"free" and "open" have different meanings for them
Posted by: gus3
on August 19, 2007 07:36 AM
As I've begun saying lately:
If you tell your dog to "sit," then punish him for doing anything but lie down, because "what 'sit' means today isn't what it meant yesterday," your dog will become confused at least, psychotic at worst. Guess what? If you standardize on Microsoft, you're the dog. (Think how .doc and .xls don't mean today what they meant 10 years ago.)
In this case, "free" and "open" are terms to be twisted into what Microsoft wants them to mean. Dag-Erling gets it totally wrong, and DiBona hits the nail on the head: Microsoft is not, and has never been, interested in "playing nice" with people who expose their rank incompetence in OS design. Windows Vista is faltering at best (more like sinking fast), people aren't upgrading the way Microsoft is trying to dictate, the "need new hardware to run new software" cycle is breaking down, and even the new hardware is still coming with Windows XP pre-installed. On the non-software side, their attempts through the Baystar Group to fund SCO's lawsuit against Novell have come to naught, costing them a little cash and lots more reputation.
Their desperation is becoming obvious, and this so-called "permissive license" is just another tentacle of the Redmond beast to be cut off.
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"free" and "open" have different meanings for them
Posted by: gus3 on August 19, 2007 07:36 AMIf you tell your dog to "sit," then punish him for doing anything but lie down, because "what 'sit' means today isn't what it meant yesterday," your dog will become confused at least, psychotic at worst. Guess what? If you standardize on Microsoft, you're the dog. (Think how .doc and .xls don't mean today what they meant 10 years ago.)
In this case, "free" and "open" are terms to be twisted into what Microsoft wants them to mean. Dag-Erling gets it totally wrong, and DiBona hits the nail on the head: Microsoft is not, and has never been, interested in "playing nice" with people who expose their rank incompetence in OS design. Windows Vista is faltering at best (more like sinking fast), people aren't upgrading the way Microsoft is trying to dictate, the "need new hardware to run new software" cycle is breaking down, and even the new hardware is still coming with Windows XP pre-installed. On the non-software side, their attempts through the Baystar Group to fund SCO's lawsuit against Novell have come to naught, costing them a little cash and lots more reputation.
Their desperation is becoming obvious, and this so-called "permissive license" is just another tentacle of the Redmond beast to be cut off.
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