arstechnica.com — The Free Software Foundation today chimed in on the controversial matter of Microsoft's vouchers and their relationship to version 3 of the GPL. The FSF says Microsoft cannot divest itself of its obligations under intellectual property law.
Aug 28, 2007 View in Crawl 4
richard2Aug 28, 2007
The GPL has been scrutinised in the courts of different countries on several occasions and has always been upheld.
meneerrAug 29, 2007
I don't understand why we always depend on the court-systems for this. Why doesn't the government step in? The EU has been a little bit mean to Microsoft, but not enough. 1) Just pull windows and office out of all the stores. Make it illegal to sell it, and say you will release the ban, when the interoperatibility issues are solved.2) Sue not just microsoft, but a dozen of its "gold" partners for running a kartel. 3) Kick software patents out of the door. Have a law that explicitely states that even trying to get a software patent is anti-competitive by definition.4) Arrest those persons that are literally saying "pay royalties or somebody will sue you" for racketeering. Don't give them a fine. Put them in jail. I don't care if they are suits. It's called extortion. 5) Don't we have anti-mob-laws to deal with these kind of assh**es anyway?f**k the fines.PUT THEM IN JAIL And if you there is shred of evidence that Bill suggested the racketering he should go to jail too, for running a criminal organisation.
daftmanAug 29, 2007
Selling is ONE form of distribution. It is not the only form of distribution.
daftmanAug 29, 2007
License is not Contract.GPL is not and EULA.
daftmanAug 29, 2007
FSF has a bunch of lawyers that work for free. What makes you think they would spend millions of dollars and a years of effort? Fighting company like Microsoft is the point of their effort.
soulhuntreAug 29, 2007
That is the stupidest list of "demands" I have seen in a long time. Then again, I suppose you are just saying out loud what so many of the OSS fanatics keep thinkign intheir heads.
meneerrAug 29, 2007
What's so stupid about wanting a fair market for software? We have a fair market for hardware, which is actually thanks to Microsoft. (if it were up to Apple..)It isn't the fault of the Microsoft programmer's or anybody. If it wasn't Microsoft, it would be somebody else. The rules need to change. IT is infrastructure, we need open standards, or public infrastructure. What if one company owned the majority of all roads? They would say, hey, you can only drive our cars on these roads. But our cars can only pump gas at our fuel stations. Only our supermarkets may be connected to our roads.This is the type of expension Microsoft has been doing. But that's not even enough for them. They actually go around as say ' we own the whole road-idea and car-idea " .. and we might sue you if you do not pay us our royality and use public infrastructure. (opensource comes as close as public infrastructure in my book) If I go to a bar, and say "hey, .. you might get hit by someone unless you pay me your money" .. "then I will make sure nobody can hurt you".. that's racketeering. That's extortion. That's illegal. How is what microsoft is doing to linux and its fud and patent threats any different?