Surely one of the main points about linux' being open source is that it is very difficult to fork the tree? Let's say that M$ does decide to do its own distribution and does manage to create some half-way decent code to improve the usability of the system. If that code is derived from the original code-base they have to put it out under the GPL, in which case it's not a problem. Otherwise, they can put it out under a proprietory licence, sure, but look what happened with KDE & Qt: harmony and GNOME.
They're not going to rewrite the system from scratch; most of the components are Free: how could they marginalise the community? Furthermore, what does it matter who develops the code, so long as it remains Free? That surely is the point: it doesn't matter who is developing the kernel or the libs, nor what they're called, as long as the code is Free.
Hear, hear. If this does turn out to be for real, I s'pose the thing is just to put the site up somewhere other than in the US. To the extent that Illiad remains the author and remains in the States, this may not help but if he's game, I know we are.
Slashdot Mirror
We're currently suing these folks. You can get the details here.
Surely one of the main points about linux' being open source is that it is very difficult to fork the tree? Let's say that M$ does decide to do its own distribution and does manage to create some half-way decent code to improve the usability of the system. If that code is derived from the original code-base they have to put it out under the GPL, in which case it's not a problem. Otherwise, they can put it out under a proprietory licence, sure, but look what happened with KDE & Qt: harmony and GNOME.
They're not going to rewrite the system from scratch; most of the components are Free: how could they marginalise the community? Furthermore, what does it matter who develops the code, so long as it remains Free? That surely is the point: it doesn't matter who is developing the kernel or the libs, nor what they're called, as long as the code is Free.
Hear, hear. If this does turn out to be for real, I s'pose the thing is just to put the site up
somewhere other than in the US. To the extent that Illiad remains the author and remains in the
States, this may not help but if he's game, I know we are.
I know the best ones are the most convincing but
if it turns out that this is s'posed to be a joke
I shan't be laughing.