Bryan J. Smith wrote: > Excuse me? IBM's history is full of Microsoft cronnism, even today.
So far they haven't been up to dodgy GPL shenanigans. For all I care, IBM can make secret contracts with Microsoft all the time as long as they stick to the *intention* of the (L)GPL in that part of their business that is to do with writing and distributing (L)GPL software. > "Tainted" has nothing to do with it. This "tainted" work is thrown > about by people like myself with_out_ any legal understanding > whatsoever. > > Who says IBM doesn't have the rights to it in _its_ cross-license > agreements with Microsoft, hmmm? (hint, hint, hint ;-) IBM or Sun may have the right to write and use code implementing methods patented by Microsoft, themselves, but that doesn't automatically give them the right to pass that code on to others under the LGPL (OpenOffice's license). The LGPL stipulates that anyone who receives a package under it must be able to pass it on to others with the same license; if you need a special patent license from Microsoft on top of the LGPL in order to be able to distribute your LGPL code you don't get to distribute it at all. See paragraph 11 of the LGPL. (This, incidentally, is why Novell needs the weaselly »covenant not to sue its customers« -- they cannot simply get themselves a blanket patent license from Microsoft to cover OO.o or the Linux kernel, as that would keep them from distributing these packages outright if the license is not extended to anyone who receives them. Microsoft's »covenant not to sue Novell's customers« is, for Novell, essentially a method of having their cake and eating it, too.) As far as Sun is concerned (or Novell, for Mono), being the copyright holder gains them exactly nothing in this respect (since we're talking patents, which are a distinct concept). If Microsoft were to come out and grant anyone who receives OO.o under the LGPL (as well as Sun) an explicit perpetual royalty-free license to use and sub-license the patents in question, that would make things clear; anything less would probably violate the LGPL. The main problem with Novell's agreement with Microsoft (as far as we can tell from the released details) is that it is valid for five years or until Microsoft doesn't like it any longer, whichever happens earlier. Any Microsoft-patented method that finds its way into open-source software effectively becomes a time bomb, if only for FUD purposes rather than actual lawsuits. The current setup basically lets Microsoft say, whenever they fancy, »please get rid of our IP in your code or else« and send the OO.o or Mono crews into a frenzy of trying to replace the code in question. If this concerns essential infrastructure like an OpenXML im-/exporter this could be a real problem, as people with OpenXML files might be locked into MS-Office while the OO.o developers are working on an alternative. We can, of course, hope for the best and say it's not a big deal, Microsoft is surely going to be nice, but then again Microsoft has a well-documented history of being un-nice to its partners when they think they can get away with it (and they have loads of money to spare for long-drawn IP lawsuits -- even if they lose or settle in the end their opponents may be out of business by then). How, under these circumstances, Novell can step up and say that their agreement amounts to »peace for our time« escapes me. > And had the rabid Linux community not demonized Caldera-SCO, and stopped > to realize that it was a contract dispute, SCO would have _not_ been > able to augment their lawsuit and "PR campaign" in May 2003 to implement > the total BS they did (which is when Linus said "SCO's smoking crack," > *NOT* before the change when he said it was "a contract dispute"). Hang on. The SCO-vs.-IBM lawsuit was filed in March, 2003. By that time SCO had already been claiming for a while that there was SVRx IP in Linux that didn't belong there, and that Linux users (at least corporate Linux users) had better take out a license from them (see, for example, http://lwn.net/Articles/21279/, which dates from January, 2003). If you check SCO's original complaint, you will find that it claims that (among other things) »IBM has breached its own obligations to SCO, [...] by incorporating (and inducing, encouraging, and enabling others to incorporate) SCO’s proprietary software into open source software offerings.« You're right that this is basically a contract dispute (they allege that IBM did something that they had promised SCO -- the »old« SCO -- they wouldn't do) but the »Linux contains our IP« claim was there from the very start. If the »IT press« had bothered to listen to people like Linus Torvalds (among others) they could have exposed SCO's frivolous lawsuit for what it was; many people did realize that at the time so it cannot exactly have been rocket science. As far as the Monterey contract is concerned, it seems to me that there are about half a dozen t's that SCO should have crossed and i's dotted to actually make something stick (such as the limitation and venue), but I haven't studied it in any great detail. > Oh, God forbid, a Linux company who wants to make itself "more > attractive" to companies! My God, oh, IBM doesn't do that in the same > way, by signing IP agreements, no, never. ;-> IBM does it, too, but wisely refrains from making itself out as the One True Linux Vendor. They're not a Linux vendor *at all*. Their offerings include enterprise-type software (like DB2 or WebSphere) that they sell to people who are used to paying big money for this type of thing, with all sorts of contractual strings attached. Linux, for IBM, is a convenient platform to run their software on. They write their software themselves (or contract it out), they don't take it from »the community« under the GPL and so they don't have to seem to do the right thing by »the community«. This is a completely different ballgame. Novell, however, as a Linux vendor, is in the unfortunate position of having to compete with Red Hat, which in addition to a vastly larger market share holds the moral high ground of GPL purity. To compete with Red Hat on purity (which counts for a lot with »the community« if not companies), Novell would have to do things like open-source eDirectory, which so far they haven't seen fit to do. So what they do instead is to try and increase the perceived value of their Linux offerings by going for »interoperability«, which of course is not a bad thing in the abstract (I've yet to meet someone who is *against* Linux-Windows interoperability). The »commercial« challenge, to Novell or anyone else wanting to take market share away from Red Hat (think Canonical), is how to do this without basically taking Red Hat along for the ride, which would happen if Novell were to, say, massively increase funding for the Samba and OpenOffice.org projects, whose output is available to everyone, including Red Hat, on identical terms. Hence the obvious (to Novell, apparently) solution is to come up with something that makes Novell's Linux stand out from the crowd, such as a »covenant not to sue Novell's customers« from Microsoft [1]. This sounds just great to people who can't be bothered to think it through, and should these people happen to be in charge of IT procurement at a big company then so much the better for Novell [2]. (By comparison, Red Hat promises to pick up the bill if *anyone* drags their customers into court over IP issues in its software. This is nice but you still have to go to court -- so isn't a promise that Microsoft won't even sue you in the first place worth more? :^)) [1] Of course this alone does nothing in particular for interoperability on the technical side -- and anything that Novell's engineers do to Samba or OO.o to make it more interoperable with Windows is, due to the (L)GPL, likely to show up in Red Hat at some stage, anyway --, but canonisation as the One Official Linux Allowed By Microsoft results in a kind of improved »interoperability«, too. [2] We can all agree that such people should know better (or employ and listen to people who know better), but there is the old adage that no one has ever been fired for buying IBM. Novell hasn't been around for quite *that* long but it still has some standing in the marketplace -- in some circles possibly more so than newish companies whose names involve colourful headgear. > Oh, duh, that's right, 97% of the Linux community still wants to have > all those wars of bigotry and products (now projects) and the overall > non-sense that accompanies it. If that's the case then I'm not part of that 97% percent. What do I want with a »war of bigotry«? I couldn't care less about Microsoft and Windows -- if anyone wants to pay good money for that stuff then by all means let them, but really, I'm in the happy position of receiving a regular paycheck for work that is close to 100% Linux-related, so my life is too short to bother about Microsoft and its products in anything but a very casual way. Maybe at some stage I'll have to take a closer interest but since the palette of Microsoft's offerings is probably going to change completely a few times in the meantime, why bother now? Anselm (This is my personal opinion and not that of Linup Front GmbH.) -- Anselm Lingnau ... Linup Front GmbH ... Linux-, Open-Source- & Netz-Schulungen Linup Front GmbH, Postfach 100121, 64201 Darmstadt, Germany [EMAIL PROTECTED], +49(0)6151-9067-103, Fax -299, www.linupfront.de _______________________________________________ lpi-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://list.lpi.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/lpi-discuss
