[Jedd]

> But MS were, at the time, against all things open source.

This may or may not be the case, insofar as an organisation can be said to have a position on a vague notion.

As per the article, rms is seeking that:

"Publicly take back Microsoft's attacks on copyleft made in the 2000s. Ballmer called the GPL a "cancer"."

I suspect rms doesn't care terribly much if MS were 'against all things open source' since no one really did, or does, know what that might mean.

[jraph]

This is all about sending a message and clarify a position.

When someone in a marketing team of a company sends a message, they usually speak for the company, not for themself, except otherwise explicitly stated. So indeed, we can't expect a huge company like Microsoft have a uniform opinion on all things, but Microsoft as an entity stills sends a more or less coherent message if they take care of their communication.

And I would not blame someone understanding a statement from Ballmer for Microsoft's official stand if the statement was made when he was the head of the company and the company did not issue an apology or a clarification after the fact.

[Jedd]

I think we agree in principle, however the point I made originally was that it's not hurtful, false, and/or spurious claims about 'open source' that rms seeks remedy for, it's 'free software'.

[samatman]

Just as Free Software is, effectively, whatever the Free Software Foundations says it is, open source software is whatever the Open Source Initiative says it is.

[Jedd]

Perhaps it's that easy, but rms is referring to comments made about the GPL (which is definitely aligned with free software, not open-source) and which were made a year or two after the OSI pinched/borrowed Debian's Free Software guidelines and came up with their initial definition.

So, at the time Ballmer was a) definitely talking about free software by mentioning GPL, and b) probably not particularly interested in, or aware of, the split by the 'open source' proponents.