Stallman vs the CodePlex Foundation and Miguel de Icaza

In a posting on his FSF blog, Richard Stallman has attacked Microsoft's creation of the CodePlex Foundation and dubbed Miguel de Icaza an "apologist" for Microsoft. De Icaza has responded in his own blog comparing Stallman's language to that of George W Bush, and defending the foundation as "great way of helping steer Microsoft in the right direction".

Richard Stallman
Source: cc-by-sa Chris McKenna http://tr.im/A4LH Stallman's objections to the CodePlex Foundation are based around his criticism of the open source movement which he says "doesn't teach developers to defend their freedoms" and that "if they don't understand the importance of this freedom, developers may succumb to Microsoft's ploys". He also criticises the unrelated CodePlex.com hosting site for not supporting the GPL version 3 (the site does support other open source licences including GPL 2 and the LGPL). "We don't know that the CodePlex Foundation will try to discourage GPL version 3, but it would fit Microsoft's pattern" says Stallman.

Miguel de Icaza
Source: cc-by-2.0 James Duncan Davidson/O'Reilly Media De Icaza responds to being labelled an "apologist" by Stallman, saying "I merely happen to have a different perspective on Microsoft than he has" and notes that Stallman "attacks his own allies for not being replicas of himself". De Icaza also points out that the Foundation was "an internal effort of people that believe in open source at Microsoft" and suggests that Stallman is engaged in "fear mongering" to push his own agenda.

(djwm)