MS "bans" GPL

[David LeBlanc]

In article <7iq1ktcmslo24kbr8qvob2g3hpgleuf025 at 4ax.com>, mkx at excite.com 
says...
> Do the folks at MS _want_ us to find them unreasonable?
> 
> http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/zd/20010702/tc/ms_attacks_open_source_1.html
> 
> "The license for Microsoft's Mobile Internet Toolkit, which is in its
> second beta release to developers, says that it may not be used with
> any software under the Free Software Foundation's General Public
> License (GPL) and six other forms of "potentially viral software."
> That language refers to open source code's freely available and shared
> code licensing agreements. The wording of the license cites the Linux
> OS and the Perl scripting language as examples."
> 
> 
> 
Now that Microsoft has bought their way out of most of the anti-trust 
suit (cheap too! nationa news reported only a few hundred thousand 
dollars contributed to Bush's campaign and his inaugral ball), it's only 
a matter of time before the license for the OS prohibits installation of 
open source 3rd party software. After all, you only pay for the computer 
- MS seems to think they own it otherwise. (One can only hope that the 
states attornies general go forward with their anti-trust suit and so 
does the EU.)

I wonder how much they paid for the UK government with it's de-facto "MS 
all the way" policy? You have to wonder what was going through the Blair 
government's mind when they flew government ministers to Redmond to kick-
off the UK government services on the web project. There's a wee bit of 
excitement over there right now since the services that are already up 
can only be accessed by Internet Explorer due to reliance on propietary 
certificates.

XP: the coming evil - you thought it was bad now? Just wait.

Dave LeBlanc