***applauds*** great find! It is about time somebody put M$ and their unfounded rhetoric in the garbage. Time and time again M$ tried to explain the reasons NOT to go open source, which in every case got an egg in the face. Man, it is nice to to rule the world, but it seems somebody is getting a little antsy about some competition, serious competiton, to be looming in the horizon. So, they hire these people to write a paper on why open source stinks and will never work and got an even bigger egg in the face. As I stated in an earlier post, every OS has its flaws and not everybody will understand or like every OS that comes down the pike. That is a matter of taste, and so is the choice of licensing and the way things are distributed and sold.

When they were yapping about the GPL being a "competitor" to copyrights, this made me wonder... this license does protect under copyright laws and does give conditions the GNU wanted all along since 1984: To protect rights. How? That source code is available, can be modified and redistributed for free or a cost. The restriction? Nobody is allowed to take that right from you. Under copyright law, a copyright holder can set conditions on how stuff should be distributed; that is free enterprise and it is not controlled by the government (they only make and enforce the rules), or Bill Gates (Who wants to be in the back pocket of politicians who are attracted to the smell of money like flies to dog ****).

Another facet of this PDF (and article) failed to point out: The GPL could the answer to ending piracy. When source code is available, and the user is allowed to redistribute means there is no fear of repercussions of the FBI knocking on your door for giving copies to friends or loading Linux and it's thousands of open source software on 1 or 1 million computers. This reduces costs all around! Also, the need to circumvent copying is all but eliminated, administrators do not need to worry about audits and worrying if they have more OS's than licenses support, and there is no fear of the BSA imposing tens, even hundreds of thousands of dollars for "settlement costs." That reduces costs even further.

(To make a point clear: I am NOT saying that EVERY program included in distributions, especially commercial versions are all GPL'd; make sure you read ALL terms and conditions set forth, because if you go on a distribution rampage thinking it was installed on *NIX, can result in problems )

Now with these benefits, I think companies like RedHat and Caldera (and other distros) have the right approach: To sell centralized support and consulting for firms. Even if it is in the thousands of dollars, why not? Its benefits outweigh the costs by 1000 fold. That is allowed in the GPL, and that is growth and progress.

And that's just the copyrights...