Bonum Certa Men Certa

Old Proof That Microsoft Dislikes Free/Open Source Software

"Microsoft: Get your grubby hands off education" -- Unnamed

Darth Vader Microsoft
Picture by SubSonica



"Microsoft has a PhD scholarship grants program which specifically excludes Free Software (Notice: NOT "Open Source"), the GPL, Sun, Netscape and Apache," says one of our informants. Microsoft disinterested in open source? That can't be. Or can it? Microsoft just pretends to like open source in order to weaken it and to change it. Moreover, in education, Microsoft's track record has been abysmal and distasteful, to say the very least. It even bribes professors.



"There is so much scientific work which uses Free Software," says our informant "and needing students who would deserve a scholarship can't afford to spend money in proprietary software... let alone the fact of the philosophy commonly shared by freedom of knowledge fostered by Free Software and the scientific exchange of knowledge."

Here are the conditions of the grants program, for those who don't believe it:

«7.2 The University shall ensure that the Resulting IPR does not include any Publicly Available Software, that is to say each of (i) any software that contains, or is derived in any manner (in whole or in part) from, any software that is distributed as free software, open source software or similar licensing or distribution models; and (ii) any software that requires as a condition of use, modification and/or distribution of such software that such software or other software incorporated into, derived from or distributed with such software (a) be disclosed or distributed in source code form; and/or (b) be licensed for the purpose of making derivative works; and/or (c) be redistributable at no charge. Publicly Available Software includes, without limitation, software licensed or distributed under any of the following licences or distribution models, or licences or distribution models similar to any of the following: (a) GNU’s General Public Licence (GPL) or Lesser/Library GPL (LGPL), (b) The Artistic Licence (e.g., PERL), (c) the Mozilla Public Licence, (d) the Netscape Public Licence (e) the Sun Community Source Licence (SCSL), (f) the Sun Industry Source Licence (SISL), and (g) the Apache Server Licence. »

Yes, Microsoft just loves open source.

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