I am sure that almost anyone following the Linux news for any length of time has gotten completely used to the FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) that comes out of Redmond over and over. Sometimes it is outrageous, sometimes it is just annoying, but I have never seen something as blatantly uninformed as this.

Yesterday, Wired reported this: (he is Bill Gates)

“There’s free software and then there’s open source,” he suggested, noting that Microsoft gives away its software in developing countries. With open source software, on the other hand, “there is this thing called the GPL, which we disagree with.”

Open source, he said, creates a license “so that nobody can ever improve the software,” he claimed

What?

Bill Gates is saying that GPL makes it “so that nobody can ever improve the software.” Apparently he does not understand what “open-source” means. With open-source software, GPL in this case, you have the right to modify and redistribute the program. How on earth does that make is “so that nobody can ever improve the software.” Is this supposed to be FUD or ignorance?

Can anyone give a logical explanation for how this could possibly be at all true?