>Jerry,
>
>>BTW, did you see that little story about MS and a select group (major) PC manufacturers completing a meeting in Las Vega to standardize a PC product on Windows XP?
>
>I haven't seen this story - can you provide a link to it ?
>
>Best.
>
>Matt.


It was mentioned on LinuxToday or CNET, I can't remember which. It may have even been referenced by some one in one of the talkbacks. But, while looking for it I did find this segment of a larger article. (I'll continue looking for that other reference to the meeting between MS and hardware manufacturers. It wasn't the DAC, which meets at Las Vegas, but DAC would be a good reason for them to meet there!)

Why the GPL Threatens Microsoft's Core Business Model
by Bryan Pfaffenberger

Still with me? Here's why Microsoft is attacking the GPL:
* Microsoft can't play its "embrace and extend" game with GPL-licensed software because the company can't appropriate and modify the code. If Linux had been released under the BSD license, Microsoft would have probably already released a version of Linux, Linux++ or Linux# or L-Nux, with a variety of maddeningly incompatible oddities that taken together would make it even more difficult to develop applications for Linux. * A GPL-licensed application pool is indeed forming around Linux, and Microsoft can't figure out how to attack it. You can't attack the companies, because--as Eazel recently proved--the software's still around, even if the company shuts down or gives up on the product.

From the Microsoft perspective, GPL-licensed software is like those monsters from "The Night of the Living Dead": they just keep coming back at you.

Doubtful? Read this:

Mr. Gates made the following statement last week to a CNET News.com reporter: "The ecosystem where you have free software and commercial software--and customers always get to decide which they use--that's a very important and healthy ecosystem", Gates told the interviewer. But the GPL, Gates says, "breaks that cycle--that is, it makes it impossible for a commercial company to use any of that work or build on any of that work. So what you saw with TCP/IP or Sendmail or the browser could never happen. We believe there should be free software and commercial software; there should be a rich ecosystem that works around that."

If Mr. Gates can forgive me for putting words in his mouth, here's my translation: "There should be free software that we can appropriate and modify--we just love BSD stuff--as well as Microsoft software. That's very healthy (for us), because we can use this system and our embrace and extend tricks to keep competing application pools from forming. But we can't do that with GPL-licensed software. GPL-licensed software is not enriching for Microsoft; it scares the living daylights out of us, in fact."

In the coming weeks, you're likely to see Microsoft pressure to force the U.S. government to disallow the use of the GPL as a license for software created with public funds. If my analysis is correct, the decision should go the other way -- the government should require anyone developing software with government funds to release the software under the GPL. It's the only way to ensure there's a meaningful public commons of freely available software that can't be manipulated for predatory purposes.

Bryan Pfaffenberger is Associate Professor of Technology, Culture and Communication at the University of Virginia, in Charlottesville, VA. You can visit his web page, and you can browse previous Currents articles under the Currents heading here. Bryan cautions that his schedule rarely permits him to reply to all the e-mail he receives concerning his Linux Journal articles, but they're appreciated nonetheless.