IP: Dan Gillmor's eJournal -- Microsoft's Attack on Open Source: Linus Torvalds Replies

[David Farber <dave@farber.net>]

>From: David Lesher <wb8foz@nrk.com>
>Subject: Dan Gillmor's eJournal -- Microsoft's Attack on Open Source: 
>Linus Torvalds Replies
>To: farber@cis.upenn.edu (David Farber)
>Date: Sun, 6 May 2001 00:14:57 -0400 (EDT)
>
>So topical & succinct that it's worth the mention:
>.............
>
>http://web.siliconvalley.com/content/sv/2001/05/03/opinion/dgillmor/weblog/torvalds.htm
>
>{Dan Gilmor} asked Linus Torvalds
>what he thought of Craig Mundie's speech
><http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/craig/05-03sharedsource.asp>
>about open source. His reply:
>
>
>
>
>I guess I'm not all that surprised. The basic argument seems
>to be that it's good for the economy to charge for intellectual
>property, so open source software cannot be good, while Microsoft
>is the most far-thinking company around and is doing it all for
>the good of the public.
>
>Gee, what a surprise.
>
>His claim seem to focus on the assertion that research and
>development is founded on the principles of "the importance of
>intellectual property rights". Which is entirely ignoring the
>fact that pretty much all of modern science and technology is
>founded on very similar ideals as open source.
>
>When Mundie wants you to think about all the work that companies
>have done in order to get patents, he also wants you to forget
>about all the work done by people like Einstein, Rutherford,
>Bohr, Leonardo da Vinci and a lot of other people who have done
>a lot more for humanity than most companies have ever done.
>
>And those people did it for the love of the art, not for some
>petty "intellectual property rights". Yet Mundie with a straight
>face claims that those intellectual property rights are the thing
>that drives science and technology. He seems to think that MS has
>done more for the US economy than the discovery of the electron
>ever did.
>
>His "shared source philosophy" is nothing but the status quo for
>Microsoft, and trying to make that status quo sound more like
>the open source model. He obviously doesn't "get" it.
>
>The strength of open source is not the source, but the intellectual
>property that goes with it - exactly the part that Mundie seems to
>hate so much. The fact that when you get involved in open source,
>you get equal rights to be involved. You can be another Leonardo da
>Vinci, you aren't relegated to just paying for viewing his works.
>
>I wonder if Mundie has ever heard of Sir Isaac Newton? He's not
>only famous for having basically set the foundations for classical
>mechanics (and the the original theory of gravitation, which
>is what most people remember, along with the apple tree story),
>but he is also famous for how he acknowledged the achievement:
>
>"If I have been able to see further, it was only because I stood
>on the shoulders of giants".
>
>One of the greatest scientists of our time, having done more for
>modern technology (and thus, btw, for the modern economy) than
>Microsoft will ever do, acknowledged the fact that he did so by
>being able to use the knowledge (what we now call "intellectual
>property") gathered by others.
>
>Mundie throws all that away, because he wants Microsoft to own
>it all, and make tons of money on it.
>
>I'd rather listen to Newton than to Mundie. He may have been
>dead for almost three hundred years, but despite that he stinks
>up the room less.
>
>Linus



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