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Just a reminder, these posts are not legal advice. This site is the personal blog of Mark Radcliffe and the opinions expressed are those of Mark Radcliffe and not those of his clients, DLA Piper or the clients of DLA Piper.

About Me:

Mark Radcliffe

I earned a B.S. in Chemistry magna cum laude from the University of Michigan and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. I have been practicing law in Silicon Valley for over 25 years and am now a senior partner at DLA Piper. DLA Piper is a new global law firm formed in 2005 from the merger of three law firms. The firm now has 3600 lawyers in 25 countries and 65 cities. My practice is a mix of corporate securities and intellectual property. I work with many startups as well as large global companies. I have had the opportunity to work with companies in many industries, ranging from semiconductor to digital media to open source. I am the General Counsel, pro bono, of the Open Source Initiative and I ran the "Users" committee reviewing the GPLv3 draft.

Microsoft & Linux: Did Hell really Freeze Over?

24/07/09

When Microsoft contributed drivers to Linux to GPLv2, my reaction (and the general reaction in the community) was that “hell had frozen over” and to bring out the skates http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2009/Jul09/07-20LinuxQA.mspx. Several recent reports suggest that these contributions were not voluntary and Microsoft had included GPLv2 licensed code in these drivers http://linux-network-plumber.blogspot.com/2009/07/congratulations-microsoft.html (Steve Hemminger of Vyatta) and http://www.kroah.com/log/linux/microsoft-linux-hyper-v-drivers.html (Greg Kroah-Hartman of Novell). 

I view this contribution as valuable even if legal concerns drove it.  I think that Microsoft acted as a responsible member of the community which is the behavior that we want to encourage.  They could have simply rewritten the code to remove the open source components. I am under no illusion that Microsoft has suddenly turned into a complete supporter of open source (and for clarity, neither I nor my law firm represents them).  However, Microsoft’s engagement with the open source community is going to  be a gradual one and will have fits and starts.  Microsoft is still fundamentally based on a proprietary model and has that mind set.   They can change and should be encouraged to change. I hope that these revelations will not result in an attack on Microsoft for not being “truly” committed to the open source community. We should, instead, encourage them to continue to be involved.

This situation is a warning to companies that they need to have an open source policy and a process for managing their work with the open source software.  See my earlier post, http://lawandlifesiliconvalley.com/blog/?p=107.

In fact, I think that the Microsoft press announcement bears further scrutiny,  In addition to the announcement of the contribution, Sam Ramji mentions several ways in which Microsoft is implementing open source in their business strategy.   This increased use of open source by Microsoft should be encouraged.

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  1. [...] Read the original post:  Law & Life: Silicon Valley » Microsoft & Linux: Did Hell really … [...]

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