IP: Once more into the breach!: Good Morning Silicon Valley Thu May 17 12:30:26 EDT 2001

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

> Once more into the breach! Representatives of the open-source movement 
> Wednesday took issue with 
> <http://www.siliconvalley.com/docs/opinion/gmsv/archive01/morn05032001.htm>Microsoft's 
> recent criticism of the <http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html>GNU General 
> Public License, lambasting 
> <http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/craig/05-03sharedsource.asp>its 
> Shared Source initiative in a caustic 
> <http://perens.com/Articles/StandTogether.html>open letter to the company. 
> Dismissing Redmond's recent assertions that free-software licensing 
> undermines corporations' intellectual property rights and is generally 
> "unhealthy" for the software business, the letter's authors -- among them 
> <http://web.siliconvalley.com/content/sv/2001/05/03/opinion/dgillmor/weblog/torvalds.htm>Linux 
> creator Linus Torvalds, Open Source advocate 
> <http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2001-05-02-019-20-NW-CY-MS>Eric 
>  Raymond and Free Software Foundation guru 
> <http://www.gnu.org/gnu/linux-and-gnu.html>Richard Stallman -- suggest 
> instead that the GPL is unhealthy only for Microsoft's monopoly. "It's the 
> share and share alike feature of the GPL that intimidates Microsoft, 
> because it defeats their Embrace and Extend strategy," the authors wrote. 
> "Microsoft tries to retain control of the market by taking the result of 
> open projects and standards, and adding incompatible Microsoft-only 
> features in closed-source. Adding an incompatible feature to a server, for 
> example, then requires a similarly-incompatible client, which forces users 
> to "upgrade". Microsoft uses this deliberate-incompatibility strategy to 
> force its way through the marketplace. But if Microsoft were to attempt to 
> "embrace and extend" GPL software, they would be required to make each 
> incompatible "enhancement" public and available to its competitors. Thus, 
> the GPL threatens the strategy that Microsoft uses to maintain its 
> monopoly." Harsh words, and ones that have inspired little more than a 
> laconic response from Redmond, which 
> <http://www.zdnet.com/enterprise/stories/linux/0,12249,5082985,00.html>responded 
> to the letter with a single terse sentence: "We appreciate the dialog on 
> this issue -- it's exactly the type of discussion Craig was hoping to foster."



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