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The truth comes out: Microsoft needs Linux

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Re: The truth comes out: Microsoft needs Linux

#111
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you need copyright law, you need men with guns to enforce the law. If you need men with guns to enforce the GPL, is that really freedom? The public domain and licenses that approximate it (3-BSD) do not suffer from this problem. Eliminate copyright law, and everything still functions like a permissive license. I want to abolish copyright because I think it gets in the way of creativity. Generally speaking I also w…

I do not mind offering my work under a dual choice. If you agree on a contract to never enforce any copyright or patents, for eternity, in legal and technical form, you may distribute my work without honoring the terms of GPL. I have yet to find a person or company who would prefer those terms over the GPL. As such, I find people to be a bit dishonest when they proclaim a desire to abolish copyright but still prefer…

Out of curiosity, in this hypothetical "never ever" license, are you also agreeing never to enforce copyright or patents in eternity?

Because otherwise, agreeing to it would not be in any way a step towards abolishment of copyright. It would, in fact, be something more akin to creating a free labour pool you are not willing to opt into yourself. You create a situation where you can profit from their work and they cannot. There's a word for this arrangement.

Re: The truth comes out: Microsoft needs Linux

#112

I don't think MS is "embracing open source" (or even necessarily rejecting it), so much as they are acknowledging that Linux servers are here to stay for a while, and simply grabbing a piece of the pie instead of ignoring it. Much like Oracle having its own Linux distro. Perhaps enough shareholders complained about a market segment simply being given to OSX (development environment for work intended for a POSIX serve…

Linux servers are here to stay for a while? Linux, and Unix and BSD, run 75 to 85% of the internet so that kind of thinking is just so wrong.

Is it too hard to imagine that "something else" might be popular in 2030? Or perhaps not.

But at some point, you and I will retire (etc), and the next generation might have other preferences, or discover something insanely great that we simply aren't used to.

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