Comments on: Microsoft: We're all 'mixed source' companies

The software maker's top intellectual property lawyer tells CNET News that the distinction between open source and commercial software has largely gone away.

[likexx]

"softwre from the beginning is supposed to be free..."

WHAT the ?&Q@$#!@? Who told you that?? Why don't you say iPhone should be free or Intel CPU should be free?? Because they have a physical body while software doesn't ???? Why don't you say all music, movie, computer games should be FREE??? Tell me, what's the difference between Windows and World of Warcraft? Why should the other one be commercial but Windows should be FREE??

If you don't think Windows worth it, you don't need to buy it. Sure, you certainly can teach your mom and grandmother and no-geeks to learn how to "Recompile" linux to work as a home server.

[symbolset]

Actually he's right. In the beginning all software was free. It took quite a lot of conditioning and lawsuits to get people to accept the idea that software was something you could charge money to copy. This battle was fought a very long time ago. You see software is speech, and freedom of speech is pretty well accepted as protected expression. We used to argue about this quite a lot when I was a kid, which was probably before you were born. Did you see the onion on my belt?

And about the grandma compiling thing... I set up grandma (92 years young) with Ubuntu over a year ago and she hasn't compiled anything with it, but I have hopes. In the meantime it does her facebook, Picasa and MahJong just fine, and she has no trouble printing photos on her network printer. After 12 hours with Comcast broadband she knew Windows wasn't ready for <i>her</i> desktop because it had turned completely evil. Now when I visit her we talk about how the cherry trees are doing, and not about how to fix her computer.

[philipdc]

Its Philip Copeman here, Project leader of TurboCASH Accounting, the leading Opens Source Accounting package for small business. http://www.turbocash.net

Clearly Gutierrez is more at home in a court room than coding behind a keyboard. I have news for you Horatio, its wishful thinking. The war is only just beginning. At best we have a war between those that say there is a war and those who say that there isn't.

Microsoft may release Open Source code and we may release commercial code, but our philosophies are totally different. We don't hire lawyers to handle our press releases for one.

It is true that The TurboCASH project releases plugins under commercial licence and we develop a commercial offering, but the difference is that our core code is Open Source. If anyone does not like what we are doing with commercial code, they are free to download the source, rebrand it and and take us on. The GPL licence is a licence that is out there to protect the users not the vendors.

In the case of Redhat, Centos is free to download the Red Hat commercial releases in source and release them the next day. The control comes from customer service and not from the patents department.

This is a far cry from the commercial efforts that are backed by ever more complex legal procedures (All ultimately paid for by the paying customer). The bottom line is that Microsoft and the commercial companies cannot get away from the fact that once you unleash the community input onto code the results are invigorating.

This is what leads Horatio to say ?If every effort to license proves not to be fruitful, ultimately we have a responsibility to customers that have licenses and to our shareholders to ensure our intellectual property is respected. ? The only way you get respect is to write code that is better faster and tighter. You don't win respect in a courtroom. Now that doesn't sound like an end to hostilities to me.

[likexx]

Why people think "Software is supposed to be free??"

What makes you think Windows should be free while World of Warcraft should be commercial??

What makes you think iPhone worth $200 while Office should be free?? Simply because iPhone has a physical cover??

Why don't you think Music/Movie/TV programs/etc. should all be FREE??

Why don't you go up to Holleywood and ask them to be "Open and Free"???

People devoted years of their efforts into software. In fact, no company has ever made the same effort as Microsoft into system design----a platform compatiable with virtually all hardwares in the world. You people simply don't realize it.