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Not particularly new, and not really FUD, but it doesn’t seem to have been covered anywhere else.
As we know, a year ago, Microsoft contributed code to Linux. The usual suspects like Roy naturally wrote an article condemning MS code as a trojan. Linus was asked his opinion, and he made some telling statements, including that Microsoft-hatred is a disease, that FOSS has extremists, that he believes in “technology over politics” and that MS’ critics are being hypocrites! Of course, it was largely ignored by the Linux crowd, with some exceptions like FSM who wrote a far more fuddy article condemning Linus’ attitude.
I almost feel sorry for Linus. His hobby has been raped and exploited by wackos with an agenda.
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Then again, he’s made quite a lot of moolah out of it. To be fair, he differs from Monty Widenius in several important respects. Torvalds is borderline-normal.
You have to a bit out of the ordinary to code operating system kernels for a hobby. Still, Torvalds is not far gone enough not to realize the FSF is a cult.
With comments like, “...there are 'extremists’ in the free software world, but that’s one major reason why I don’t call what I do 'free software’ any more. I don’t want to be associated with the people for whom it’s about exclusion and hatred”, I can restore my faith in humanity.
Worth quoting the FSM:
“One thing stood out about the code submission. It was released under the GNU GPLv2. This from a company that called GNU/Linux a “cancer” and “communist”. They also expressed disdain for the GNU GPLv3 because of it’s viral nature, so you can understand why they used the previous version of the GPL but its provisions should at least ensure that they cannot prevent the distribution of royalty-free licences. It was never on that they would release it under Version Three as it is a matter of record that they regard it as viral. They couldn’t anyway as the kernel is resolutely version Two.”
Microsoft are evil because they call us nasty names. Microsoft are evil because they donate code (Embrace and Extinguish). Microsoft are evil because they use GPLv2 rather than GPLv2.
And, er, we don’t want them to use GPLv3 anyway, because the kernel is released under GPLv2. (I wonder whose duckpondy fault that might have been?)
These people are freaks.
Microsoft supports Linus with GPLv2 instead of v3, that’s the criticism about! They could have forced Linus to upgrade to GPLv3 first before contributing code ( at least in the minds of the FSF ).
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