said parties have to agree to as well, one of which being the general worship of Richard Stallman as God.
I'm wondering why I still post here, actually...I haven't used Linux for weeks, now. As much as I used to love the operating system from a purely technical point of view, I've been completely repelled from using it thanks to the FSF and the army of mindless zealots that follow it. I wonder if that's happened to many other people, recently.