Free Software's Stallman strikes back at Microsoft
http://news.excite.com/news/zd/010529/16/free-softwares-stallman
by Mary Jo Foley , Ziff Davis Internet, eWEEK
NEW YORK -- To Microsoft Corp., software is about making money.
To Richard Stallman, head of the Free Software Foundation, it's
about freedom, equality and liberty.
Stallman took his philosophical message to an audience of
students, professors and press at New York University's Stern
School of Business here Tuesday morning. He held forth for more
than 2 hours, in a talk that was billed as the FSF's response to
Microsoft executive Craig Mundie's May 3 speech, in which Mundie
dissed the GNU General Public License (or GPL) and open-source
software. Microsoft has argued that sharing source code on a
limited basis, rather than developing free software or
open-source software, offers developers and customers the most
sustainable business model.
Erroneously, "Microsoft called the GPL an open-source license,"
said Stallman. "They don't want people to think about freedom as
an issue. They want people to think as consumers ... not as
citizens or statesmen."
Stallman addressed everything from the distinctions between
open source and GNU/Linux to his take on how Microsoft might be
best broken up by the government, in the aftermath of the
Department of Justice antitrust trial.
On the latter issue, Stallman told the Free Software-friendly
crowd -- several were outfitted in Ximian, Debian and Perl wares
-- that he'd suggest breaking Microsoft into separate software
and services companies, rather than along the operating
system/application lines suggested by Judge Thomas Penfield
Jackson in the case.
"Microsoft is preparing to do something dirty: They are tying
services to programs," Stallman told the audience. By using
these kind of (Hailstorm) services, they are "looking to achieve
a greater lock, a greater monopoly on those services."
Stallman also had retorts to some of the suggested GPL-related
questions forwarded to some reporters by Microsoft before
Stallman's address. Microsoft's list, distributed via e-mail,
called into question what Microsoft presented as ambiguities in
some of the licensing terms and conditions outlined in the new
Free Software Foundation Frequently Asked Questions document.
"Would Microsoft let you use 1,000 lines of their code in your
program?" Stallman asked. "Maybe you could negotiate a special
license with them," but a free-software company could also
hammer out an agreement with a customer desiring to use
GPL-protected code, he said. "In both cases, the 'normal'
(Microsoft and GPL) licenses wouldn't permit it."
"The GNU GPL defends your freedom. This is why Microsoft is
attacking today," Stallman told the audience. "Microsoft would
like to take the code we wrote and make improvements or even
introduce some incompatible versions -- and put it on
everybody's desktop. But the GPL doesn't allow for 'embrace and
extend.'"
What's Love got to do with it?
Microsoft wasn't the only company to incur Stallman's wrath. He
also had nothing good to say about Caldera Systems and its CEO
Ransom Love. Love recently went public with his claim that the
GPL was holding back commercial Linux vendors like Caldera, and
said that Caldera was considering switching to the BSD license
for its commercial products.
"Caldera's not a free software company at all. They are just a
parasite," Stallman claimed in a press conference following his
talk. "Who in the world is Ransom Love to have any ideas about
what's good for our community?"
Stallman went so far as to suggest that consumers who care
about the philosophical ideas espoused by the Free Software
Foundation possibly boycott non-free-software products, such as
those produced by Caldera.
Despite Stallman's hard line on free software vs. open source,
he joined a number of open-sofware luminaries in composing a
retort to Microsoft's shared source strategy. In that document,
Stallman and the other authors noted that: "Although Microsoft
raises the issue of GPL violations, that is a classic red
herring. Many more people find themselves in violation of
Microsoft licenses, because Microsoft doesn't allow copying,
modification and redistribution as the GPL does. Microsoft
license violations have resulted in civil suits and
imprisonment. Accidental GPL violations are easily remedied, and
rarely get to court."
