All Things Microsoft > Microsoft as a Company

Microsoft wins Open Source Product Excellence Awards

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mobrien_12:
To be GPL, the source must be freely available if you sell binaries.  You don't necessarily have to put it on the same CD as the binaries, but if someone asks, you have to give him/her the source at no extra charge (not including small charges for say, materials and shipping).

choasforages:
and the source cd was labeled at 20 and the bin's were hundreds or so

SAJChurchey:
They probably took the code off some other open source project that they couldn't exactly "steal" from and wound up having to offer IT under GPL, too.  M$ probably had every intention of making it proprietary.

Just speculation, but "stealing" open source code might be something M$ thought about :)

And if M$ "modified" it; once the source code is given to the right person, they're probably going to be hacked left and right.

[ January 30, 2003: Message edited by: SAJChurchey ]

Pantso:

quote:Originally posted by ecsyle_one:

wait, what?? sells GPL software? isnt that illegal? wtf
--- End quote ---


Nope, that is definitely not illegal. When you license your software under the GNU/GPL, that does definitely not mean that you can't charge for it. You can charge for it as long as you provide the source code along with the binaries. In return, those who wish to modify the source, improve it etc have to announce those changes as well etc etc, something which the fsf also calls ironically copyleft.

xyle_one:

quote:Originally posted by Panos:


Nope, that is definitely not illegal. When you license your software under the GNU/GPL, that does definitely not mean that you can't charge for it. You can charge for it as long as you provide the source code along with the binaries. In return, those who wish to modify the source, improve it etc have to announce those changes as well etc etc, something which the fsf also calls ironically copyleft.
--- End quote ---

i didnt read the article very carefully  :D  
thanks everyone, for clearing that up. i wasnt really paying much attention to the article. it is quite interesting that M$ is playing fair with this. at least so far. wierd days

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