when Microsoft will run like a 's*** scared American',
running for its life, with no end in sight, ruthlessly
laying off people, hysterical, shreiking
and a new true order will be created.

Until then, folks sorry to say, please continue to suffer!!!

... yeah... ok.

GPL seems to be fine for small part time projects, but i fail to see how it can work on anything larger. Developers need money to live as well - where are they supposed to get money from if they are supposed to just give away their work? advertising space etc isnt an option anymore. Seems to me that most large GPL projects are currently burning money like there is no tomorrow with no realistic business plan to make it back again. Its .com all over again.

The only people who seem to make money out of GPL are the end distributors like redhat. I fail to see why developers are happy to give their code away and let other people make money from it?!

RedHat is infact losing money and in the majority (if not every single case) no company under the open-source model has yet made a profit.

Check your facts. Red Hat was in fact profitable last quarter.

Red Hat has been profitable for a couple quarters, however, they have not been wildly profitable. The outlook is not positive and their future is still uncertain.

Mmmm, I'd like to note that GPL doesn't prohibit developers to ask money for their products. Ok, it usually comes down to that because it is freely REdistributable. But however; GPL isn't the only option in this area; provided that you don't use GPL-licenced code to create your own. That's, in my opinion, the strenght of Linux. The virtually endless amount of possibilities.
The commonly known distros like SuSe and (as mentioned above) Redhat, use these possibilities. They combine GPL licenced packages with 'commercial' implementations, as well as with support and extended manuals. Until now they may not have proven their succes yet, but that's partially because Linux is not as widely known as Windows and partially because it's so young, and is therefore not completely stabilized.
However, there wíll be a time when these disadvantages will disappear (Microsoft's more and more agressive attitude towards end-users will probably help a great deal), and then we'll truly be able to choose our OSs.

The GPL viral? HAH. I think MS doesn't like any compettition it may have from any open source software or maybe even the fact that they aren't the only source of software..

MS is just after the one thing everyone needs and that not everyone has enough of...Money.

Yes...Microsoft isn't allowed to have an opinion/view on GPL but you sir are allowed to have an opinion/view on everything.

its all about the $ , and this is the one time im not for ms, the idea that gpl is "viral" is arse fict, cant see why this is what it is

"But not everyone has warmly embraced Microsoft's initiative to "share" its source code. The Free Software Foundation/GNU’s Bradley M. Kuhn views Redmond’s steps to reveal the secrets of its proprietary source code with cautious optimism, and offers up some scrutiny of his own."

jokes or this is what?
www.h8teiris.com

lol my thoughts exactly.

Can I ask an honest question?

Would any of you have done any thing different if you were Bill Gates and faced with the same desicion? EVERY company wants to be top dog!! EVERY company HATES competition! So Microsoft just did what most companies can't do and that is effectivly kill a lot of their competition. In the end this only hurts us if it is to continue. We at this point need competition, but do you remember the web of 7 years ago? Computers of 7 years ago? NOTHING was compatible! It was insane! Every thing had it's own format and nothing worked with any thing else. If it weren't for MS we would still be putting up with that. MS did one thing good, they got market share and got every one using their software. This means that most every thing is compatible.

I think I and most all of you would choose $ over competition. I do think that at this point we really need more competition to jump start innnovation that seems to kinda leveled out.

Think about this whole "monopoly" thing in real world terms. MS makes their OS (their building) and other companies DEMAND that you let them put THEIR products in YOUR building to COMPETE with you! If this was the real world and this was a real building... what would you say? I bet it would be something like "this is MY building... go get your own and sell your stuff".
Windows has IE built right in and most linux distros ship with Netscape.

This would be like McDonalds being forced to sell Whoppers too, because only selling Big Macs just isn't 'fair'.

Wouldn't it be in everyone's best interest if people could actually make money off open source software too? Poisoned is a better description, although it is "viral in nature". It seems to me GPL is written to protect insecure programmers who can't quite write an entire solid program themselves. They are also aware of their total lack of business sense, and thus suicidal, and someone else making money off their idea might just be enough to push them over the edge. So now you have geek herds that hang out and play with their toys and wonder why corporate America isn't adopting their software.

Who do you blame when your GnXkword won't spell-check, what if that herd isn't around anymore, now it's my problem, and, since it's GPL, I should be able to fix it myself. I want software that works (FreeBSD) or someone to blame (Micro$oft). I don't want to learn the neat algorithms some group of way too high IQ software engineers wrote. (we know the IQ is high because insecure, suicidal, etc.) So, someone takes your wonderful software and actually makes money, (you could have), then, they don't give back one measly line of code! All they do is employ 200 more insecure geeks that write more open source code, and in this happy world, the 200 insecure geeks get to live in a modest Silicon Valley home, and eat meals regularly.

I can tear apart the GPL model all day long, which is sad, since I really like Linux, and other GPL software. I hate to watch people starve to death trying to make money on installers and phone support (no doubt GPL isn’t making anyone rich, in fact, it’s put more people out of a job). You see what GPL has done! phone support! I would prefer writing Barney(tm) device drivers for Microsoft than do phone support for anything.
Is GPL why windows 2000 is finally something almost stable? Or is it why Linux is almost unstable? (at least on my machines)
Confused yet?
btw, feel free to make whatever money you can off this post.
or feel free to use my part or my entire post and add your post to it, but you must then give away your post too, and neither one of us better make money off it. Unless you can think of a third, unrelated item, that may well be useless without our posts, but is useful enough to charge for, and is not yet poisoned by anything.

Even the hippies at the commune up the road sell their pipes and love beads, they will also teach you how to blow a pipe or string love beads, or trade items for them, but they don't stop you from making money on your own pipes or require you to teach someone else how you blow pipe. On to the Native Americans highly optimized buffalo stack...

LOL :-) :-)

Sorry to see that neither you nor Bill understand what is GPL !!!

What you write is absolutely true!!!
Congratulations, you said 'everything out' about Americans !!!

For 55$ you can call and ask Microsoft to help you with your spell check problem. If they cant fix it you are still most likely out $55. Can you fix it? But if you read your EULA you cant blame them, or point a finger at them. They told you up front that there are NO guarantees of fitness for anything.

I program a lot "~$80k :)". Do I work for a software company? No. I work for an Insurance company. The GPL software we make does not affect the profitability of our company, because we don't sell software we sell insurance. Do we make GPL software? Yes, we consider it and investment, and over the years have received many returns.

Once I have .NET I will only need to turn my networked PC on, all the applications I will need are there for $19.95 a month. Why on earth would I go and buy your software?

GPL is about freedom. It is about your rights. You are willing to sell your rights and I understand. But do not sell anyone else's.

I can't comment on the interview because I just couldn't get myself to read it. Whatever happened to the normal interview style where we see what questions were asked, not some reworded "narrative."

Your loss, I guess. Kuhn has some very interesting responses to the topics, many of which would have been hard to follow in a "true" interview format.

It often amazes me that people fall for quite transparant propoganda of the dominant paradigm. Calling the GPL 'viral' is nothing short of propoganda. Maybe people will learn when all other software companies are non existant and we only have Microsoft's offerings to turn to.
As for this shared source inititive. It's quite convenient when they choose to launch it, isn't it? I also thought much the same as the interviewer in this article. Microsoft is all to willing to release it's code at the moment and let people tinker with it, but what is the benifit to the user? Or do microsoft just want to capitalise on some of the community spirit generated by the GPL and gain some free labor?

I am with you that people are stupid and they just blindly follow the person who is in power. Microsoft will NEVER be the only provider of software. There will always be people developing on their own. Explain to me why you believe that Microsoft is going to become the only software provider. How would that possibly ever happen?

I, for one, don't think that M$ will be the sole software provider. As long as people out there have free wills, this will NEVER gonna happen. Yes, M$ can and already became one of the biggest software provider, but never the sole...

That was a bit over the top describing M$ as one day been the only software provider. But their business practices certainly aren't for the benefit of the consumer and left to themselves M$ might very well harm the marketplace.

Microsoft has already got it self into trouble with the law so why should be belief anything they say when they are obviously trying to dominate the entire market and be the sole provider of every thing technical. Microsoft can go to hell where it belongs. Power to open source and free software!

You can be sure that micro$oft's legal agreement will include

"all modifications to source code will become the property of micro$oft, micro$oft will also take the deed to you house and steal your girlfreind and rape your mother"

It would be pretty impossible for them ever to become the absolute only software developer, there are companies that need special software that no one else would have a use for. But I could easily see them becoming the only provider of software that a regular home user would use. It goes something like this:

1. Right now, you are forced to use windows if you want hardware and software compatibility.
2. Micro$oft slowly adds every app that the average person uses into the OS, along with some others that are used by many people.
3. Other software companies can no longer make money on those apps, so they stop developing them.

Of course, there will always be some other options out there for people who take the time to look, but, since the vast majority of people will use whatever is included with the OS no matter how bad it is, they won't have very large userbases and will probably be mostly shareware/freeware by small companies.

When MS says something it is different than when you or I say something, in a sense of propagating GPU is vaguely like a virus on some level. For MS to say it though is straight propaganda, their only motive is to kill competition. MS makes money because they are in the legacy and compatibility business, that is the real virus like situation, nobody else can enter the OS market because of MS's virus like manipulation of standards and entrenched legacy, not to mention the overt things. There are half a dozen versions of Windows for the sole purpose of forcing companies to be overloaded in supporting all the differences, no other OS can get driver development because MS comes up with a new OS to be supported every year or so and several new APIs a month I'm sure. I agree that being all sappy about it and whining isn't compelling, but there comes a time to break compatibility and legacy. MS can't do the job because they are infected with their own legacy virus that is living off of their corporate short sightedness.

MS is a dot com run by the mafia.