More EU Open Source Software Allegations Against Microsoft

On February 26, some organization called Wikileaks (just what you think it means) proudly outed an alleged Microsoft (MSFT) front group's alleged comments on the alleged working draft of an alleged European Union (EU) workgroup on open source software. I have no idea if any of the allegations is true, but the pomposity of Wikileaks and the poor quality of the document, whatever its source, provide a little humor in these dark economic times.

Wikileaks says it only outs documents with "political, diplomatic, ethical or historical significance." If this document--full of the usual EU nonsense mispositioning open source software--is of any significance, it demonstrates how low politics, diplomacy, ethics and history have sunk. The document is full of comments of all types so it is not clear which comments allegedly come from the alleged Microsoft front group, called the Association for Competitive Technology (ACT). (For the record ACT is listed as a K-Street Washington, D.C. lobbyist funded by eBay (EBAY), Microsoft, Oracle (ORCL), Orbitz (OWW), Verisign (VRSN) and--according to its web site--3000 other companies.)

I certainly hope the EU is not paying anyone to write this document because it has the quality level of a bad high-school term paper. In a good old 11th-grade-approach, the authors have come up with the findings first and are now sending "Erwin and Charlotte (out) to find some evidence." The misspellings of EU-based companies are embarrassing. But I am afraid it might be a legitimate EU document because it has that "outlawing misshapen fruit" feeling about it.

And I hope for Microsoft shareholders' sake that it is not funding anyone to take the time to comment on this crap.

No matter the source, the original and the comments are all rubbish from the first sentence. Richard Stallman did not start the open source movement. He despises the term violently. (As an aside, I do not believe he is or ever was an "MIT scientist.")

More important, open source software is neither a complement to (apparently Microsoft's alleged contribution that makes this of Wikileak-level historical significance) nor an alternative to non-open-source software.

• Open source is a widely variant set of legal terms and conditions (Ts&Cs)--some of which date back to the 1970s--by which a relatively small amount of software is distributed.

• Open source is secondarily a 50-year-old culture/philosophy within the quickly shrinking worldwide software development community.

The document sets up a false taxonomy of open source "creators", which includes everyone except--not unexpectedly but inaccurately--Microsoft. 10-year-old companies are incorrectly labeled as new and companies that only license using open source Ts&Cs are incorrectly classified as hybrid. The hybrid idea is as old as the information technology industry. Software distributed with open source Ts&Cs is no more standard or non-standard than any other software.

And although I believe software has no nationality, open source has not "evolved faster in Europe than anywhere else in the world." All the leading open source projects are multinational but primarily funded by large U.S. information-technology suppliers (e.g., IBM, HP (HPQ), and others behind the Linux Foundation; Google (GOOG) behind the Mozilla Foundation, all the leading technology companies behind the Apache Foundation, and so forth). Most of the most popular open source technology began as products sold with non-open-source Ts&Cs and was later released with open source Ts&Cs as its functionality became a commodity. (The Apache web server--probably the most popular piece of open source software--is an exception.)

Comments

[avd:]

> Richard Stallman did not start the open source movement

He did. He started the GNU project, invented GPL, produced gcc and other free programming tools that in turn enabled linux and the whole host of other free software. There were disparate bits and pieces of open source software before him but there was no movement.

> He despises the term violently

The term but not the concept. The original term was "free software" while "open source software" was made up by Eric Raymond and Bruce Perens to make the concept marketable.

> As an aside, I do not believe he is or ever was an "MIT scientist."

Whatever you believe in, his biography says he worked for MIT AI lab, where, for instance, he created emacs text editor. I see no reason to doubt this.

> More important, open source software is neither a complement to nor an alternative to non-open-source software.

This statement is rather vague. Open source software by now is lots and lots of very different software pieces. Some of them were specifically created as an alternative to existing non-open-source software. Like linux was created as an alternative to Unix. Others were created as original research projects. Like X Window System was created by MIT and DEC to add windowing to Unix. Now greatly extended it perfectly works on Linux. Others were initially closed-source projects later relicensed as open source. So each open source project has a different purpose and different story. Saying for the whole open source software that 'it is that" or "it is not that" just makes no sense.

> Open source is a widely variant set of legal terms and conditions (Ts&Cs)--some of which date back to the 1970s--by which a relatively small amount of software is distributed.

Oh common. Open source licenses is one thing and open source software is another. Simply put license is license, software is software. Don't confuse the two.

Sure, each software is usually covered by some license. Specifically each open source software is covered by an open source license. License is just a tool. It ensures that software is distributed according to the open source model. And open source model is the idea that every user has the right to see the source code of the software he/she uses.

> Open source is secondarily a 50-year-old culture/philosophy within the quickly shrinking worldwide software development community.

Again, people indeed wrote software and released its source for free for a while. But it was mainly university culture not open source culture as such. Scientists did some research and released the source code because it was not supposed to make money from it in the first place. Like reference TCP/IP stack was created at University of Berkeley by Bill Joy and folks. Then Bill Joy founded Sun where they were creating proprietary software.

Free software, as philosophy and distinct movement was founded by Richard Stallman and later rebranded as open source by Eric Raymond and Bruce Perens.

As for quickly shrinking software development community I have no idea where this comes from. Open source expands to more and more areas.

Mar 08 08:25 PM

[Alinax:]

"And I hope for Microsoft shareholders' sake that it is not funding anyone to take the time to comment on this crap."

I wonder why Microsoft participates in the drafting of a European Software Strategy at all, which presumably needs to serve our European interests. But maybe it is common practice in the USA to let North Korea participate in drafting the military strategy of the US? Who knows...

"No matter the source, the original and the comments are all rubbish from the first sentence."

I wonder why these ACT lobbyists leak alpha draft documents. The answer seems to be simple: in order to blow up the industry working group of the European Commission that writes an open source report.

"And although I believe software has no nationality, open source has not "evolved faster in Europe than anywhere else in the world.""

Yes, it has though been ignored by policy makers. This changes now, and politicians get increasingly upset by the way Microsoft gets in the way of their own interest.

Mar 09 08:50 AM

[Jeff Noel A...:]

it is inevitable that the pursuit of success through proprietary gains will rival its very own fundamentals sans commercialism.

Open source and Competitive technology seems will the "other rivalry" that will inherit the technological boom of this century. A revolution is at hand: one is making sure that it knows more and have more, the other working against the flow but is the "majority"

Mar 09 01:07 PM