MS contributing to Linux

[Derek Broughton]

Smoot Carl-Mitchell wrote:

> On Thu, 2009-07-23 at 17:00 +0100, Liam Proven wrote:
>> 
>> Secondly, MS did not choose to give away the source, it had to,
>> because it has been caught violating the GPL.
> 
> Folks, MS did not have to GPL the source.  They could have provided
> proprietary drivers much as VMware does with its virtualization
> software. I believe they chose to GPLv2 the drivers because the wanted
> the code in the mainstream Linux release.

No, they had to GPL _that_ source, because it was already using GPL code 
(exactly what MS means when they call GPL a virus!).  They could, just as 
Linux does when we find somebody has included proprietary code, rewrite it 
to not include any code from the "tainted" code base, but they chose to keep 
the code they had, and release it properly under the GPL.

-- 
derek