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Open source terror stalks Microsoft's lawyers

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

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.

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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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