Microsoft Makes Second GPLv2 Release

angry tapir writes "Microsoft has made its second release under the General Public License in two days with software for Moodle, an 'open-source course management system that teachers use to create online learning Web sites for their classes[, which] has about 30 million users in 207 countries.' It comes on the heels of Redmond contributing drivers to the Linux community. No reports as yet on dropping temperatures in hell."

Comments

Not contribution; use

[CarpetShark]

This is an moodle plugin for microsoft's own groupware. Like their previous driver offering, it's not a wholehearted contribution to making an open source project better, but instead just a thing to make microsoft's own services work better when people need to use open source.

It's good to see a willingness to do even this much, but hardly a staggering change of heart. They've a long way to go yet.

Re:Not contribution; use

[dword]

This is the change some of us wanted and I believe it to be a very good one! Why would anyone have the right to force Microsoft to contribute to open-source? What we really needed was compatibility. Nobody cares about the way Microsoft manages its code and nobody should have the right to bother them about it.

Re:Not contribution; use

[Chyeld]

Microsoft is a victim of their reputation, a reputation honestly earned by their past actions. When everyone who ever gets in bed with you turns up dead or with a story of barely escaping alive the next day, sometimes it's appropriate for others to label you a black widow and liken you to a praying mantis.

No one claims that anyone in the group you listed are contributing to open source purely because they are altruistic and without any self interest. But that's the point, everyone on your list 'plays nice' with open source because they have an interest in seeing it succeed. Microsoft, however, has never acted as if open source was anything but a despicable wretch deserving a slow painful death. Their own self interest, therefore, leads people to suspect that perhaps the apples they are offering are poisoned.

It's also important to note that in both of the cases where they've done this, the contribution wasn't a general "here's some improvements" code, it was "here is some code which would allow you to work better with our proprietary services, so more people would be willing to use those." Anyone who thinks that Microsoft would continue to maintain such interoperability code should it prove a disadvantage to MS should avoid real estate brokers with deals concerning bridges.

We were thinking of using Moodle

[Canazza]

AS far as I'm aware, the only thing they have for Moodle is a Windows Live Plugin, that lets you do Windows Live Searches and have some sort of MSN Messnger functionality.

This isn't Microsoft caring about GPL or whatever, it's about a small project that gives them more hooks into more websites. It gives people learning to use the web in a formal environment MORE Microsoft.

Re:v2? why not v3?

[Freetardo Jones]

Hmm, this is interesting. The more cynical part of me wonders why, and can't help but recall the protections against patent litigation built into GPLv3, and notably missing from GPLv2...

What's interesting about it? The Linux kernel is GPLv2 so a GPLv3 driver is unlikely to make it in. Moodle is also GPLv2 so it's perfectly logical that they'd release their plugin that works with it under the same license. Did you forget that whole big thing about GPLv3 being incompatible with GPLv2? In fact, it would be stupid on their part to release source code to work with programs under incompatible license terms which would disallow anyone from legitimately being able to distribute it.

Re:So that's their plan....

[Freetardo Jones]

Sue for what? They can't sue you for anything if they themselves release it under a license that says you can freely use, modify and distribute the source code. This imagined case would be thrown out of court.

Re:Bravo

[bloodninja]

Moodle is a preexisting OSS project, this is just a plugin for making Windows Live web services work with it. This does suggest that MS doesn't think that they can kill moodle; but it isn't their offering.

Actually, it might lead to courses that use Moodle (my university does) to require Windows Live Messenger for each student. That means that Linux users, who otherwise could use the Moodle coursework, will now not be able to interoperate fully with the rest of their coursemates. This seems to me to be adding an option for a _dependency_ on Windows to Moodle. I am afraid that many courses will exercise that option.