I would like your thoughts on this article. I am not even sure if this is good or bad...
Here is the headline:
"Microsoft joins group working to 'cure' open-source licensing issues"

http://www.zdnet.com/article/microso...16336921614584

Beware of Greeks bearing gifts!

It sounds like a soft form of extortion to me, in that: "comply or else". And you've got x amount of time to do it in.

Another pillar in the M$ "open source strategy" and Red Hat's on-board.

CA Technologies, Cisco, HPE, Microsoft, SAP, and SUSE along with Google. In all ten companies involved.

Why pick out MS????

"Beware of Greeks" indeed. I don't particularly see that there is an actual problem here that needs to be "solved." These companies should be aware that open source projects might respond by refusing to accept contributions from these companies, and that they might also excise those contributions from their code and replace them with something written by someone else. Even a very big company simply does not have the grip on an open-source project that they do on something proprietary which they developed by themselves. Open source is a rising tide that lifts all boats. Don't stand on your boat and pee into the water if you plan to drink it.

Because they're the ones who once seriously referred to the GPL as a cancer?

I'll wait to see how they behave.

But, given their past, I doubt that anything less than releasing all their software under the GPL will make me trust them.

I agree with wait and see.

Parts of MS do seem to be behaving better. Other parts no so much. I do believe that their current CEO is trying to change the corporate culture, but corporate cultures, especially in organizations as big as MS, are difficult to change; inertia is one of the most powerful forces in organizations.

Moved: This thread is more suitable in <General> and has been moved accordingly to help your thread/question get the exposure it deserves.

As much as I dislike and distrust Microsoft this appears to have begun with RedHat whom I've had to view with squinted eyes for about four years now but as for this "initiative" even after attempting to wade through the legalese I still have to ask, "What the hell is "predictability" in regards to the GPL?".

It's actually been (publicly) well received by FSF: https://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/...pl-enforcement

It's essentially a group implementing GPLv3 termination for GPLv2 - as permitted by FSF. Google, Facebook, IBM and Red Hat were already in - this is just about the latest members.

However it is, when all is said and done, yet another rejection of GPLv3 itself by the big businesses funding (and controlling) major FOSS projects such as Linux.

I think changing Linux to GPLv3 would require getting permission from every single contributor, which sounds fairly impractical to do regardless of what "big business" thinks.

Who said anything about Linux changing to GPLv3?

Well, to my way of thinking, "the prerogatives of every single copyright contributor, at the time that they were made, was – and, still is – "sovereign™."

Being the sovereign possessor of "the sovereign copyright," they are of course entitled to deign to(!) license those rights as they (then) saw fit ... and(!) to subsequently re-assign those same sovereign rights.

... "So, what (if anything) actually happens," if the terms of the agreement by which these sovereigns initially (and, individually(! .. !! .. !!!) granted their copyrights, is subsequently "revised?"

Well, at least so far as I see, there is no "Holder In Due Course™" here. That is to say, there is no "third party" to whom these sovereign copyright-holders ever formally signed-away, or in fact, assigned, the formal ownership (or, "executive control") of their copyrights.

There is no "separate corporate legal entity" here. No record-label. No publisher. No studio.

Therefore, I frankly anticipate that "actual open-source licensing" represents a vacuous legal new-frontier, the likes of which these parties have never fully anticipated. "I anticipate an entirely-new legal precedent here," eventually being handed down by Supreme Courts (and thereafter fought-over by legislators). We Shall See.™

Hmm, so when you said:

"rejection of GPLv3 itself" meant something different than 'not wanting to change projects to GPLv3'?