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Microsoft Tech Specs Prohibit GPL Implementations
abartlet writes "As described in this Advogato entry, MS is trying to pull a swifty with their latest 'release' of their CIFS (the networked filesystem Samba implements) Technical Reference. The licence specifically prohibits any GPLed or (or LGPLed) program from implementing it, defining it as an 'IPR Impairing Licence'! Fortunately the CIFS community is about to release its own Technical Reference based on earlier MS documents and long experience in attempting to interoperate with the MS product." Microsoft's claim is completely ungrounded - nothing written by a third-party can take away Microsoft's intellectual property rights. But it makes a good (read: confusing to the general public) justification for preventing others from interoperating with their software.
That any license can say anything it wants to. It doesn't mean that this has any basis in legal reality. The point here is, truly, confusion over all else.
Luck favors the prepared, darling.
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Implement any thing needed from the DOCUMENTATION in a Non-Gpl module, BSD, Apache, or other liscence.
This "LISCENCE" is for the documentation NOT the protocol. So friggin what, Samba team has done a great job reverse engineering other things before, wihtout docs.
Hell have a friend agree to the terms, read it, then TELL you how they do what they do, at that point there is no tactic agreement between you and microsoft, oyu recived the knowledge second hand and you partner had of course "no idea" that the information would be implemented in a GPL app.
Better yet, write a REVIEW of the documentation as a Journalist, a critique, perfectly acceptable under fair use laws, just make sure to critique the authors work on the spiciest bits of Information.
Sig went tro...aahemmm.....fishing........
It affects any license REQUIRING you to
- distribute in source
- redistribute at no charge
...it shouldnt be to hard to not require these things... am I wrong? The BSD license has no such restrictions, right?
That's what we said about the entire EULA until UCITA made it 100% binding - even the most outrageous parts (like not being able to unfavorably comment on the software).
These guys are not buying legalese for nothing. And even if the next round of bought-and-paid-for legislation doesn't make it on the books for a year or two, and they bring a baseless lawsuit, do you have $200,000 to defend yourself in court? Or will you just settle, pull your site and go home crying?
This is Microsoft saying "I dare you."
-David
We're on the road to Tycho.
This is actually good news in a certain way. It is yet stronger proof that Microsoft considers the open source community a very viable and threatening competitor.
Most likely they hoped that if they could squash open-source compatibility with windows networks, they could hurt some of the interoperability that is neccesary during the middle phases of migrating a company away from Microsoft (like the recent Merrill Lynch stuff).
The tides are still very very slowly turning, and barring the government helping them too much (and I do believe SSSCA-type bills are a boon for Microsoft if they pass), they will eventually lose.
11*43+456^2
Reverse engineered is not a copy, you idiot!
As long as the samba team uses no documents from Microsoft, they can make samba interact with Microsoft file systems.
Compaq did this with the PC Bios, it is well established practice.
The DMCA might make reverse engineering illegal, though, but I think when push comes to shove on this the Supreme Court should help reverse engineering make the DMCA illegal.
Of course not, Microsoft likes the BSD license. First they get their TCPIP stack from it, next they'll get a fixed CIFS implementation from it. ;)
I find it interesting that they won't let you use licenses which put specific restrictions on derivative works, but not ones which forbid distributing them altogether. Would a license worded "you may not distribute derivative works *unless* you blah blah" where blah blah is the stuff Microsoft doesn't like work? I mean strictly speaking it doesn't require those things, you have the option to not distribute your derivative at all. (which you, of course, have with the GPL, but since it's specifically named forget it.)
I don't read this as implying that the DMCA requires anything... just that a person is legally permitted to reverse engineer a protocol/format in order to acheive interoperability.
Knowing Microsoft, their next step will be to implement a completely new filesystem, encourage (force) everyone to upgrade, and protect it with encryption (if they claim that the encryption is for protection of a user's intellectual property, then perhaps the DMCA would have more teeth in this situation), and/or patents (somewhat akin to what they did with ASF).
Microsoft - boldly leading us back into the dark ages of incompatibility.
The really fun part is that, read carefully, it doesn't say that the GPL/LGPL is a "license that requires in any instance that other software distributed with software subject to such license (a) be disclosed and distributed in source code form; (b) be licensed for purposes of making derivative works; or (c) be redistributable at no charge."
In fact the GPL/LGPL are implied to be such licenses but MS is just going after them by name, not by characteristic. Create a license, called ALLGPL (Anti-Lawyering LGPL) that is cut and paste LGPL and it is not the LGPL, merely compatible with it. But MS then has the burden of proving that it is an IPR licenses which, of course, it is not.
First of all, there is no way Microsoft can enforce conditions upon the implementation of a standard (read: "standard"). Entering into a contract requires, well, that you enter into a contract.
Secondly, this is a -- if not the -- prime example of what's wrong with the "intellectual property" faction of anti-GPL types. The GPL in no way inhibits intellectual property. It is simply a software license that imposes contractual conditions on the use of software. It is only unusual in that it does not require payment.
Here's the argument that Microsoft and other anti-GPL nutballs are making: "You're not making any money off this, so we want to steal your intellectual property, violate the hell out of your license, and make money from our criminal activities." The underlying, unstated argument is, of course, that unless you're in it for profit, you have no intellectual property rights. This is utter bullshit, of course, and serves only to show what basically unethical and indecent people we're dealing with.
This would be exactly parallel to a clothing manufacturer telling people that they have established a pattern for shirts with two sleeves, and you are therefore not allowed to make shirts with two sleeves unless you promise not to donate your old shirts to the poor.
It's a pity that certain political factions like to lionize Microsoft as bastions of capitalism when Microsoft is itself devoted to strangling the free market at every turn. If Microsoft is as good as they say they are, why are they so afraid of competing in an open and fair market? Why have they adopted such a deeply un-American stance towards the fundamental values of political and economic liberty? Ballmer can spew all he wants about the GPL being communist, but as near as I can tell, it is Microsoft that is seeking to create a command economy.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
In other words, the DMCA requires that programmers be able to access parts of a computer program "to achieve interoperability of an independently created computer program with other programs" (i.e. porting a windows program to linux). If that access isn't provided then the programmer can legally circumvent a technological measure that controls access to the essential parts of that program for the purposes of porting.
Who says that such access isn't provided? The CIFS licence above is for Royalty-free licensing. If you contact Microsoft and can negotiate a reasonable licensing agreement with them, then it certainly is provided. In which case, it's not a violation. Just because it can't be done free doesn't mean that it can't be done.
-Andrew
The real problem is that MS is claiming a patent on the underlying technology. They are offering a royalty-free license to non-GPL software. This is hard for GPL software to get around.
Does anyone understand what is being patented? Does it look like a valid patent -- I never got the feeling that this technology was particularly innovative.
Not really. The DMCA applies to copyright. This license is not covering reverse engineering or protecting their copyright on their binary code. But is licensing the use of patents and documentation of the protocol.
The DMCA does not give you the legal right to violate a patent for interoperability. Finally documentation does not constitute a computer program.
So basically this license is setting out very specific terms as to how they license their patents and some documentation. It does nothing to prevent someone with a copy of windows from reverse engineer it to write another implementation of CIFS. That's an issue for the windows EULA. Which if I'm not mistaken probably already stipulates you may not reverse engineer it anyway.
The DMCA grant you mention only exists to circumvent digital rights management for the purpose of interoperability. And even then it's pretty narrowly construed.
Last but not least. Just because you have a right does not mean you can not give it up contracturaly. For example, generally one has the right to free speach. However, if I sign a NDA and start saying things I agreed I would not I could be sued. The judge wouldn't be very interested in my Free Speech rights.
Does anyone remember when Microsoft released Novell NetWare compatibility into its Windows NT operating systems? At that time, Novell was the dominant player, and Microsoft was playing catchup.
Microsoft quickly eroded Novell's network operating system market share, eventually becoming the dominant player in office network servers. Novell Netware installations now seem a rarity.
Microsoft, the dominant player, is now threatened by people creating compatible implementations of its own services. This turn of events, though not surprising, somehow seems ironic.
My car gets 40 rods to the hogshead, and that's the way I likes it!
Microsoft have indicated in at least one public forum that this is the case. The legalisms are there for the sole purpose of protecting their patent rights.
The courts have of late become inclined to invalidate patent licenses under an emerging doctrine similar to that of copyright abuse. Essentially if you encourage people to use a technology that you have filed patent claims on in certain ways the courts can decide to revoke the patent. This was done for a patent that covered EISA bus which covered technology that had been proposed to the standards committee without disclosure of the IP claims.
The issue on GPL is hardly suprising and in no way prevents anyone's ability to develop open source. All it does is to prevent the open source authors from placing certain restrictions on the re-use of that software that Microsoft objects to. The Samba people can still distribute code for free, they can distribute the source for free. What they cannot do is to place restrictions on their code that prevent others from modifying the code as they might want to.
GPL is an exercise in control-freakery, Microsoft don't want to be controlled by RMS. The spat is somewhat amusing but has no real consequences.
Let us imagine that someone does write an implementation and distributes it with a BSD license and someone else takes the code modifies it and sells the result. Just how exactly is that outcome meant to be baaaaaad? The original freeware version is still out there.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
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that is right on.
apart from the entirely different argument about whether *BSD or linux is better, the biggest threat to Microsoft on servers is linux. If something is a big enough competitor, MS does not care what license it uses. MS only cares that every machine running a competing OS is not running Windows (or exclusively Windows).
In Microsoft's leaked emails they don't talk about letting BSD slide because of the license. they don't mention the GPL as the reason that linux must be outsold. They only mention that they want to work especially hard to win those accounts.
people mentioning Apple's OSX as a threat miss the point. though Darwin is open source, OSX is not. If it were, i'd be running it on my PC architecture. Microsoft lets Apple slide because they have been confined to a niche market (though personally, i wouldn't be surprised if OSX reverses that trend.) as it stands, OSX only runs on proprietary Apple hardware.
The point is that MS focuses its efforts on its largest immediate threats. Not threats to licensing or IP, but threats to market share. As soon as BSD gets a big enough install base, MS will go after BSD.
Also there's the idea that GPL does not allow the MS tried and true formula, embrace, extend, extinguish. MS likes BSD because it can do anything it likes with the code. They'll toss code out there if it allows people to develop for their own proprietary platform. It is not contributed because MS thinks that it would like to help make BSD a better OS.
Anyone who thinks that Microsoft's final goal is something other than total market domination in every area related to technology is fooling themselves.
you probably shouldn't have read this.
- any license that requires in any instance that other software distributed with software subject to such license
The GPL requires you do all those things [...] [This] license [only bans] the GPLYou're right, but for the wrong reason. (As an aside, the GPL does not require you to distribute "software" for no charge, only to provide access (or information about how to get access, for non commercial binary distributions) to the source (not the "software") at no more than cost-of-distribution). But the issue is actually the "other software distributed with" part. There is no open source-ish license that covers anything "distributed with". That's pure Microsoft FUD. The GPL explicitely extends to software linked with GPL source to produce a derivative product, but that's a whole different kettle of fish.
You're absolutely right that this is an attack on the GPL, but it's the LGPL prohibition that's the real eye opener. Consider that the Mozilla license is functionally equivelant to the LGPL, and it's not prohibited, whereas the LGPL is.
This isn't an attack on open source, nor even on "viral" licenses. It's a direct attack solely on the GPL and LGPL, and by extension the FSF. Battle on.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Actually, the language prohibits the GPL and LGPL only, AFAIK. The language in Microsoft's license governs licenses that restrict software "distributed with software subject to such license". This would be licenses that require source from bundled software, and I'm not aware of any license with that requirement. The GPL doesn't require that, it requires source from derivative works. The Microsoft license doesn't mention that. The GPL is restricted because it's specifically mentioned. A non-GPL license with precisely the same terms as the GPL wouldn't be restricted by the Microsoft licensing agreement.
However, just copying and renaming the GPL wouldn't be enough, I think. My bet is that the judge would just consider that sophistry, look on it as an attempt to make him and his court look stupid, and nail you twice as hard. However, if you did a complete rewrite from scratch on the language, it might well stand up in court if you had a decent lawyer. However, Microsoft would amend their license terms in about 5 minutes to add your license.
Finally, RMS didn't create the GPL to be incompatible with the BSD license. The terms of the GPL were incompatible with the old BSD, people asked RMS about it, and they were answered. The Microsoft license, OTOH, is specifically aimed at the GPL, and at Samba in particular. Furthermore, the language is designed to make people misinterpret the GPL as you did, restricting things it doesn't. And the GPL never never contained language calling the BSD license a "bend over and let the proprietary software companies rape you" license, while Microsoft uses the terms of this license to spread even more anti-GPL FUD by calling it an "IPR Impairing" license.
There is no sin except stupidity -- Oscar Wilde
That may be true, but it still doesn't change the fact that microsoft caused consumers harm by precluding them from having a preinstall of Netscape, when as you say, it was superier to IE.
All I'm trying to do is answer the question: Did MS's actions cause consumers harm. I think the answer is yes. danhaskett disagrees, and thinks that it's impossible to prove harm because now the environment is completely different. And he's right that the environment now is different, but I think that's irrelevant.
I think it's irrelevant because it doesn't matter what the environment is like now. A harmful act was committed. Think of it this way. It's not a acceptable excuse for Bin Laden to say that he should avoid punishment because the product of his actions ended up with the US becoming more united and less concerned about petty bickering. That may very well be a good thing that came about from his harmful act, but that doesn't enable him to avoid the consequences of that act.
IMHO, the same thing should be true with MS.
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
Microsoft likes the BSD license because it, unlike the GPL, allows them to hijack projects and/or code and create a closed, proprietary product. The BSD license can be subverted. The GPL cannot.
The true value of the GPL is that it keeps companies and people honest. Whenever a company begins abusing its position or customers the GPL ensures that alternative products can be safely created independent of market share or monopoly power. A company like Microsoft might be able to stomp all over other companies and pre-emptively purchase or squash startups that threaten its position. It can't do that to a loose collection of hackers (!crackers) and hobbyists that are sick of taking its crap. Microsoft hates the GPL because it is a direct and serious threat to Microsoft and only Microsoft. It is not because of any supposed threat it poses to the software industry as a whole. Where the software industry is concerned, the only thing Microsoft cares about is controlling and dominating it. To hear the evil empire crying foul play is about like the KKK accusing someone of racism.
As far as I'm concerned, if Microsoft hates something then it must be a good thing. The more they scream and the louder the volume, the more wonderful the subject of their complaint must be. If the devils says he doesn't like something, you can bet your sweet ass it must be touched by the divine.
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
Because we don't all agree on the BSD license. I won't
work on any BSD licensed code any more for example.
Look at the reasons that Wine changed from BSD style
licensing to LGPL for a clue as to why that might be....
Regards,
Jeremy Allison,
Samba Team.
From Advogato:
It's simply time to acknowledge the reality of the situation, and go our own way.
F*ck Micro$oft; f*ck interoperability with Micro$oft; let Micro$oft and its ilk rot in hell, stewed in their own juices, which they most certainly will.
Two worlds, one the world of darkness, and one the world of light.
Guess which one is Micro$oft?
Which one will you join?
t_t_b
I'm on PJ's "enemies" list! Are you?
Brrzzztt! Wrong! I am not obliged to sign and mail back this license before I look at the spec. I am under no NDA. It's preposterous for Microsoft to say "now that you know what our specs are, you must agree to this license before you can implement them."
If Kodak told me *after* I had received their recipe what I can do with their recipe, I would tell them to go fly a kite. By making their recipe public they just destroyed any trade secrets they might have. I have no obligation to Kodak after they give me the recipe if I didn't agree to any before hand.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned