> He directly referenced Linux which is famously under GPLv2.

Sure, he used it as an example, but he also explicitly made a generality about open source software, not the GPLv2. In any case, what he said was wrong about Linux, wrong about the GPL (including GPLv2), and wrong about open source software, so arguing over which of those he was talking about is a sideshow.

> You can argue with this wording if you like, but his observation is spot on

No, its absolutely, completely false. You can use -- or even distribute -- "open source software" (or GPL software, or Linux specifically) without "all your other software" being required to become open source.

By use it is pretty obvious he meant incorporate it as part of their products (ex. utilize a GPL library). Microsoft is a software development shop after all.

It seems to me like he was purposefully taking a hard political stance on a nuanced issue in order to drive people who are uninformed or unsure about these things into his own company's pen. It has nothing to do with linux, GPL, or any technicality, and everything to do with perceptions, executive policy, and business culture.

perhaps, but he was referring to the GPL, and this particular discussion started because one poster asked roughly "wasn't he being accurate"?

And the answer is yes.

What I think is "obvious to those who are not unduly biased" is that he was cherrypicking the most extreme example (the restrictive GPL license, which is not used by most open source software[1]), and then trying to use that to spraypaint FUD over the (much) broader open source concept as a whole.

"Open source is not available to commercial companies" is about as factually incorrect as any statement in the English language can aspire to be.

[1]: http://johnhaller.com/useful-stuff/open-source-license-popul...

weird how the GPL shows up as the most popular license by having double the marketshare of number 2.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyleft#Viral_licensing

" Craig Mundie remarked, "This viral aspect of the GPL poses a threat to the intellectual property of any organization making use of it."[35] In another context, Steve Ballmer declared that code released under GPL is useless to the commercial sector (since it can only be used if the resulting surrounding code becomes GPL), describing it thus as "a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches"."

It seems even the Wiki editors believe he was speaking about the GPL.

Stop being a jackass.

If any of that FUD were true, how do you explain that Microsoft has been shipping the "Subsystem for UNIX-based Applications" add-on for Windows Server for a decade, while Ballmer was CEO?

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc771470.aspx https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Services_for_UNIX

It includes GPL-licensed programs such as GCC and GDB; shouldn't Microsoft have released the source code of Windows Server by now if these statements weren't anything but FUD?

That was 2001. There was no SAS loophole to exploit. If you desired to sell software, you had to ship it. In a box. The GPL was as viable for businesses back then as the AGPL is today.

> That was 2001. There was no SAS loophole to exploit. If you desired to sell software, you had to ship it.

People have been selling access to remotely hosted services since long before 2001 (since before the web, the FSF/GPL, or even the internet or even ARPAnet existed.)

The thing now referred to as "SaaS" has been a thing a lot longer than the name "Software-as-a-Service" or the acronym "SaaS" to refer to the concept has existed.

In 2001 I sold a closed-source commercial product that ran on Linux and used LGPL librsries.

No, you can use Linux without having to open source the stuff you run on Linux. That is not an accurate observation by any stretch of the imagination.