Microsoft Makes Second GPLv2 Release

angry tapir writes "Microsoft has made its second release under the General Public License in two days with software for Moodle, an 'open-source course management system that teachers use to create online learning Web sites for their classes[, which] has about 30 million users in 207 countries.' It comes on the heels of Redmond contributing drivers to the Linux community. No reports as yet on dropping temperatures in hell."

No reports as yet on dropping temperatures in hell

[ChoboMog]

I don't know... It looks like its going to drop a few degrees overnight. http://www.weathercity.com/us/mi/hell/ [weathercity.com]

Re:Inspect thoroughly

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Not really necessary. Microsoft's contribution [educationlabs.com] is explicitly designed for "Live Services integration" for signing in to moodle instances using Windows Live IDs(from MS, naturally) and using the various Windows Live web services(bing and friends).

Nothing subtle about it.

Re:Bravo

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Moodle is a preexisting OSS project, this is just a plugin for making Windows Live web services work with it. This does suggest that MS doesn't think that they can kill moodle; but it isn't their offering.

Re:Not contribution; use

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent up! And realize that Linux kernel is and will stay GPL2. Moron.

Re:Not contribution; use

[Freetardo Jones]

If it was a big change, they'd go GPLv3.

Why? That would make it be under an incompatible license with what the original software is written under and as such no third party would be able to distribute it legally because of this incompatibility. Or did you not even bother to take the 2 seconds to realize this fundamental problem with your argument?

Re:Not contribution; use

[uhoreg]

Actually, the original software (Moodle) is moving to GPLv3, while Microsoft has released their plugin under GPLv2 only which makes it impossible for anyone to legally distribute Moodle with Microsoft's plugin. Not only that, but Moodle had previously be licensed under GPLv2 or later, so using a GPLv3 plugin was always fine. So it would have been better if Microsoft had used GPLv3 instead.

Re:Bravo

[bertoelcon]

what's-it's-name-now Gaim

Its Pidgin.