Microsoft – Cloud, Computers, Apps & Gaming
www.gnu.org
Explore Microsoft products and services for your home or business. Shop Surface, Microsoft 365, Xbox, Windows, Azure, and more. Find downloads and get support.

I was curious what the Linux people think about Microsoft and any bad practices that most people should know about already?

  • scratchandgame@lemmy.ml
    ·
    6 months ago

    pushing for a move from “Free” to “Open Source.”

    Can you explain more? Is that related to the clown gpl guys criticizing BSD/MIT/ISC license and laugh on FreeBSD for letting Apple to do whatever I can't remember?

    • BaumGeist@lemmy.ml
      ·
      6 months ago

      Did you mean

      Is that related to the gpl advocates who criticize BSD/MIT/ISC license and laugh at FreeBSD for letting Apple do something (I can’t remember what)?

      I'm not trying to be a grammar nazi, I just want to make sure I'm interpreting you correctly and not putting words in your mouth.

      Afaik, BSD and MIT licenses qualify as Free Software licenses. I could be wrong; I am not a lawyer, nor am I Richard Stallman.

      As for your first question:

      Can you explain more?

      @rand_alpha19@moist.catsweat.com did a good summary of the distinction, so I will expand on m$'s role:

      By most Free Software advocates' accounts, the rise of the term "Open Source" was a deliberate move to make proprietary software less of a bitter pill for us radical digital anarchists: "look, our code is Open and Transparent (but you still can't reproduce or modify it, even if you buy a license)." At the same time, Open Source advocates argued that this was the "Shoe-In-The-Door" for Free Software into the corporate/capitalist landscape—it's not, because it doesn't actually advocate any of Free Software's Four Essential Freedoms (Five, if you consider Copyleft to be essential, as I do).

      So basically the corporate world took the concept of Free Software, which was starting to be a threat to their businesses, sanitized it of any actual freedom, and sold it back to devs and users as some kind of magnanimous gesture that they were letting us look (but not touch) the code they wrote. Open Source.

      M$ has been essential in this shift. Perusing their github, they make it clear that they're willing to toss projects onto the pile, but make sure as hell to keep the Freedom from infecting any of their larger, popular software (e.g. Office, Visual Studio, Windows). And in return, they get access to whatever code you host on their service, assuming they can interpret vague phrasing in their Privacy Policy loosely enough.