Microsoft tries to prevent Free Software (Spiegel Article)

[Simo Sorce]

Frank Heckenbach wrote:
> 
> Eike Lange wrote:
> 
> > An article in the german magazine "Der Spiegel Online"
> > reports about Microsoft' plans to prevent the use of Free
> > and Open-Source-Software with their "Mobile Internet Toolkit". See:
> >       http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/ebusiness/0,1518,141719,00.html
> > for details.
> 
> Like the passage Alessandro cited from the new Microsoft EULA
> recently, this again refers to "viral" licenses. To avoid confusion
> on this isssue, maybe FSFE should set up an information page.
> Something like:
> 
> By analogy with biology (viruses attacking other cells) and computer
> sciencs (virus code modifying other code and data) a viral license
> should mean a license that affects other licenses.
> 
> Examples of non-viral licenses:
> 
> GNU GPL (affects only code derived from GPL'd code which is covered
> by the GPL'd code author's copyright according to copyright law;
> somewhat like inheritance in biology).
> 
> Examples of viral licenses:
> 
> The new Microsoft EULA (affects licenses of other code that is not
> covered by Microsoft's copyright).
> 

This is a really good idea IMHO.


-- 
Simo Sorce
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Una scelta di liberta': Software Libero.
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