Much of the hottest debate and discussion in the open source community lately has been about one the most proprietary of vendors, Microsoft. As Redmond alters its course and plots its co-existence and next wave of competition with open source, it is running into everything from pushback to open arms to, more recently, a challenge by the Free Software Foundation. The FSF repudiates Microsoft’s July 2007 statement declaring its unwillingness to include support for GPLv3-licensed code in its distribution of SUSE Linux, which is part of the Microsoft-Novell collaboration deal struck in November 2006. When released, Microsoft’s statement seemed somewhat odd and looked to some like recognition that there may be some issues for Microsoft in this new open source license.

While I disagree with the FSF that the term intellectual property is “a propaganda term designed to confuse patent law with copyright and other unrelated laws, and to muddy the different issues they raise,” I do agree that Microsoft must abide by the terms and conditions of the GPL, whether version 2 or 3, whichever is applicable, which may emerge as a key question. Microsoft found a loophole in GPLv2 that allowed the patent promise to Novell SUSE Linux users but not other Linux users. The selective patent promise, while contrary to the spirit of the GPL and nebulous for users, does comply with the letter of the open source license. However, GPLv3 is different, and Microsoft was exactly what the FSF had in mind when it described and defined distributor, propagator and conveyor of Linux in the new license.

Should Microsoft be discriminated against or otherwise treated differently as it attempts to foster its own open source efforts or seeks OSI approval on its proposed open source licenses? Absolutely not. I liken this to the discussion of open source software used in weapons and military applications. The bottom line is that while some may not like the result of what’s done with granted freedoms, those freedoms must in no way be limited or exclusionary to any groups or individuals. The whole basis, and here’s where I agree with the FSF again, of free and open source software is freedom. On the flip side, Microsoft can’t come out and declare that it won’t need to have anything to do with GPLv3 because it says so. What the license says is far more relevant. The company should not, dare I say cannot, seek any special status if it wants to be treated fairly, particularly in regards to software licenses, which are the basis for the bulk of Microsoft’s billions.