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[FYI] Open source terror stalks Microsoft's lawyers



http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/19953.html

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Open source terror stalks Microsoft's lawyers

                    By John Lettice

                    Posted: 25/06/2001 at 15:50 GMT

When Bill Gates last week urged businesses to have their lawyers read 
the GPL before using open source software, it turns out he was 
speaking from a position of knowledge. Knowledge of having lots of 
lawyers, anyway, because Microsoft's legal team have clearly given 
themselves the most awful fright by reading the blessed thing.  

[...]  



Microsoft is discharging its obligations, as it should do. But why is 
it ranting on at imaginary monsters, telling developers they can't do 
what they'd never dream of doing anyway, and rejecting responsibility 
for a bunch of stuff that nobody would ever dream of holding it 
responsible for? Maybe the monsters aren't so imaginary, and a lot 
closer to home than you you might think.  

Think lawyer. Think lawyer thinking about developers. Other people's 
code gets into products. Other people's code has got into Microsoft 
products in the past; plagiarism happens, and there is absolutely no 
way any senior Microsoft manager could swear an affidavit saying that 
it never happens, and never will happen. This is not a criticism of 
Microsoft, the same applies to everybody, but think lawyer thinking 
about this.  

And also, maybe, think Posix. It's been alleged to us that the NT 4.0 
Resource Kit includes Posix utilities subject to the GPL. Were this 
the case, this would raise the question of why source for NT 4.0 has 
not yet been published under the GPL. If the lawyers haven't 
considered this one already, we're sorry to have scared them even 
more, but over all these years, with all of these people, there must 
be many such questions for Microsoft's lawyers to worry about.  

If someone within Microsoft or contracted to Microsoft could be 
legally deemed to have the authority to accept the provisions of the 
GPL while incorporating GPL code into Microsoft software, then 
Microsoft would be bound by the GPL. Some punk could force them to 
GPL WinXP. It's even conceivable (well, if you think lawyer hard 
enough) that some of the many open source sympathising grunts in 
Redmond could plant the code deliberately. And you thought we were 
joking last week (Commie cell in MS secretly pushing GPL to 
customers).  

[...]

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