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05/22/2007, 3:00 PM - 3:50 PM
Speaker:
Bruce A Lehman, Senior Counsel, Akin Gump.
If software licenses lie on a continuum between the "purist" open source model advocated by the FSF and the hard-line proprietary practices of Microsoft, does there exist a middle ground where open source and proprietary software can coexist simultaneously? Virtualization is an excellent way to explore this middle ground because it facilitates and encourages even more bundling of open source and proprietary software into a single distribution package. Neither "pure" open source nor "pure" proprietary models are compatible with successful virtualization, because both extremes seek to impose their own licensing philosophy on the developer. The extreme position taken by Microsoft with respect to running Windows in a virtual machine is particularly troubling because it signals a reluctance to share a machine with any other operating system, and potentially raises anti-competitive concerns that the industry supposedly resolved. At the same time, the GPLv3 may be pushing so far towards "freedom" for the user that it may severely limit the ability of a developer to distribute GPL'd software in a single virtual machine with proprietary packages. The speaker will discuss the legal and practical implications of this problem.
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