Earlier this week MIcrosoft released GPL code to the public. Opinions have varied on this, with some folks thinking it suggests a stark about-face for Microsoft, others thinking it’s simply a marketing ploy to sell more licenses for their Hyper-V virtualization solution. Whatever the motivation, the code is out there. Linus Torvalds, the benevolent dictator of the Linux kernel, hasn’t yet looked at the code, but he does have some opinions on the matter.
I’m a big believer in “technology over politics”. I don’t care who it comes from, as long as there are solid reasons for the code, and as long as we don’t have to worry about licensing etc issues.
Allah knows there’s plenty of politics in Linux-land. From the raging battle over whether to say “GNU/Linux”, to recognize the GNU project’s involvement, to the subtle differences between “open source” and “free software”, there’s plenty of room for people to lose sight of the technical objectives, and get mired in never-ending semantic arguments.
So complaining about the fact that Microsoft picked a selfish area to work on is just silly. Of course they picked an area that helps them. That’s the point of open source – the ability to make the code better for your particular needs, whoever the ‘your’ in question happens to be.
And there, my friends, is what I think is one of the best aspects of free and open source software: you can use it for purely ideological reasons, or you can use it for strategic business reasons.
A lot of people just getting started with free software are often overwhelmed with and dismayed by the amount of duplication of open source code. Why are there eleventy billion different text editors? Why are there six different web browsers? Why are there so many mail clients? One of the overarching principles of open source software is “There’s more than one way to do it.” Microsoft is slowly learning this, and they’re taking baby steps toward some of those other ways.
It’ll be really interesting to see how Microsoft responds to patches submitted against their newly released GPL code!
Via OSNews.
One also wonders whether this might provide some information that people writing virtualization environments could use to better support Hyper-V-enabled OSs. After all, the driver interface defines a “contract,” and, as Raymond Chen (a well-known Microsoft developer) has pointed out, “you can read a contract from both sides.”
Linus is right, of course, and Microsoft looks to be doing The Right Thing here. I would, however, employ Ronald Reagan’s philosophy for the time being: “Trust, but verify.”
Wha… ONE comment, albeit a thoughtful one @Erbo. The real story here is how Micro$oft and to a much greater extent Apple have ripped off BSD while providing NOTHING back to the community. And in the case of Apple especially – it goes on and on.
i prefer ‘trust and don’t care’, its just source code after-all, and the gnu license prevents them to use patents and the stuff..
the only threat out there would be 3th party licenses… but then windows would also have a problem…
and imho people should just ignore those stupid things…
@drone
thats basicaly the gnu vs bsd licesing debate..
its bsd licenced… so stop whinning that you get nothing back… if you would want that you should have used gnu..
i mean you cant really suspect for big commercial en competitive companies to keep up any moral values this day and age…
Pretty sure the real reason MS had to release this code as GPL is that part of the code they used already was under GPL. If they hadn’t released, they could have been sued for GPL violations. Shame, that; I really would have enjoyed an open and shut lawsuit against Monkey Boy (i.e, the guy who once called Linux a Cancer).