Microsoft's Code Contribution Due To GPL Violation

ozmanjusri writes "While Microsoft presented its recent embrace of the GPL as 'a break from the ordinary,' and the press spoke of them as going to great lengths to engage the open source community,' as is often the case with Microsoft, it turns out they had an ulterior motive. According to Stephen Hemminger, an engineer with Vyatta, Microsoft's Hyper-V used open-source components in a network driver and the company released the code to avoid legal action over a GPL violation. Microsoft's decision to embrace the GPL was welcomed by many in the open source community, but their failure to honestly explain the reason behind the release will have squandered this opportunity to build trust, something which is sadly lacking in most people's dealings with Microsoft."

Comments

Makes the GPL real in their eyes.

[slack_justyb]

I for one welcome this news.

It shows that Microsoft actually respects the GPL and believes it to be a license that can be held up in court. Or at least, they don't want to try to test the validity of the GPL.
At any rate, it gives us some insight as to Microsoft's view on Linux, since they've been silent for quite some time about the topic.

Re:sooo...

[BasilBrush]

Exactly. By doing this Microsoft have added weight to their argument that businesses shouldn't use GPL because it's viral nature is dangerous. Of course it's a poor argument, but perfectly good for them to spin to suit their agenda.

Perhaps they did it on purpose.

Good business

[redelm]

Frankly, I'm pleased at this explanation. I'd very much rather MSFT accept the GPL and OpenSource as a sound business concept than merely out of some arbitrary corporate policy decision. Which could easily be reversed in the continuous "Change" ego-stroking.

Here, it appears that in spite of their best efforts and doubtless strong admonishments that GPL code found its' way into a key product. Good. They've learned they can't be completely leakproof. So will have to comply. Underforce is fine, because it is the most certain and sincere.

As for "trust", what a load of BS! Shareholders generally cannot even trust their Boards nor employees who by law and custom are supposed to look out for their interests. Why should the rest of us expect any better?

Trust is only a precursor to betrayal like Google. Trust is neither required nor desired in business. Much more reliable to trust persuit of self-interest. Business is not family life. There are no bonds of affection. Delusional to pretend there are. And stupid to lean on these bonds too hard anyways.

"Built trust???"

[Joey Vegetables]

Trust must be earned. IBM, the Microsoft of an earlier era, has abandoned many of the anticompetitive and fraudulent actions of its past, and thereby helped to earn trust and respect. Microsoft could do the same, at very little cost or risk to itself, in various ways. For instance, it could agree not to sue reimplementers of .NET (Mono, etc.) and SMBFS/CIFS (Samba, etc.), or list the alleged "patent problems" with Linux that it has claimed in the past. But half-hearted measures such as releasing software under the GPL when it legally was required to do so, or the very limited promises it has made surrounding .NET, don't quite cut it for me.

Re:"Built trust???"

[mcgrew]

My problem with Microsoft isn't their business practices (it would be if I were their partner of competetitor), it's their software design and overall philosophy: "Do it the Microsoft way or no way. We have a monopoly so the customer doesn't matter."

From their changing each version of almost any product as to cause one to need a complete retraining, to their lack of quality control, to their onorous "activation" and the need to type in a long string of alphanumerc characters just to install an OS, to Active-X and non-standards compliance... the list goes on. I avoid Microsoft whenever I can because I, personally, don't like their products (Excel is an exception; but maybe it's only good because the others are so gawdoffal bad).

If they'd change the attitude they have towards their customers, I might become one again. If you like their products, give them your money and enjoy. I'll continue to run Linux and curse the necessity of using MS at work. I'm glad I have no need of a spreadsheet at home, maybe one of these days I'll fire up the OO spreadsheet just to see how it compares.

Vital information not given

[abigsmurf]

All the information about this story is in 3 pages, all of which seem to link to each other as a source. There's a very fuzzy picture about what went on. Big questions I have about the story:

The issue appears to be that there were drivers linked to open source code. Which exact binaries, which GPL'ed code?

What are the timescales? Was the discovery of GPL'ed code made before or after MS released the code? If before, how long before? It's not clear on any of the pages.

Was the GPL'ed code able to be licensed through other means? Is there a possibility they decided to make this GPL'ed code a while ago and decided to link to other GPL'ed code because of this?

I don't mind doing a bit of my own research to get the full facts of a story but having to read 3 vague blog posts and still coming out non the wiser is irritating.

Re:First Laugh

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Chrome OS has the potential to hit Windows 7 hard,

Of all the companies I trust on my desktop less than Microsoft, Google is number one. Microsoft just wants me to give them money. Google wants to know everything about me.

That, and I bought a computer damnit, not a cloud-computing terminal. I haven't used a terminal since the 90's, and have no desire to return to that world. At least now when I use a terminal, it's into a machine I own.