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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