Bonum Certa Men Certa

Devaluing the GPL, the Microsoft Way

EVERY NOW AND THEN we warn that by paying SourceForge, for example, Microsoft markets Visual Studio as an "open source" development tool [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]. By blurring the gap like this, the term "open source" ceases to mean what it once represented and some so-called open source software -- never mind the licence -- is made so dependent on the Microsoft stack that it permanently becomes Windows-only. MediaPortal is a new example of this and Heise covers its 1.0 release.



MedialPortal 1.0, a GPL licensed Media Centre alternative that has been five years in development, has been released for Windows XP, MCE2005 or Vista.


From the project's Web site.

Supported operating systems

     * Windows XP 32-bit Edition with service pack 3      * Windows Media Center Edition 2005 with update rollup 2      * Windows Vista 32- and 64-bit with service pack 1

[...]

Operating System Components

     * Microsoft .NET Framework 2      * Microsoft DirectX 9.0c or later            o Note: Using MP 1.0.0 the installer will automatically install latest DirectX if necessary.      * Microsoft latest avaiable Windows Media Player Version            o Note: Using MP 1.0.0 the installer will automatically prompt you for the download of latest WMP.      * Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 SP1 Redistributable Package (x86)            o Note: Using MP 1.0.0 the installer will automatically install the Visual C++ Redist. package.


How truly "Free". So when do DirectX, .NET, Windows and so on and so forth going into GPL realms? Free labour that promotes Windows and its accompanying technologies is exactly what Microsoft wanted and that's why it deviates from standards like OpenGL and ODF.

Broken lens
Broken promise

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