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The Linux Foundation: Not a Friend of Desktop Linux, the GPL, or Openness

posted by on Wednesday April 05 2017, @07:33PM   Printer-friendly
from the fork-the-linux-foundation dept.

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

After stirring up a ruckus by using words like "restrictive" and "virus" to describe the GPL in a Linux.com article, the Linux Foundation responds by quietly removing the post from the website.

The Linux Foundation has no respect for FOSS. Nor does it seem care about any users of Linux who aren't connected with the enterprise. It's been that way since the beginning. It now appears that the Foundation also has little respect for the GPL...you know, Linux's license. Nor does it appear to be much of a believer in the notion of transparency.

[...] On March 23, the Linux Foundation posted an article on its website, Linux.com, by Greg Olson, the foundation's senior director open source consulting services. In the article, "Five Legal Risks For Companies Involved in Open Source Software Development," he wrote that "permissive licenses present little risk," while referring to the GPL and other copyleft licenses as "Restrictive Licenses" and "viral."

[...] While his points are accurate enough, and reflect what I've already written in this article, the terms he uses suggest that the foundation holds the GPL and other copyleft licenses in contempt.

Source: http://fossforce.com/2017/04/lin-desktop-linux-gpl-openness/

takyon: Archive of the Linux.com article. The original blog post currently says "Access Denied" and "You are not authorized to access this page."

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Thursday April 06 2017, @02:23AM (1 child)

    by Thexalon (636) on Thursday April 06 2017, @02:23AM (#489472)

    The goal of the GPL was to create a Free Software ecosystem that could never have its source closed off, or have some major corporation take the work of Free Software developers and turn it into their own proprietary thing. It's *supposed* to be what the proprietary folks are calling "viral": Like the more restrictive Creative Commons licenses, you can't (legally) take something that's GPL'd, include it in your own thing, and sell the results without including the source code.

    I'm pleased as punch that the suits hate it. It means that on the whole, it's working!

    --
    The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 06 2017, @04:51AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 06 2017, @04:51AM (#489506)

    SystemD gets around this by serializing everything.