More on Microsoft vs the Free World

I had a great comment from Jason on my previous Microsoft vs. World post.

I'll work on using losing and not loosing. I actually checked that I had the right word, but I guess I forgot to update it. I've never claimed perfection in that area, lots of room for improvement.

Despite Microsoft's claims of 40 million copies of Vista shipped, I see signs like Dell offering Ubuntu and XP instead of Vista, based on customer demands, as a sign Microsoft is losing (see, I can be taught!) there totalitarian grip on the desktop. I also read a lot of blogs, mostly of developers, and a surprising number have rolled back from Vista to XP, or jumped ship to Linux all together. No hard numbers there, just a perceived trend.

I am well aware of the differences of patents and copyrights. If you read the GPL it does cover patent indemnification as well as copyrights. In the paragraph 7 of the preamble it states:

Finally, any free program is threatened constantly by software patents. We wish to avoid the danger that redistributors of a free program will individually obtain patent licenses, in effect making the program proprietary. To prevent this, we have made it clear that any patent must be licensed for everyone's free use or not licensed at all.

Read the rest, especially section 7 on Patents.

From what I was reading in Fortune's Microsoft takes on the Free World, this specific patent coverage in the GPL is why Microsoft is offering certificates and not offering SUSE directly. But I was only skimming at that point while I was in the airport.

I actually do understand the GPL fairly well for not being a lawyer, but I do appreciate Jason's concern. However I may have misstated things. I was saying that the idea behind open source is that users can change or add to the code - that is one of the the basic freedoms of open source. The GPL says that if the user does distribute the changed version, then their changes are also covered by the GPL. This is referred to as Copyleft. Free software was originally designed as a developer to developer (including administrators, etc.) system since they were the only ones using computers. The Open Source definition (which came after the GPL) says you cannot discriminate (point 5) users. As the users of computers and open source software has expanded to non-developers, now they are covered under the GPL even though they have no inclination to modify the code. Not sure if you were aware of it or not, but Microsoft actually offers their own copyleft license similar to the GPL, called the Microsoft Community License. Obviously calling it community would indicate the idea that a community would use and contribute to the code, but as you stated it, they are not required to contribute to use. It also covers patents similar to the GPL. Basically Microsoft made their own GPL so they can still call Stallman evil.

As far as my Tax law reference, Jason was correct. The copyright law defines the financial gain that a license is offered for ". . includes receipt, or expectation of receipt, of anything of value, including the receipt of other copyrighted works." For some reason I was thinking I read that in the tax law because it says "financial gain". Oops, my bad.

Thanks again for the great comment Jason!