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Story: OpenOffice developers clear Visual Studio licensing hurdle

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Posted by: Jeff Lewis (Monday 14 February 2005, 7:49 PM)

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Errr... how is this article "anti-Linux"? In fact, if anything, it's "anti-Microsoft"... and weirdly so at that.

The complaint seems to be "Microsoft bad because it doesn't give away free compilers with debugging and optimising tools to people in poorer countries trying to make products that compete with their products while the good hearted open source and Linux people do..."

Even the title of the article is misleading - while it is technically correct to refer to 'not having enough money to buy a copy of VS' as 'a problem with Microsoft's VS licensing schemes' (since the reason they have a licensing scheme is to charge money for using their products), it implies something more sinister - that somehow there's something in the way that Microsoft licenses their software that specifically targets open source... which from what's written here, isn't the case.

The fact that open sourcers may be poor and can't afford a copy of VS, while unfortunate, is hardly Microsoft's fault.

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