Sheer GPLv3 hatred is nothing new from Microsoft. Now comes their little 'study'.

A study (PDF) funded by Microsoft and carried out by Harvard Business School professor Alan MacCormack aims to determine what kind of features and protections developers want in version 3 of the widely-used General Public License (GPL 3). The study, which uses extremely questionable methodology, concludes that open-source software developers don't want the GPL 3 to impose extensive patent licensing requirements or prevent agreements like the controversial cross-licensing deal between Novell and Microsoft.

This is not too surprising. Here you have a survey funded by Microsoft which assesses a licence they have little to do with (only transitively). Microsoft and Novell have had a highly controversial study about customer satisfaction with their little deal, as well.

Microsoft has said on numerous occasions (even recently) that it hates GPLv3 and that it was probably the cause it threatened to sue just over a week ago, according to their executives.

The company has also used a lot of lobbying and placements in the media (using proxies) to discredit GPLv3 and create a scare.

This is just something to be aware of.

The reality about the GPLv3 is much brighter, but media manipulation can have you misled.

Update: see the criticism of this 'study' at Groklaw. It's titled "Only 11% of OS Targeted Programmers Willing to Help MS-Funded Study".