Microsoft is expending an awful great deal of time and power to attempt to derail the next edition of the Free Software program Foundation;s General Public License (GPL).On May 22, but a different inside a long line of Microsoft-commissioned open-source research made its debut. The most recent, performed by Harvard Enterprise College professor Alan MacCormack in conjunction with Keystone Technique Inc., is titled “A Developers Bill of Rights: What Open Source Developers Want in a Software License.”You probably can guess what the study concludes, given Microsoft;s decision last week — in the name of attempting to derail the looming GPL version 3 — to claim that open-source software program violates 235 of its patents.The Bill of Rights study found that rank-and-file open-source developers don;t want the GPL to dictate policy on patent-protection deals, like the one particular forged last year between Microsoft and Novell. The methodology (as detailed by eWEEK): “Researchers sent out 354 e-mails between Feb. 28, 2007, and April 4,
Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2007, 2007. Of those, 332 reached their destination, from which 34 responses were received, giving a response rate of 11 percent.”In other words, this was a study based on 34 responses that was conducted far more than a month before Microsoft decided to go public with its 235-patents-infringed claim.Why am I harping so much on Microsoft;s open-source moves lately?I;m stunned that after taking a number of seemingly positive steps vis-a-vis its thinking and strategy around open source, Microsoft has decided to blow away any bridges it built inside a matter of weeks. Until recently, it was primarily CEO Steve Ballmer who was championing publicly Microsoft;s old “closed source is good/open supply is bad” rhetoric. (For every three steps forward others at Microsoft took toward understanding and articulating ways that open supply and proprietary supply could coexist, Ballmer only managed to take two steps back.)This newest Microsoft-sponsored study adds insult to injury. The enterprise;s decision to go public with an alleged count of patent infringements has backfired and turned into a three-ring circus (If you doubt that, check out the list of nearly 300 individuals who;ve lined up on a public Wiki asking for Microsoft to “sue me first” for patent violations.)I think it;s time for an independent study on Microsoft;s practice of funding open-source studies. Do the resulting white papers actually convince anyone to abandon open-source in favor of Microsoft products and technologies?
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