Will the friction between GPL and other licences finally start persuading projects that free != GPL, and that BSD-style licences better suit their needs? Or will it just be that GPLv3 fails to make headway?

"Microsoft made a few mistakes in the Novell-Microsoft deal, and GPLv3 is designed to turn them against Microsoft, extending that limited patent protection to the whole community," explains GPLv3 co-author Richard M. Stallman.

"Now that Microsoft has declared itself untouched by any GPLv3 terms, everyone is trying to figure out if they have a leg to stand on. There is a whole lot of analysis going on, with some wondering if Microsoft is a distributor of software under GPLv3 by means of the voucher distribution and others wondering just what those vouchers included."

"The news of Silverlight 1.0 being released allows some insight in the way that Microsoft will work with GPLv3...In simple terms, Microsoft will not work with GPLv3. That is the line that they have drawn, and their rhetoric and actions now show this to be so..."

Microsoft has issued a statement about its position in regard to the Free Software Foundation's version 3 of the GNU General Public License, which was crafted in part to protect users from possible Microsoft patent infringement lawsuits. Microsoft's stance?

Microsoft’s current position, taken unilaterally, is intended to eliminate any perceived ambiguity about the applicability of GPLv3 to Microsoft.

Assorted statements suggest that Microsoft may be gaining a little too much influence over ODF.

Microsoft denies that it has anything to do with GPLv3 or vice versa. Novell, however, is making it clear that it will be supporting SUSE Linux Enterprise Server in the future, including any components, such as future versions of Samba, that are licensed under GPLv3.

We take a look at two not-so-open-source companies that live among us and are run by former Microsoft employees