[plug] Australian IT - MS 'loves' open source, not GPL (Chris Janz, March 05, 2002)

[The Thought Assassin]

On Tue, 5 Mar 2002, Sol wrote:
> http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,3888418%15306%nbv%,00.html
> <http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,3888418%5E15306%5Enbv%5E,00.html>
> quotable quote of the year from M$ chief bloodsucker, Craig Mundie: "We
> love open source. We have no problems with the concept of open source."

This is well worth reading. It's front page, with the headline "Linux
licensing model flawed" - with little effort made to distinguish between
the rants of Mundie and objective journalistic Truth. (Oxymoron, I know)

He basically says that open source is great, and Microsoft uses plenty of
open source software, but that the GPL is an abomination because it
prevents Microsoft from commericalizing other people's open source output.

To paraphrase very very lightly "Open source is good because we can
obtain it for free and sell it for free+$x, gaining $x. The GPL prevents
us from selling it unless we license our modifications openly, so it is
bad. The concept of producing open source software ourselves doesn't enter
our heads, however much we might like using the labour of others."

Peter Nicol wrote:
> Mundie has given us perhaps the best insight into the working of a
> monopolists mind.

Hell yes.

-Greg