On Wed, 17 Mar 2004 10:12, Maureen E. Duffy wrote:
Also, as I understand, the BSD licensing scheme fully allows for
people to profit from it in this way. So Microsoft has done no wrong
with respects to using open source code from BSD.
They haven't done any wrong, AFAICT, with the GPLed stuff the
distribute, either. The GPL's commentary explicity blesses making a
profit from free-as-in-liberty software.
What Microsoft _have_ done is speak out of both sides of their mouths.
One side "speaks" by basing their business in part on FOSS, including
software distributable only under the dreaded, terrifying
"pacman/cancer" GPL; the other side "speaks" by criticising or at least
damning-with-faint-praise the very same licence arrangement.
To pick a more pointed example, the second side of the mouth "speaks"
by
using the influence of their (Paul Allen's) investment vehicle (Vulcan)
on an investor and broker (BayStar) to provide financial life support
to a nasty, lying thorn-in-the-side of FOSS. A thorn which would
otherwise have dived millions of dollars into the red in the last
quarter and probably expired of cash deprivation, a demise which would
have been greeted with joyous acclaim by of millions of people.
You can see the same thing at work when they support "software choice"
initiatives and the bottom line is that they're only happy if you
choose their own software: the buffer organisation acts to _reduce_ the
available software choices.
Cheers; Leon