Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer recently told analysts:

“I would not anticipate that we make a huge additional revenue stream from our Novell deal, but I do think it clearly establishes that open source is not free,” he said, “and open source will have to respect intellectual property rights of others just as any other competitor will.”

Intellectual Property Rights? Microsoft screams about IP rights when they think theirs are being infringed, but never when they are the ones infringing. They seem to think that having a monopoly that allows them to squeeze out competition is fair. They also forget that in all this, they are attempting to trample on the GPL and all IP developed under it. This has in fact, delayed the latest version of the GNU Public License (GPL).

Free Software Foundation President and co-author of the GPL, Richard Stallman, recently weighed in on this:

“The GPL was designed to ensure that all users of a program receive the four essential freedoms which define free software. These freedoms allow you to run the program as you see fit, study and adapt it for your own purposes, redistribute copies to help your neighbor, and release your improvements to the public.

He continued: “The recent patent agreement between Microsoft and Novell aims to undermine these freedoms. In this draft we have worked hard to prevent such deals from making a mockery of free software.”

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