Microsoft launches open source foundation (Linux-Watch) [LWN.net]

Microsoft launches open source foundation (Linux-Watch)

Posted Sep 12, 2009 0:02 UTC (Sat) by Hellow (guest, #57997)
In reply to: Microsoft launches open source foundation (Linux-Watch) by martinfick
Parent article: Microsoft launches open source foundation (Linux-Watch)

Part of open source is the ability to edit the source code and port it to other platforms, but this is impossible or extremely hard due to the fact it relies upon software only found in Windows, which is a proprietary platform.

Microsoft launches open source foundation (Linux-Watch)

Posted Sep 12, 2009 0:34 UTC (Sat) by martinfick (subscriber, #4455) [Link]

No, having that "ability" is not part of open source, no more than "having the ability to create a video compression algorithm that is 10x better than today's standards". You have the right to try all you want and it might be hard to do, but that difficulty really has nothing to do with open-source or free software. Your are implying way more of open source than is commonly accepted anywhere.

There is plenty of windows only free software developed by open source (non evil corporations) that would be extremely difficult to port to a free operating system. That free software is not non-free because of it. If we take your reasoning to its logical conclusion, all of the original GNU software would have been non-free before there was a free OS to run it on!

Do you forget that before linux/bsds, GNU software developers were just developing software that relied on a very proprietary operating system that did not have much of a chance (would require a behemoth of effort to create) of becoming free? The GNU software was no less free then than now! Naturally the users were, but one could hardly blame the free software developers for that, could we?