Re: Beware the ORACLE.COM risk

[Matthias Urlichs]

Hi,

Wendy Lin:
> Given ORACLEs very aggressive stance and intentional destruction of
> opensource communities like opensolaris.org it must be *CLEARLY* ruled
> out that there is *ANY* risk for Debian.

Wrong. You cannot rule out ANY risk, and the current legal landscape is
not compatible with CLEARLY, no matter what you do.

What are the facts, anyway?

* Debian is hardly the first or only user of systemd, and Oracle didn't do
  anything about these patents for the last two years
* Nobody has yet mentioned any specific patents which systemd may or may
  not be infringing, and a quick Google search doesn't unearth any either,
  thus so far the whole thing is a big bunch of FUD.

> The situation sounds a bit as both Novell/Suse and Redhat/Fedora are
> standing with the back to the wall and have no choice than to
> negotiate with ORACLE.
> 
Do you have any reputable sources for this, or is that just more FUD?

-- 
-- Matthias Urlichs


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Beware the ORACLE.COM risk

[Wendy Lin]

On 28 March 2014 12:51, Philip Hands  wrote:
> Sebastian Feld  writes:
>
>> Now that Redhat and Suse have been contacted by ORACLE regarding to
>> licensing the SMF patents a question arises for Debian:
>
> Have you read this:
>
>   https://www.debian.org/legal/patent
>
> in particular, point 3.
>
> Having read that, I would suggest that either:
>
>your concerns are based on a concrete risk to Debian, in which case
>you should not be discussing them here if you have Debian's best
>interests at heart,
>
>or they have no basis in legal fact (I'm guessing that you're not a
>lawyer, as you didn't cite which jurisdiction you thought your
>assertion might apply, or any other salient details) in which case
>they don't really tell us anything.
>
> Either way, they don't belong here.

This is the wrong way to handle it. A lot of people want systemd in
Debian and push for it very hard, but then appear to ignore the
*LEGAL* risks and push any comments about it away as "trolling" or
"contact someone else".

Given ORACLEs very aggressive stance and intentional destruction of
opensource communities like opensolaris.org it must be *CLEARLY* ruled
out that there is *ANY* risk for Debian.
The situation sounds a bit as both Novell/Suse and Redhat/Fedora are
standing with the back to the wall and have no choice than to
negotiate with ORACLE.

Should Debian risk the same fate? ORACLE.COM is a dangerous opponent
and is unlikely to play it fair if they smell money.

Wendy


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