Ballmer Attacks Open Source

In an interview with the Chicago Sun-Times, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said: “Open source is not available to commercial companies. The way the license is written, if you use any open-source software, you have to make the rest of your software open source.”

That’s a remarkable statement. It’s also not true.

When I spoke with Ballmer about this a couple of months ago, he was careful to refer to the GNU General Public License. Now, talking with a reporter who apparently didn’t know the difference, Ballmer turns his criticism on a wider target.

Ballmer surely knows that not all open-source licenses adhere to the GPL. Why did he mislead the Chicago newspaper? I’ve asked Microsoft’s PR folks for an explanation and will post any response.

UPDATE: Rick Miller of Microsoft says Ballmer mis-spoke. “He intended to refer to the GPL,” Miller says.

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