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Re: [school-discuss] two-sided rant



On Wed, 17 Mar 2004 22:27, Maureen Duffy wrote:
> Does Microsoft release anything under the GPL?

Services For Unix has a significant GPLed content, including the FSF's 
own GCC (Gnu Compiler Collection).

> I thought you could not use GPL code in closed source software

That's right. They supply the source for the Open components, as per the 
licence, and they don't commingle (AFAICT) any GPLed code into the 
closed-source parts. That is, no part is a mixture of GPLed and closed 
code.

> - you have to release any software that uses GPL code as GPL 
> code itself.

That's right. SFU is a *collection* of software. Some parts of the 
collection are GPLed, and other parts are closed.

> The "beauty" they see in the BSD license is that they can grab code
> without having to open up their source, correct?

Yes. And AFAICT they didn't even openly acknowledge the origins of most 
of what they did use (e.g. their command-line FTP client) until about 
MS-Windows-2000 or so.

Cheers; Leon