El Viernes, 3 de Noviembre de 2006 18:11, Kevin Donnelly escribió:
> On Friday 03 November 2006 14:26, Andreas Jaeger wrote:
> > > Yes, though it's unclear from the press release whether the patent
> > > ceasefire is in perpetuity, or merely for the duration of the Novell
> > > agreement (up to 2012, IIRC). I got the impression it was the latter,
> > > so there is the difficulty that Microsoft could argue in any future
> > > legal assault that one of the leading distro makers explicitly accepted
> > > there were patent issues in Linux. That's not so good.
> >
> > This one is irrevocable - for ever,
>
> That is interesting. It would be a good idea for Novell to put out some
> additional explanatory material in the next few days, addressing the
> various excitable comments that have been made in discussions on this.
I'll just quote Groklaw's PJ:
Take a look at "Microsoft's Patent Pledge for Non-Compensated Developers" and
read about how it works:
"To further encourage these efforts, this pledge provides non-compensated
individual hobbyist developers royalty-free use of Microsoft patents as set
forth below.... Microsoft hereby covenants not to assert Microsoft Patents
against each Non-Compensated Individual Hobbyist Developer (also referred to
as "You") for Your personal creation of an originally authored work
("Original Work") and personal use of Your Original Work. This pledge is
personal to You and does not apply to the use of Your Original Work by others
or to the distribution of Your Original Work **by You** or others."
So Microsoft is purporting to provide hobbyists "royalty free use of Microsoft
patents" as if they are understood to be infringed already.
But by my reading, the pledge only holds for you using your own software, not
if you distribute it. And it doesn't apply to others using the work you may
contribute to Linux. You personally won't be sued, but if Red Hat uses your
patch, it could be. That's how it looks to me. But if you kept it to
yourself, how would MS ever know? (I should also note that in Europe, a
private hobbyist can never infringe any patent with his own private use of
anything.) So that side is rather pointless. More to the point, how does this
help if you open yourself up to legal shenanigans as soon as you share your
work with anyone?
> In particular, is Novell suggesting that there is some truth to the
> suggestion that parts of Linux infringe patents, or is it simply accepting
> that Microsoft has rights over its own stuff (eg codecs)? Most comments on
> the net tend to assume the former, but I would have thought the latter is
> equally plausible.
>
> The only fly I still see in the ointment is the phrase "individual,
> non-commercial developers". For example, does this mean that a group of
> non-commercial developers, or a single developer who decides to sell a
> service based on the app he's developed, are not covered?
>
> And as Marcel Hilzinger said:
> "Why are there 2 different points in the patent question? Will there be a
> difference between OpenSUSE and Suse Linux Enterprise? What about
> contributors to OpenSUSE.org whose code is _not_ included in the SUSE Linux
> Enterprise platform? Are they covered by the second statement?"
--
Don't see the world through a window, be open{source}minded, and be free :-)
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