Tuesday June 25 - Mustafa Suleyman calls web content “freeware” in front of God and everybody at the Aspen Ideas Festival.
Thursday June 27 - Mother Jones sues Microsoft. I’m sure that their lawyers are thrilled.
“With respect to content that is already on the open web, the social contract of that content since the 90s has been that it is fair use. Anyone can copy it, recreate with it, reproduce with it. That has been freeware, if you like. That’s been the understanding,” said Suleyman.
Ugh. Social contract, free use, freeware - those all mean very different things. I don’t think the head of a department like that should be blabbing to the public if they’re going to mix up terms like that. Do they not have PR and legal departments that are versed in anything beyond Microsoft’s historical business methods (lie, steal, and fearmonger about open source)?
Not to mention that in some places, you cannot give up the IP rights over code you write.
Not to mention “fair use” is primarily for artistic endeavors.
Not to mention “freeware” is for programs, not written word blog posts or images.
etc…
