Alexandre Oliva wrote:
Would the world be a better place with no GPL and all software created
by those who now create code under the GPL putting it into the public
domain instead?
Microsoft would almost certainly have been displaced years ago by many
other companies building better products containing this code
Or... Microsoft would have used that code and used it to control
people in just the same way it does with every other piece of software
it touches.
The only software that they can use to control anyone is their OS, and
they can only do that as long as no one ships something competitive
enough to attract application development. That hasn't happened,
largely because of GPL restrictions on code that might otherwise have
been used in such products.
Isn't this why Microsoft hates the GPL and loves
permissive Free Software licenses?
I wouldn't say they love permissive licenses. Look how long they
shipped their own broken TCP/IP stack when the well-tested BSD version
was available and everyone on the network would have been better if they
had used it from the start (remember the win95 version where the retries
speeded up instead of backing off when packets were dropped due to
congestion?). Anyway it is the GPL that has kept them rich and in control.
--
Les Mikesell
lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx
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