Microsoft Corp. representatives assert that Platforms Group Vice President Jim Allchin was “misunderstood”, according to Peter Coffee of eWEEK in his article “Microsoft clarifies exec’s open-source concerns“. Yeah, he really didn’t mean to imply that open software was “un-American” and that open source developers were criminals. Microsoft is not an altruistic organization; open source competes with it for market share and it does’t like it. Open software source is available to anyone and its licensing (if under the GPL) requires it to stay that way. If you want to prohibit someone from seeing your code, or seeing your “innovation” (or lack of it), then don’t use GPL’d software — you have the freedom to choose, something that Microsoft apparently wants to take from you. Contrary to some corporate suits who think the entire world is just like them, there are many bright, innovative open source developers out there who like, and in some cases feel morally obligated, to provide unrestricted access to their software.
Isotropic is …
... my personal blog. Anything I write here is simply my personal, probably ill-formed, opinion and does not represent the views, beliefs, positions, or opinions of any other person or entity.