--- Begin Message ---
|
Subject: |
(DDJ) "A Ringside Seat" by Editor-in-Chief Jonathan Erickson |
|
Date: |
Wed, 11 Jul 2001 03:43:31 -0400 |
URL: http://www.ddj.com/articles/2001/0108/0108p/0108p.htm
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
A Ringside Seat
Dr. Dobb's Journal August 2001
While it's not as historic as, say, Brown versus The Board of
Education, or as exciting as Ali versus Foreman's "Rumble in the
Jungle," the Stallman versus Microsoft tussle has its
David-and-Goliath moments. In one corner, there's the Redmond tag team
of Jim Allchin, Craig Mundie, Steve Ballmer, and a squad of ringside
support personnel. In the other corner, there's Richard Stallman.
In truth, Microsoft isn't ganging up on Stallman per se, instead
dissing the GNU General Public License (GPL). But, as any fool knows,
going chin-to-chin with the GPL means taking on Stallman. Yo mamma!
That said, they're sort of badmouthing the GPL. Microsoft's real
opponent seems to be open source in general, and Linux in particular.
The confusion is in how Team Microsoft continually muddles the
concepts of "open source" and "GPL," referring to them as being one
and the same. They're not — and Microsoft darn well knows it.
>>>>>>>> See Technetcast [http://technetcast.ddj.com/] <<<<<<<<<<<
Round One, you recall, started with Allchin stupidly describing open
source as "unAmerican." This idiocy was followed in Round Two by
Mundie's presentation
(http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/craig/05-03sharedsource.asp)
at New York University's Stern School of Business, in which he first
lumped together GPL and open source, then introduced Microsoft's
notion of "shared source" — a model that governs the terms under
which Microsoft licenses source code to its "customers and partners"
(http://www.microsoft.com/Business/Licensing/SharedSource/). In fact,
there's nothing new about Microsoft's shared source at all. The
company admits it has been sharing source code with some customers and
academic institutions for years.
Pursuant to Mundie's talk, NYU's Center for Advanced Technology
invited GPL author Richard Stallman for a contrary view. Setting the
stage for Round Three, a Microsoft public-relation minion delegated to
the Stallman problem encouraged journalists "to take a moment prior to
[Stallman's] speech to read through these questions and to look at the
GNU GPL FAQ" (http://www.ddj.com/articles/2001/0175/0175c/0175c.htm).
These questions were graciously provided by Microsoft, of course.
For nearly two hours, Stallman hammered home that free software and
the GPL aren't the same as open source
(http://www.gnu.org/events/events.html). Much of Stallman's discussion
focused on the freedoms that free — not open source —
software offer: The freedom to run programs for any purpose, any way
you like; the freedom to change programs to suit your needs; the
freedom to distribute copies of programs; and the freedom to publish
improved versions so others can get the benefit of your work. In
short, Stallman really didn't offer much new (as someone pointed out
on Slashdot.org "Headlines for today: RMS: Free Software Good, Dog
Bites Man, Sky Blue"). His specific response to Mundie was best summed
up in the letter "Free Software Leaders Stand Together"
(http://www.perens.com/Articles/StandTogether.html), jointly signed
with Bruce Perens, Eric Raymond, Linus Torvalds, Miguel de Icaza,
Larry Wall, Guido van Rossum, Tim O'Reilly, Bob Young, and Larry
Augustin.
Opening Round Four, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer jumped into the ring
with an interview in the Chicago Sun-Times
(http://www.suntimes.com/output/tech/cst-fin-micro01.html). Without
mentioning GPL, Ballmer did his best to again muddy the waters: "Open
source is not available to commercial companies. The way the license
is written, if you use any open-source software, you have to make the
rest of your software open source." Frankly, I have no idea what
Ballmer is talking about — open source is available to commercial
companies. However, I do understand when he states that "Linux is a
cancer." Of course, why he'd say such a thing is another question.
Although I've never met Allchin or Mundie, I have met Ballmer and am
here to tell you he is a very, very smart guy. Consequently, there's
no question that Ballmer, Allchin, and Mundie clearly understand the
difference between open source and GPL. So why persist in
intentionally obfuscating the truth? One explanation is that it's just
business — Microsoft is scared silly of Linux, open source, and
free software, and will go to any lengths to poison the marketplace
well. However, my favorite theory is that this is all a red herring.
By bobbing and weaving about open source, attention is diverted from
other controversial issues — such as licensing.
Microsoft wants to make major changes in how it sells software, and
they're going to be very hard sells indeed. What the company wants to
do is treat software as a service, à la the failed IBM MVS model of
years ago. In the service model, customers lease software from
Microsoft, rather than buy it. What makes this viable today, however,
is distributed computing and the emergence of web services (such as
Microsoft's .NET), whereby application software resides on vendor
servers rather than local disks. Continuous Internet connections let
vendors have non-stop access to customer systems for monitoring —
and enforcing — license compliance. Miss a monthly lease payment,
and your access to applications is restricted. While feinting over
open source, Microsoft is able to slide another agenda in under the
radar.
Round Five should be a doozy when Mundie climbs on stage at the
O'Reilly Open Source Convention
(http://conferences.oreillynet.com/cs/os2001/view/e_sess/1834) to
further derogate open source and promote shared source. Here's hoping
for a ringside seat.
Jonathan Erickson
editor-in-chief
address@hidden
Advertisement
Click Here to Vist CMPNET
Copyright © 2001 Dr. Dobb's Journal
Dr. Dobb's Journal Privacy Policy
Comments: address@hidden
CMP's Software Development Media Group
------- End of forwarded message -------
--- End Message ---