[mercury-users] Microsoft's financial support

[Tyson Dowd]

On 09-Nov-1999, Marko Schuetz <marko at ki.informatik.uni-frankfurt.de> wrote:
> (to spare me from writing "IMHO" all too often: this is just my humble
> opinion) 
> 
> >>>>> "Fergus" == Fergus Henderson <fjh at cs.mu.oz.au> writes:
> 
> Fergus> |	There's nothing wrong with taking money away from Microsoft.
> Fergus> |		-Richard Stallman.
> 
> I couldn't agree more. But it's not the whole story: there is a NDA
> about the details of the deal, so one thing that was sold is the
> ability to speak freely about the details of the deal and have them
> openly criticized or applauded (or whatever else people would like to
> do). 

Sure.  Which is pretty annoying.

But it only binds the people who have signed the NDA.  There are
quite a few Mercury people here in Melbourne who know nothing about
any of this.   The rest of us only wish we didn't.  ;-)

> >>>>> "Tyson" == Tyson Dowd <trd at cs.mu.OZ.AU> writes:
> 
> Tyson> (my opinions, my comments, my mistakes, nothing official here,
> Tyson> nothing to see here, move along)
> 
> Tyson> I believe we are pretty aware of the issues involved.  Taking a
> Tyson> grant from Microsoft doesn't do anything to negate the
> Tyson> licensing conditions that Mercury is distributed under.  We
> Tyson> still have a daily released under the GPL/LGPL licensing
> Tyson> conditions that Mercury has had for ages.
> 
> Tyson> Microsoft Research is a huge funding agency in programming
> Tyson> language research these days.  Many full time
> Tyson> researchers/developers working on Haskell actually work at
> Tyson> Microsoft Research.  However, these same people have revised
> Tyson> the licensing conditions of GHC to make it completely
> Tyson> open-source (in fact, it's got a BSD-like license) while
> Tyson> employed there.  The MLj compiler is a GPL-ed compiler which is
> Tyson> also being worked on by two two Microsoft Research employees.
> 
> \begin{speculation} 
> 
> If I were to put on my hypothetical Microsoft hat for a moment and
> think about the poor growth of Windows NT/95/98/... in academia, say
> programming language education. Then I spot an interesting very
> promising language development, that has evolved into a stable project
> and has attracted some very talented contributors around the world
> (mercury). How could I apply the company philosophy ("embrace and
> extend") to this project to help Windows marketing? I could offer some
> money to some of the researchers involved. If then I can channel some
> of these researchers efforts towards some of my companys proprietary
> protocols and technologies, I will already have some extension
> availably on windows, but not on another platform and, as we all know,
> once this is implemented, implementing the same features using open
> protocols and technologies will be much less prestigeous than the
> original work. 
> 
> ...and so on and so forth...
> 
> \end{speculation}

I'm sure they are thinking all those things.

We were aware of this long before they spoke to us.  They knew that we
were aware of this.

> Tyson> Commercial confidentiality agreements are common in business
>                                                            !!!!!!!!
> 
> They are quite uncommon in free software and open-source software. 
 
Many many contributors to open source software are bound by 
NDAs which stop them speaking about various technologies and other
knowledge.  Linus Torvalds has refused to tell anyone what he is doing
at Transmeta for the last few years.  I don't think it's a big problem
if doesn't interfere with the work you are doing for free software,
and it enables you to work on free software.

Nobody has been particularly dismissive of everyone working on the
Linux/Merced port, even though they are probably knee-deep in NDAs.

> Tyson> practice and I see no real harm in accepting one with a time
> Tyson> limit.  Especially when it means in return you get a bunch of
> Tyson> money with which to develop open-source software.
> 
> Tyson> Even if you hate the company, please consider that we are
> 
> Not me.
> 
> Tyson> spending their money on free software.  Consider it as a kind
> Tyson> of Robin Hood thing ;-)
> 
> Don't get me wrong: I do think that these are honorable motives and I
> think it is a great thing to support free software. I don't believe
> that these are Microsofts motives. And you are taking a high risk
> meeting them on their (legal/financial/marketing) turf.

I'm not sure what to say to this.

I don't see it as that high a risk.  
 
> On the side, it isn't the Robin Hood thing: He *robbed* the rich ones
> to give to the poor and did not have any written agreement with them
> be it an NDA or other.

Well the written agreement part doesn't fit well into the story, but
I guess only time will tell whether we *robbed* them or not ;-)

Tyson.
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