Monday, July 30 2007 @ 02:42 PM EDT |
I guess you saw the news about Microsoft submitting some licenses to OSI hoping for approval as "open source" licenses. You can
watch Bill Hilf of Microsoft giving his talk at OSCON, which is where the stories emanated from.
That, to me, wasn't the news, since a Microsoft license was submitted once before, although I gather not by the company. But what I'm noticing is reactions. ComputerWorld
collected some truly astonishing responses, and if you follow their links, it gets worse. First, though, the reaction that matters,
from Michael Tiemann:
Michael Tiemann, president of the non-profit Open Source Initiative, said that provisions in three out of five of Microsoft's shared-source licenses that restrict source code to running only on the Windows operating system would contravene a fundamental tenet of open-source licenses as laid out by the OSI. By those rules, code must be free for anyone to view, use, modify as they see fit. "I am certain that if they say Windows-only machines, that would not fly because that would restrict the field of use," said Tiemann in an interview late Friday.
Why would this need to be said? What nerve Microsoft has to even dream of trying for such a restriction. A license that restricts use to only the Windows operating system. Why would OSI even consider that? Have we lost our minds? At least two years ago, folks began
noticing the erosion of the meaning of "Open Source" by Microsoft. It moves like a glacier, but while it may be slow, it's hard to be in a glacier's path and win. But unless someone stands up, and soon, Open Source is dead as we know it, and Microsoft will take it over and remake it in its image. All that will be left standing will be GPLv3 and Free Software. Personally, I hope that doesn't happen. I have always seen the need for both, and I hope OSI has the vision to see what needs to happen next.
Leia na íntegra [
aqui].
Microsoft Fracturing the Open-Source Community? (The Secret Diary of Steve Ballmer)
"As agruras dos formatos proprietários não são exatamente novidade para os designers gráficos da Red Hat. Com o passar do anos muitos deles perderam fotografias, projetos arquivados e um portfolio importane quando sempre que os formatos de armazenamento mudaram. Eles eram forçados a uma atualização antes de estarem preparados para ela.
Será possível ainda duvidar da prevalência futura do Linux como plataforma tecnológica preferida?
