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.. a while back. here
Just 'cause M$ say it isn't covered by GPL3 doesn't necessarily make it true.
PJ has, as ever, done a thoughtful piece.

"Is it game over for OpenDocument? Probably. We've been expecting Massachusetts ITD to publicly revise its open formats mandate to include Office Open XML (OOXML) ever since Louis Gutierrez resigned as CIO in early October 2006. That was as clear a signal that ODF had failed in Massachusetts as needed by anyone in the know"

How can you equate political machinations with the the technical merits of a document format. If OOXML was so technically superior then why did MS need to get the decision to go with ODF reversed and Peter Quinn effectivly FIRED.

Yea I know, they just cut his funding and ignored his recommendations .. same thing ...

Groklaw had an intersting look at how Microsoft'shared source worked last year and it was very enlightening. The first paragraph I find the most amusing part of the article as they try to explain in simple human terms how Microsoft views sharing.

When my sister and I were growing up, we were almost always about the same size. We still are, actually. So we shared clothes. It was a way to double our wardrobe. But, from my point of view, I shared mine freely and she never wanted to share back. If I'd say, "I'd like to wear your blue sweater today," her answer would often be, "No, I'm wearing it."

Weird, sounds to me like you have a bias on the GPLv3 issue yourself that colors your opinion of Pamela's opinion as "bias". After all, the part where you "lost all respect for her" was due to her saying something that is factually true -- GPLv2 would allow MS' strategy of inserting patent-encumbered code into GPL software then suing users of said software. The only thing that could make that an "accusation", as if Linus was deliberately trying to help Microsoft, is your own bias.

She wasn't accusing Linus of helping MS put patent landmines in the Linux Kernel. She was asking if Linus' concerns regarding the GPLv3 were worth leaving Linux (legally) exposed to the possibility of patent landmines by sticking with GPLv2. Which is a perfectly reasonable question.

Pj, You seem to still be in a "us vs them" mode.

Why do you think the GPLv3 is the only "free" license?

Why do you think that the GPLv2 is inferior?

And why do you think that unquestioning obedience to the
FSF is such a good thing, and we all have to march in one
line?

Weird, sounds to me like you have a bias on the GPLv3 issue yourself that colors your opinion of Pamela's opinion as "bias". After all, the part where you "lost all respect for her" was due to her saying something that is factually true -- GPLv2 would allow MS' strategy of inserting patent-encumbered code into GPL software then suing users of said software. The only thing that could make that an "accusation", as if Linus was deliberately trying to help Microsoft, is your own bias.

She wasn't accusing Linus of helping MS put patent landmines in the Linux Kernel. She was asking if Linus' concerns regarding the GPLv3 were worth leaving Linux (legally) exposed to the possibility of patent landmines by sticking with GPLv2. Which is a perfectly reasonable question.

Pj, You seem to still be in a "us vs them" mode.

Why do you think the GPLv3 is the only "free" license?

Why do you think that the GPLv2 is inferior?

And why do you think that unquestioning obedience to the
FSF is such a good thing, and we all have to march in one
line?

I'm not the anonymous user you're replying to, but PJ has little credibility with me.

PJ started losing credibility when she started calling things like an OO.o plugin made by Novell a fork of OO.o. Her exact reasoning is "It may not be what it says, but to me it's what it means." and "To me, it's a fork because of the patent deal."

Then stories that are blatant Microsoft bashing, like A Brave New Modular World - Another MS Patent Application, started popping up.

Then the GPLv3 posts started popping up.

One of the moments I remember the most is when PJ accused Linus of "enabling the Microsoft patent strategy" by remaining with the GPLv2, at which point I lost all respect for her.

So no, Pamela is not an unbiased source, particularly not when it comes to the GPLv3... and it's not surprising, since she was on one of the committees that created it.

I'm not the anonymous user you're replying to, but PJ has little credibility with me.

PJ started losing credibility when she started calling things like an OO.o plugin made by Novell a fork of OO.o. Her exact reasoning is "It may not be what it says, but to me it's what it means." and "To me, it's a fork because of the patent deal."

Then stories that are blatant Microsoft bashing, like A Brave New Modular World - Another MS Patent Application, started popping up.

Then the GPLv3 posts started popping up.

One of the moments I remember the most is when PJ accused Linus of "enabling the Microsoft patent strategy" by remaining with the GPLv2, at which point I lost all respect for her.

So no, Pamela is not an unbiased source, particularly not when it comes to the GPLv3... and it's not surprising, since she was on one of the committees that created it.

I'm not the anonymous user you're replying to, but PJ has little credibility with me.

PJ started losing credibility when she started calling things like an OO.o plugin made by Novell a fork of OO.o. Her exact reasoning is "It may not be what it says, but to me it's what it means." and "To me, it's a fork because of the patent deal."

Then stories that are blatant Microsoft bashing, like A Brave New Modular World - Another MS Patent Application, started popping up.

Then the GPLv3 posts started popping up.

One of the moments I remember the most is when PJ accused Linus of "enabling the Microsoft patent strategy" by remaining with the GPLv2, at which point I lost all respect for her.

So no, Pamela is not an unbiased source, particularly not when it comes to the GPLv3... and it's not surprising, since she was on one of the committees that created it.

I'm not the anonymous user you're replying to, but PJ has little credibility with me.

PJ started losing credibility when she started calling things like an OO.o plugin made by Novell a fork of OO.o. Her exact reasoning is "It may not be what it says, but to me it's what it means." and "To me, it's a fork because of the patent deal."

Then stories that are blatant Microsoft bashing, like A Brave New Modular World - Another MS Patent Application, started popping up.

Then the GPLv3 posts started popping up.

One of the moments I remember the most is when PJ accused Linus of "enabling the Microsoft patent strategy" by remaining with the GPLv2, at which point I lost all respect for her.

So no, Pamela is not an unbiased source, particularly not when it comes to the GPLv3... and it's not surprising, since she was on one of the committees that created it.

Please could you explain why I couldn't use the gcc compilers on a box running Linspire for development?

"Customers" means an enterprise or individual that utilizes a specific copy of a Covered Product for its intended purpose as authorized by Linspire. Enterprises or individuals are not Customers when they (1) resell, license, supply, distribute or otherwise make available to third parties such specific copy or additional copies of the Covered Product; or (2) resell, license, supply, or distribute the output of SDKs or developer kits they utilize as a Customer.

PJ at Groklaw ranted about this grudge already. Presumably on account of the release of GPLv3, InformationWeek is now on a rampage of FUD and misinformation against open-source software and particularly Linux. Last week they declared Open Source / Linux "Dead". The author of that one has since written a correction, so it appears everyone at InformationWeek had a few synapses fuse this month and we're still sifting through the fallout of that.

This troll didn't need to make it to the front page.

The Sony rootkit is a good point, since Symantec agreed not to detect it. "The creator of the copy-protection software, a British company called First 4 Internet, said the cloaking mechanism was not a risk, and that its team worked closely with big antivirus companies such as Symantec to ensure that was the case. The cloaking function was aimed at making it difficult, though not impossible, to hack the content protection in ways that have been simple in similar products, the company said." http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200511131 64717817&query=symantec

As an example of how Microsoft is manipulating the whole process everywhere, take Portugal IPQ standards body (the national ISO body there): The chairman of the technical committee to study the granting of the ISO standard to MSOOXML happens to be a Microsoft employee, first they tried to fill as many seats as possible at the committee with Micrososft partners, including Microsoft employees, one of them at the presidency, such as "Primavera", "Jurinfor" and "ASSOFT", then they denied Sun and IBM the possibility of participating in the process with the lame excuse that there were not enough chairs on the meeting room!!!! (Was Ballmer visiting the premises before the meeting?)

Join the www.noooxml.info campaign and also the www.openxml.info sister campaign for latin america!

Sources:
In English:
http://www.groklaw.net/comment.php?mode=display&si d=20070716141225333&title=More+Portugese+OOXML+blo gs&type=article&order=&hideanonymous=0&pid=595143# c595183
http://joaobarros.bsdtech.org/2007/07/17/not-enoug h-seats-for-sun-and-ibm-to-discuss-ooxml/
http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F %2Fabretesw.blogspot.com%2F2007%2F07%2Fsun-microsy stems-sem-espao-na.html&langpair=pt%7Cen&hl=en&ie= UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&prev=%2Flanguage_tools

In Portuguese:
http://www.openxml.info/index.php?option=com_conte nt&task=category&sectionid=5&id=7&Itemid=13
http://mv.asterisco.pt/2007/Jun/cat.cgi?MS%20OOXML
http://abretesw.blogspot.com/2007/07/sun-microsyst ems-sem-espao-na.html

As Joao Barros report:
Not enough seats for Sun and IBM to discuss OOXML

Just read Paulo Vilela's post about how a request by Sun and IBM to become part of the Portuguese Technical Committee established to discuss document standards in Portugal was denied. Why? There are no seats. And I do mean CHAIRS!!!

I'm ashamed of my country, again.

Note: Paulo Vilela is a Sun employe in Portugal and his post is in Portuguese, so here is the page translated to English, via Google.

The correct link is here

Yes you can, visit this article at Groklaw and look at a sample from the ones that were posted. The idea is to let them know they are setting standards that may be viewed from around the world, and that they are being watched as an example. While initially there were only 50 letters submitted, we all know what the power of slashdot users can do.

Groklaw had a thing to say... and the author of the article then retracted some of his errors (but not all in the Corrections part of the thread).

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200707131 92403106

There was a comment following this that was interesting regarding the author still not liking GPLv3 - that concludes that all that GPLv3 does is make software pure as math (the same as the UK Court of Appeal, th UK high court, has done by outlawing software patents)!

see: http://www.groklaw.net/comment.php?mode=display&si d=20070713192403106&title=Dear+David+-+RE%3A+your+ comment+%26quot%3Bperipheral+to+my+opinion+that+th e+GPLv3+may+do+long-term+harm%26quot%3B...&type=ar ticle&order=&hideanonymous=0&pid=594620#c594677

Why does Slashdot run FUD that is incorrect? It really should not see the light of day in the first place?

Groklaw had a thing to say... and the author of the article then retracted some of his errors (but not all in the Corrections part of the thread).

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200707131 92403106

There was a comment following this that was interesting regarding the author still not liking GPLv3 - that concludes that all that GPLv3 does is make software pure as math (the same as the UK Court of Appeal, th UK high court, has done by outlawing software patents)!

see: http://www.groklaw.net/comment.php?mode=display&si d=20070713192403106&title=Dear+David+-+RE%3A+your+ comment+%26quot%3Bperipheral+to+my+opinion+that+th e+GPLv3+may+do+long-term+harm%26quot%3B...&type=ar ticle&order=&hideanonymous=0&pid=594620#c594677

Why does Slashdot run FUD that is incorrect? It really should not see the light of day in the first place?

http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/ 2007/07/open_source_is_1.html

In support of TFA: the above Iweek story really takes the cake for "most clueless" author on the subject of the GPL. One can take it as evidence that the GPL3 has become such a buzzword in the community that tech writers feel forced to comment even before they have even the slightest clue what the fuss is all about.

PJ over at groklaw politely stomped the author into the ground as one can see here:
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200707131 92403106
Whle always a fan, I admire her tact here: she did it a lot less painfully than some in comments section of the original article ;-)

Groklaw had a good overview, way back in January:
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200701230 71154671

Furthermore, to the degree that one wants to see major players support Linux, inventing ways to use changes in the GPL to screw Microsoft for peripheral involvement in Linux support seems completely counterproductive.

Are you joking or trolling? 'peripheral involvement in Linux support'?! Do you call this support?

Microsoft thought they could get around the spirit--if not the letter--of the GPL by a technicality (getting Novell to support their patent FUD) and make Free software proprietary, Stallman and his erstwhile chums at the FSF have plugged the gap. Now, please stop trolling and get a clue.

Sorry for feeding everyone, but am worried someone might actually believe this rubbish

MSFT's army of lawyers have said no such thing. They've said that in a press release, but as Microsoft Watch said, they have lied about many things in their press releases.[1]

In any case, they are NOT living up to the obligations they gave to the coupon buyers after they told them they would not sue (except, now, if they include GPLv3 code in SLES). Gee, I wonder how Walmart feels after being used by MSFT in the NOVL ploy; did they pay for nothing? Not to mention what happens if someone takes some GPLv2 or later version from SLES into GPLv3 in a derivative distro, and then asks NOVL for the patent covenant from MSFT.

[1] http://www.microsoft-watch.com/content/corporate/s ay_it_aint_so.html

"Microsoft has a long history of saying stuff (expecting people will believe) that wasn't true then or didn't turn out to be true in the future. I've grabbed some random examples:
Software Assurance: In its May 10, 2001, press release announcing the program, Microsoft claimed: "The improvements to Microsoft's volume licensing offerings are designed to match the current acquisition behavior of the majority of Microsoft's enterprise customers, and should result in a reduction or no change in licensing costs for approximately 80 percent of Microsoft volume licensing customers." In reality, based on research from Gartner and other analyst firms, only a minority of customersthose upgrading every two years or lesswould realize cost savings. The program raised most customers' software acquisition costs, as much as 107 percent, according to Gartner.

U.S. Antitrust Case: There are just so many examples, but I chose this one from a December 1998 Microsoft press release. Microsoft's lead attorney said in a statement: "The government may think they're winning on soundbites, but they are striking out when it comes to proving their case. The major elements of the government's lawsuit have already been discredited, and not a single Microsoft witness has even testified yet." The government went on to win the case, with the trial judge ordering the breakup of Microsoft as remedy.

Windows Vista: In August 2004, Microsoft "announced it will target broad availability of the Windows client operating system code-named 'Longhorn' in 2006." Here is a link to one of several slide shows kicking around Microsoft's Web site that clearly identifies the Longhorn (aka Vista) release as "Holiday 2006." Strange isn't that Microsoft set a delivery date and missed it. Strange is Microsoft later affirming that launching to businesses on Nov. 30, 2006, meant the company met its 2006 ship commitment.

A dozen examples would be easy, but hopefully three makes the point. Microsoft says lots of things that aren't necessarily true or ever going to be true. But the company behaves like if enough people believe what it says, then it's true enough. Saying doesn't make it so."

[1] http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200706302 30615981
        http://www.vcnet.com/bms/features/tale.shtml "A Tale of Two Press Releases"

"Good morning, class, and welcome to Microsoft Literature 101. Today, we will be examining a short story from the points of view of both the protagonist and the antagonist, and considering how these two characters in a story react to the same events, and what this may reveal about their personalities.

The protagonist in our narrative is a small software company called SCO, otherwise known as the Santa Cruz Operation. The antagonist is the software giant, Microsoft. First, we should sketch out the storyline."

Of course, the law isn't that easy. The book Contracts, by John D. Calamari and Joseph M. Perillo, 3d Edition, begins with this first sentence: "No entirely satisfactory definition of the term 'contract' has ever been devised." It then goes on for almost a thousand pages, trying to do so.

So while acknowledging that the word 'contract' can be used loosely in various contexts to mean different things, here we are looking at the heart of the matter, not the "on-the-other-hand" footnotes that result from common law. In the broadest sense, you might even hear someone say a license is a form of contract, but that's in the footnote category, not the essence of the discussion.

Microsoft has bought Suse vouchers from Novell, and sold them to customers. The vouchers have no expiration date.

According to FSF lawyers, when someone hands one in for a copy of Suse, then at that moment Microsoft distributes that version of the software; if it contains GPLv3 code, then there you are.

See this Groklaw article. Eben Moglen knows copyright law.

A quick Google search revealed that yes, it has gone to court and won.

If you feel like signing up, the article is here.

Your link didn't work. It took me back to home page. :(

Here are some...

This sounds vaguely familiar...

They lose rights, not the copyrights themselves. If the court agrees, the injunction would mean that they can't collect damages until they quit whatever the court tells them to quit.

The article reads the RIAA would lose the rights, not the copyrights.

These are all the occurrences of the word 'patent' in the GPLv2. If you could point out to me which of them state that you must donate your patents, I'd be interested in which language you're speaking and why you think it's English.

*MY ORIGINAL COMMENT* Even under GPLv2, however, it would result in Microsoft giving rights to their patents. END ORIGINAL COMMENT
I disagree. Under GPLv2 it would result in Microsoft not being allowed to distribute Linux. Their sole remedy is to cease distribution of the GPL'd code/program which conflicts with their other agreements (barring weaseling out of the original agreements.

The text the article is referring to is unchanged since the earlier drafts, and it certainly doesn't get novell off the hook wrt the linked article - Microsoft may still well have to lean on them to stop them shipping gplv3 code - since the use of the coupons, whilst existing as an effect of the patent agreement, will cause, when useed, a new contract between the coupon issuer [microsoft and novell] and the redeemer [joe bloggs] to be created at the date of redemption. If the code joe bloggs recieves contains gpl3'd code, then under the current draft (and as indicated in tfa) any patent protection indemities offered by that contract will automatically be extended to everybody. Thats why there was the fuss after poeple noted there isn't an expiry date on the coupons - up till that point it was thought they would all be gone by the time gplv3 was out and suse would be fine. Conclusion: either the summariser is misinformed or a turfer. for further info, go have a browse through groklaw. They have had pretty good coverage of it.

I'd guess 95% of people on here moaning about vista have never used it.

Well, I think your percentage is too high, but you've undoubtedly got a point. I mean in addtion to those who are moaning after having tried it, you have those who are complaining about not being able to purchase a Microsoft operating system unencumbered with DRM; those who are concerned that changing operating system will cost them much more than price of the OS, in hardware and software upgrades; and of course those who are sick of Microsoft moaning on about people not paying for Vista when they don't see anything wrong with the operating system they have at the moment.

I don't think any of those viewpoints are unreasonable, personally.

Admittedly, you also get people like me. I haven't tried Vista because I use Linux, and because MS burned me one time too often for me to willingly use their software - especially this early into a product lifecycle. Then again, I'm not moaning so much as laughing at Microsoft, so that's probably OK too.

The people bitching about vista here are the same ones who bitched about XP, and before that, windows 2000.

Some of them are. But I'm seeing a lot of people here saying, in effect, "I've tried it and it sucks! I want to stick with XP!" Unless of course you want to invoke The PJ Principle and claim they're all lawyers employed by IBM or something...

..actually, it seems to be intermittent.

A couple of other sites that are inaccessible (but for non-obvious reasons) :

http://www.swimman.com/
http://www.groklaw.net/

Not like the F/OSS world, no sir - we wouldn't begin a long, drawn out painful hate campaign if a F/OSS company makes even the smallest error... No, it's all love in the Community.

Not like the F/OSS world, no sir - we wouldn't begin a long, drawn out painful hate campaign if a F/OSS company makes even the smallest error... No, it's all love in the Community.

Not like the F/OSS world, no sir - we wouldn't begin a long, drawn out painful hate campaign if a F/OSS company makes even the smallest error... No, it's all love in the Community.

Not like the F/OSS world, no sir - we wouldn't begin a long, drawn out painful hate campaign if a F/OSS company makes even the smallest error... No, it's all love in the Community.

Not like the F/OSS world, no sir - we wouldn't begin a long, drawn out painful hate campaign if a F/OSS company makes even the smallest error... No, it's all love in the Community.

• A student vs. a pro?
• A blogger vs. another blogger?
• Pro Israel vs. Pro Palestinians? (*)

Apply the abstraction, filtration, and comparison test.

"A pritable data terminal includes at least two communication transeivers having different operating charactrtistics, one for conducting data communications on a wired sub-network and one for conducting data communications on a wireless subnetwork"

So basically they patented all wired and wireless networks. Isn't just a case of a US company using legislation to impede competitors entry into the market. The whole TRIPS thing being designed so any future non-US telecom company will have to pay a tithe to Washington just to sell their own technology. Pax Americana rules everywhere.

was Re:ITC press release

It's the users that can get annoyed when a package they could normally use can't after a license shift

I see no such FUD. GPL advocates may suggest not using the BSD license for various reasons, but those are opinions, not FUD. The Wasabi Systems article on the other hand looks like FUD, smells like FUD, quacks like FUD, so it must be FUD. But of course, I guess Wasabi would rather assert that it is NotFUD. ;)

For those not reading Groklaw, the NotFUD term is a reference to their NotaDuck joke.

Groklaw you uncultured heathen! And the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has a pretty decent website Here that covers many aspects of the RIAA cases. It's not *quite* as well organized and coherent as Groklaw is, but it's a darn good place to start. Honestly precious few are going to have PJ's kind of dedication to a cause *and* sufficient legal background to research and make sense of court filings for the layman.

Why do you feel the need to draw lines between different locations of licensee?

If a buisness doesn't want control of their hardware, they should rent that hardware. And I seriously doubt that any business really wants manufacturers to have control over their hardware. Manufacturers who are worried about modifications to their software causing them liabilities should put it bluntly (at point of sale) that they are not responsible if the thing they sell is modified in any way.

We don't want to draw a line based on whether you rent or own the device that houses the software, because if we do, every device manufacturer will find a way to "rent" their device as a way to get around the GPL's requirements. We've already seen some distributors try to make this very argument with GPLv2, particularly in the ISP business where it's common to lease modems to customers--even though rental qualifies as distribution in pretty much every jurisdiction.

Moreover, the companies that have the sort of "managed IT" that we're trying to allow--where they don't have the keys to modify the software and actively don't want them--are already renting that hardware. Nonetheless, they were still concerned that it would not be possible to use GPLv3 software in these programs.

...

Any device you can buy at an electronics store should qualify as a Consumer Product. This includes the overwhelming majority of desktop and laptop computers, portable media players, all kinds of mobile phones, DVRs, plenty of digital cameras, wireless routers, and other dedicated hardware.

Devices that probably don't count are the kind of very-high-end computing equipment you would expect: Blade servers, huge rackmount Gigabit Ethernet switches, that sort of thing.

The line between these two extremes is blurry. I don't know exactly where we're going to settle on a cut-off point. None of these devices should be locked down; we say that in the preamble of the draft. But the people distributing these devices aren't locking them down just to take away users' freedom, and right now there's no reason to believe that's going to change--quite the opposite, actually. Meanwhile, the devices where this is a problem are all very safely tucked under the Consumer Products umbrella. So even if the definition of Consumer Product isn't perfect, we think it's still a good compromise to help us achieve our goals.

Can anyone give some clarification?

Sure, it's bit of a complicated legal argument but here goes: Part of the deal is Microsoft getting vouchers that can be traded for Novell SUSE packages. Distributing those vouchers are, in GPLv3-speak, an act of "conveyance". The GPLv3 contains an explicit patent license for the product conveyed. Therefore every GPLv3 package conveyed as part of SUSE through these vouchers will, in effect, carry an explicit patent license for that package from MS.

Now, the GPLv3 doesn't exist yet and is thus not part of SUSE, yet. Microsoft therefore tried in recent to distribute the vouchers like crazy in order to get rid of them before the GPLv3 becomes part of SUSE. However, the vouchers do not have an expiration date and thus can be used after SUSE contains GPLv3 packages.

You can read about it in more detail on Groklaw, for example, here

I'm sure that you're pleased to hear that they do.

It is possible that Judge K. will rule on Novell's request (from four months ago iirc) that all the money in SCO's possession be put in a trust account.