Re: [ox-en] Why is Microsoft Attacking the GPL?
- From: Stefan Meretz <stefan.meretz hbv.org>
- Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 11:23:27 +0200
Hi Raju,
Raju Mathur wrote:
Bryan has missed out one important (IMHO the most important) result of
MS' FUD campaign: the splintering of the Free Software/Open Source
community.
If you examine MS executives' earlier statements about Open Source
software, most (not all) of them fail to clearly distinguish between
the GPL and other Free Software licenses, lumping them all into one
category and damning them. Now, I don't know whether this is
deliberate or accidental, but the effect it is having at the
grassroots is that the non-GPL license advocates (of which the BSD
license advocates constitute the largest part) see this as unfair,
since, as Bryan pointed out, MS' basic grouse is with the GPL.
IMHO this embracing of FS in general, but damning of GPL, is a *only*
new step in MS' FUD-strategy against the whole community (remember the
Halloween papers). They intend to split the community, I guess.
The BSD advocates are hence tending to take attitudes ranging from,
``Yeah, we must do something about this'' through ``We are safe, so
let's not get excited'' ultimately to, ``MS is right, the GPL is a
virus, and this is a good time to kill this heathenish license once
and for all''. I've seen enough about this on mailing lists which I
subscribe to to be extremely concerned at the trend things are taking
within the Free Software community.
I hope that one is clear beside all differences: GPL must be defended.
I fear that the GPL/GNU/Linux advocates are about to be isolated in
their own community, ending up as a vocal group which slowly gets
silenced in the morass of FUD and license envy generated by both its
detractors as well as one-time supporters.
But it could also go this way: solidarity with GPL can strenghen the
freedom idea GPL transports. About two-third of free projects use the
GPL. Well, you might say these are one-time supporters, but they are a
lot of people choosing the GPL for good reasons.
For me there is another point - maybe the special oekonux one: What is
the relation between proprietarianism and commercialization of free
software? In my view the difference between BSD and GPL is the easier
opportunity the make former free software prop software, in order to
build a bussiness on this artificially produced scarcity.
This is better with GPLed free software, but not much. Due to not being
able to make free software scarce itself (freedom is kept by GPL), many
ideas are wasted to add _other_ scarcity to the free software
(artificial or not) to make to whole "bundle" scarce - which is the
basis to make money from it. Ok, I know, this point is beyond the
general thinking of free software, because it touches the holy fetisch
of society: money. But I my _this_ is the really new vision with free
software: We can have good stuff and products and fun without the money
game involved. It gives an idea of a society not based on scarcity but
on wealth for all.
Ciao,
Stefan
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