[Cryptography] Microsoft's new, free, crypto library dubbed FourQ

[Ray Dillinger]

On 09/18/2015 11:11 AM, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 16, 2015 at 6:28 PM, Ray Dillinger <bear at sonic.net> wrote:

>> That's -- Highly uncharacteristic of Microsoft.  Perhaps
>> things are changing in Redmond. 
>>
> 
> No, it is highly characteristic of them. They have been releasing code
> under an MIT license for most of the 20+ years I have been working with
> them.

Interesting.  That's about the same time I stopped using Microsoft
products.  In fairness, I have been seeing progressively less
evidence as time goes by of widespread and idiotic security failures
on their part; for the last while the windows security failures have
been rarer and apparently have required more-than-just-trivial effort.

> When Bill Gates criticized the 'viral' nature of GNU, he gave his explicit
> personal support to the BSD and MIT licenses at the same time. Gates never
> criticized open source software as a whole, what he objected to was the
> clause that makes it impossible to use GNU licensed software in proprietary
> or MIT licensed work.

The GNU license is largely a reaction to the proprietary culture
he fostered and the relative impossibility of realizing a profit
from anything if you weren't part of the Microsoft hegemony.  It
represents a lot of people just plain giving up on the possibility
of personal profit. They wouldn't have done so had Microsoft not
been frequently, deliberately, and unfairly barring or disrupting
their access to the market.  As far as I can see its emergence as
a significant force affecting the market is the direct consequence
of Gates' own actions. His dislike of it therefore deserves neither
sympathy nor respect.

				Bear


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