Linked by Thom Holwerda on Mon 20th Jul 2009 15:54 UTC, submitted by Brandon L
As you would have guessed, the Mono debate is long from over. Two weeks ago, Microsoft extended its legally binding and perpetual community promise to cover the C# and CLI ECMA standards, which was generally seen as a good thing for Linux-centric fans of the C# language as well as for the Mono project. The FSF has responded now, and it isn't too impressed with Microsoft's move.
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Member since:2009-05-19
Well. You know what they say about trust? You work to gain it for years and loose it in a second forever.
The main issue, that I see, is that Microsoft did not got for the standard legal term - license, but labeled it a promise. That is why the is a big issue with that promise.
As for patents, I believe IBM has the biggest portfolio and is a part of the Open Invention Network, that pledges to allow open source to use the patents and defend open source with those patents.
Well, we could start with their logical fallacies and work from there.
They take Ballmer's quote of "So how do we somehow get the appropriate economic return for our patented innovation...?" as proof positive that "The company has been quite clear about its intentions since late 2006." Of course, they take for granted that someone would make the jump from 'trying to get appropriate economic return' and 'will attempt legal action to gain recompense for what they have lost.'
Never mind that between this and other actions, the way Microsoft has been dealing with "getting "appropriate economic return" on GNU/Linux's use of their works lately is to work more and more with the open-source community. (Sure, it's burning the company's long-term survival for short-term gain, but it wouldn't be the first time a company that had recently switched management, changed from sustainable but low-margin goods to short-term high-margin goods, and then wondered why management left town when the bill came in.) Logical fallacy: Hasty generalization (Because Microsoft wants to make money off of their work, they must want to sue).
Not to mention the preface lists other companies with patents for things that have since been released under copyleft licenses - Sun and IBM. Why are we to lose sleep over Microsoft working with open source, yet give no thought to other companies (in IBM's case, larger) doing the same? Why - because this is Microsoft. The reason Microsoft can't be trusted is beause it's Microsoft, and the reason Sun and IBM can be trusted is because they're Sun and IBM. Logical fallacy: Circular logic (Microsoft can't be trusted because Microsoft can't be trusted).
And it ends with the continual assertion that things would all be better, somehow, if Microsoft gave away their patents or patents for everyone were taken away. Logical fallacy: Appeal to belief (The FSF is correct because most people reading their argument would assume it was correct).
Member since:2007-02-17
Never mind that between this and other actions, the way Microsoft has been dealing with "getting "appropriate economic return" on GNU/Linux's use of their works lately is to work more and more with the open-source community. (Sure, it's burning the company's long-term survival for short-term gain, but it wouldn't be the first time a company that had recently switched management, changed from sustainable but low-margin goods to short-term high-margin goods, and then wondered why management left town when the bill came in.) Logical fallacy: Hasty generalization (Because Microsoft wants to make money off of their work, they must want to sue).
Rubbish. Utter nonsense.
There is ample evidence to show that the approach Microsoft has adopted is to let (or even encourage) open source development continue, without even a murmur in the direction of the developers themselves, and then to extort royalty payments (via threats to sue) from any company that tries to use the resultuing open source software in a product.
Tom Tom and Buffalo show this strategy up very well indeed.
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Member since:
2007-02-22
Well, we could start with their logical fallacies and work from there.
They take Ballmer's quote of "So how do we somehow get the appropriate economic return for our patented innovation...?" as proof positive that "The company has been quite clear about its intentions since late 2006." Of course, they take for granted that someone would make the jump from 'trying to get appropriate economic return' and 'will attempt legal action to gain recompense for what they have lost.'
Never mind that between this and other actions, the way Microsoft has been dealing with "getting "appropriate economic return" on GNU/Linux's use of their works lately is to work more and more with the open-source community. (Sure, it's burning the company's long-term survival for short-term gain, but it wouldn't be the first time a company that had recently switched management, changed from sustainable but low-margin goods to short-term high-margin goods, and then wondered why management left town when the bill came in.) Logical fallacy: Hasty generalization (Because Microsoft wants to make money off of their work, they must want to sue).
Not to mention the preface lists other companies with patents for things that have since been released under copyleft licenses - Sun and IBM. Why are we to lose sleep over Microsoft working with open source, yet give no thought to other companies (in IBM's case, larger) doing the same? Why - because this is Microsoft. The reason Microsoft can't be trusted is beause it's Microsoft, and the reason Sun and IBM can be trusted is because they're Sun and IBM. Logical fallacy: Circular logic (Microsoft can't be trusted because Microsoft can't be trusted).
And it ends with the continual assertion that things would all be better, somehow, if Microsoft gave away their patents or patents for everyone were taken away. Logical fallacy: Appeal to belief (The FSF is correct because most people reading their argument would assume it was correct).
For the document as a whole, we can add the fallacy of Appeal to Fear (the assumption that the reader will be afraid of the target from the beginning) and Bandwagon (The FSF is right because everyone knows Microsoft is the devil).