A year after Joy's speech, Sun Microsystems vice
president Marco Boerries was appearing on the same
stage spelling out the company's new licensing
compromise in the case of OpenOffice, an
office-application suite designed specifically for the
GNU/Linux operating system.
"I can spell it out in three letters," said Boerries. "GPL."
At the time, Boerries said his company's decision had
little to do with Stallman and more to do with the
momentum of GPL-protected programs. "What basically
happened was the recognition that different products
attracted different communities, and the license you
use depends on what type of community you want to
attract," said Boerries. "With [OpenOffice], it was
clear we had the highest correlation with the GPL community."See Marco
Boerries, interview with author (July, 2000).
Such comments point out the under-recognized strength
of the GPL and, indirectly, the political genius of man
who played the largest role in creating it. "There
isn't a lawyer on earth who would have drafted the GPL
the way it is," says Eben Moglen, Columbia University
law professor and Free Software Foundation general
counsel.
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