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Microsoft And The GPL/LGPL
AnimeFreak writes "In this CNET news article, it talks about how Microsoft's new license that will allow competing companies to read-over software code for their products does not allow software covered under the GPL/LGPL licensing agreement (such as Linux, SAMBA, and Mozilla)."
Thou shall not be competent?
Old age and treachery almost always overcome youth and skill.
It's their code, they can licence it however they damn well please.
That's what "freedom" is all about. You get to choose how your code can be used. MS has decided, now it's up to us to honor that decision.
Otherwise, you have no right to expect anyone to respect licences like the GPL.
Dragging people kicking and screaming into reality since 1996.
So in short they are denying you to use information. And of course that would just mean, that every Open Source development in projects that are related to what MS is "disclosing" have to stop immediately, otherwise MS could claim that the developers violated their license. And the question is if Open Source then has to prove if they are innocent or if MS has to prove that they are guilty. Anyway, legal affairs cost much more than many Open Source developers can afford.
So this is just another form of censorship. But its much worse. Microsoft is "publishing" something and in the same moment trying to disallow you to use that knowledge which is published. A thing that is really serious because the human brain doesn't have an infrastructure that tags information as "not usuable for Open Source" and so on. Or can you imagine a school that learns you how to add 1+1 and then tells you: You are not allowed to use this knowledge. And keep that in mind!
As a developer I don't want to bother if the knowledge that is stored in my brain is free or not! For me it is free and nobody, especially not Microsoft has the right to control what I'm doing with my brain!
So for an Open Source developer this sort of license agreement simply says: Read the information and forget it completely. And so there is no need to waste time with reading at all.
So, basically this license can be used by Microsoft to protect even things that are not able to get a patent for.
If I go on thinking about this a bit more, then I think that Orwell was a very big optimist when he wrote "1984".
The picture I get of Microsoft when I read articles like this, is that of a spoiled child who wants all of the toys, wants them his way and wants them right away. However eventually this child grows up and learns that he has no friends. In Microsofts case, the child has grown up and learned to beat the other children with his toys.
"Can't sleep. Clowns will eat me"
I work in a state agency (hence the AC), and the prevailing "unwritten" policy that has been tossed my direction is that we will use Micro$oft platform software for systems that we have a shortage of competent workers to use as resources (ie one, me) due to these principles:
So.. we continue to use M$ software in a highly vulnerable part of our enterprise (web).
What's the point?
The point is that members of the technical community (read: tech workers, not most middle-managers) are already convinced of the issues of interoperability, standards, and the monopoly status of Micro$oft. The hurdle lies in convincing "The Management" that the only way to break this monopoly and to curb these business practices is to take your business elsewhere.
From my perspective, most of those in middle management feel that Micro$oft will do what is "right", and do what is "best" for the tech sector, and that having a large corporation there to take care of our interoperability worries, and our standards issues, and our implementation problems is a nice comfy thing to have. It gives them a sort of comfort zone in which to work in.
I think I started rambling.. I better move to my weblog now so I don't get modded too heavily.
Unfortunately this is a way of competing. Microsoft has chosen to take the Toyna Harding approach.
"Can't sleep. Clowns will eat me"
Mozilla is licenced under the Netscape Public Licence, not the GPL.
This sig intentionally left blank.
From the text of the license:
3.2 Patent License. Subject to Sections 3.3 - 3.7, Microsoft
hereby grants Company a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive, personal,
transferable, non-sublicensable, license under its Necessary Claims to (1)
make, use, import, and (2) offer to sell, sell and distribute, directly or
indirectly, to End Users, Company Implementations that fully comply with the
Technical Reference. The above license is limited to implementing the CIFS
communication protocol itself, and does not include any express or implied
licenses or other rights to any underlying technology (operating system
technology, local file system technology, etc.) that may be used to make a
complete file server or other CIFS compatible device.
Reciprocal Patent License. To the extent Company owns,
controls or can sublicense without payment of a fee to an unaffiliated third
party, any patents that are required for Microsoft or its licensees to
implement CIFS as set forth in the Technical Reference and distribute such
implementations, Microsoft and its licensees are hereby granted a license to
such patents solely for the purpose of implementing CIFS as set forth in the
Technical Reference and distributing such implementations.
If I understand this correctly, Microsoft is claiming patent rights (5,265,261
and 5,437,013) on technology related to implementing CIFS. Basically they're saying "everybody can use our patents royalty-free as long as it's not part of (L)GPL'ed software." Essentially this is a patent license, not a software or documentation license. The "technical reference" is just along for the ride--also free under the same terms. I predicted this about 2 years ago--that Microsoft would turn to software patents after realizing that GPL software was undefeatable by any other means. This is their first attempt.
It seems there are 3 options:
1.) Develop CIFS software outside the US, ignore the patent for use within the US.
2.) Develop a CIFS module for Samba under the BSD license (license compatibility?)
3.) Develop CIFS software at will and ignore M$ altogether.
All three cases probably require some degree of civil disobedience for US citizens--in the form of not honoring software patents. I say go for it. This could become the first time M$ ever legally fought individuals, and believe me--it could raise such a stink in public opinion that it destroys them completely.
Can anybody explain to me how Microsoft can allow BSD software to use their license while forbiding GPL? Since BSD software can be re-licensed under any other license (the property that MS likes), why couldn't it be re-licensed under the GPL. In other words, what would prevent me from writing a very small BSD program that just used the MS doc but doesn't really do anything useful, and then re-license it under the GPL.
Or probably better, all the MS interoperation code could be put in a BSD library (since there'd be nothing innovative in that part, MS won't even bother) and then link all kinds of GPL programs to that library. Does that make sense?
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
This shit is legal?
If it is, why not just ruin their market? A client which on installation calls a 3rd party server anonymously, to indicate a sale. The dealer donates all the money to the dolphins or maybe the FSF. No money is collected, he just donates on behalf of all the users.
Scenario two: The software is only sold in 1000,000-packs, price is 1 cent. What constitutes a sale? What constitutes prior restraint on business? Microsoft does not make money directly from this license it would seem. Is it possible for them legally to force a licensee to take a profit?
This could sprout a new anti-anti-GPL: Just like BSD but the FSF or somebody else puts up 1 cent for enough copies to cover the world population. We can have a $10 fund to cover any number of M$ products which use this until the sun explodes. Perhaps we should use a dead currency that will give us better compression..
If this license is allowed by the court,
it is now far worse for the open source developer
than before the trial!
Now there is a specific exclusion for a specific competitor. Would the contract be legal if it named a company instead of the GPL?
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
All reimplementations of this then will be released under a different license that is an exact copy of GPL, plus an additional clause that Microsoft or any entity that is owned by Microsoft is prohibited from using it. Technically it will be perfectly ok under Microsoft's license -- it's not GPL at all, it's not even compatible with GPL.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
It may be stating the obvious, especially on Slashdot, but there are many people in the world who need to hear this: again and again, M$ pushes its products not by trying to make them have the highest quality and win in market competition, and certainly not by innovating, but rather by playing political hardball and introducing gratuitous incompatibilities, all to deprive consumers of choices.
So many times, I hear people insisting that M$ could only have become so powerful by being the best. This seems to derive from a profound conviction that market forces can only ever do The Right Thing, so anything that succeeds in the market is by definition a superior product. I think that market forces make this happen most of the time, but like anything else conceived and practiced by human beings, markets are flawed, in that they sometimes allow products to succeed by shenanigans rather than by quality. And M$ is living proof of it.
Here's M$, reacting to the open source phenomenon, which may truly be the biggest threat they face today. Especially the GPL fosters the existence of software that they couldn't at least copy for their own purposes, unless they open their source code as well. So what do they do? Create even better products that beat out GPL'd software on the market? NOOOOOOOO!!! Instead they create a license designed to make the competitor incompatible, by legal fiat. Not that any consumer of software derives any benefit from the intracacies of software licenses, and not that there's any innovation in legally forbidding interoperation.
What will it take before M$ apologists finally get it?
Always keep a sapphire in your mind
The GPL/LGPL basically says you can't change the license on the code to anything non-GPL/LGPL.
The MS license says you can't ever change the license to GPL/LGPL - or, in other words, MS must always have the option to copy/buy/(steal?) the code back.
Really, MS just took the GPL and turned it around on itself. If the ideas behind the GPL are valid, then the ideas behind this license are valid. Clever trick... you ALMOST have to admire their lawyers.
MS has faith that open source can't survive without MS code. Open source has faith that they can survive without MS code. I wonder who's right...
A witty [sig] proves nothing. --Voltaire
...and if not, shouldn't she? Seems to me this is clear evidence that the proposed settlement is worthless.
Why not just make a third license with exactly the same terms as the GPL, but which requires that every user fork over one penny for use of the program to the FSF at some point before January 1, 3000 A.D.?
In this case distribution isn't 'free' since there is a real cost involved, even if that cost is delayed. Companies use the idea of 'delayed costs' all the time in accounting; why can't common citizens do the same?
Better yet, have one person buy the program and then relicense it under the actual GPL. You can do the same with the exempted BSD license and I doubt MS could do a damned thing about it.
(Well, actually, I don't doubt that. They've obviously bought Bush and through him the DOJ, so they can probably do just about any damned thing they like, with Federal marshals to back them.)
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
This is a very astute comment (IMHO). The real reason behind this is to raise FUD in the minds of vendors looking at Samba on Linux as an alternative to Microsoft's server appliance kit.
Doesn't matter if it's legal or if the patent claims are valid. It's to get the CEO's of appliance companies to go into their engineering dept. and say "see, we should have licensed from Microsoft to be *safe*".
It's all about the dollars and control of the vendors........
Regards,
Jeremy Allison,
Samba Team.
I am not a lawyer. That having been said, the clause at issue seems to be the following:
It occurs to me that there are two well-known open source licenses that satisfy this requirement: the BSD license and the MIT license. They both basically give carte blanche to use the licensed software in any way one pleases, and contain none of the so-called "Intellectual Property Rights Impairing" provisions..
So ... can we re-license these projects under a BSD license? Or is there something I'm missing about the agreement? For example: if we link a GPL program against a BSD library, does that library become GPL?
NB: I believe very strongly that this is an effective way around this problem, so I may play devil's advocate with any replies. Hopefully we can hammer out a solution somehow.
Finding God in a Dog
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.
The above sentence is meaningless. First of all what do you mean by "standard"? A defacto standard like Flash, a standard ratified by a standards body, an industry standard (like Java), or something else? Secondly, regardless of what you meant if MSFT has patents on technology they are well within their rights to license it however they see fit.
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.
Interesting, I am curious as to what MSFT literature you read that made you come to that conclusion. From what I've seen of the anti-GPL rhetoric that has come out of MSFT, they are primarily against Richard Stallman's political agenda that comes with the GPL. They see nothing wrong with altruistically giving away code (which is what the BSD license and its ilk are about) but licenses like the GPL that attempt to devalue the cost of software are anathema to such people. The GPL drives the cost of software to 0 or at worst the cost of distribution media (just take a look at Cheapbytes for a living example of this). This means that any entity that produces GPL software most augment their income in some way be it through moonlighting, consulting, support, selling hardware, etc. This is not a mere side-effect but was an explicit goal of the GPL which can be garnered by reading Richard Stallman's early writings especially the gunk about software developers should work as waiters so that we can afford to give our software away.
Since the GPL makes it near impossible for an entity to simply produce and sell software as its core business, it is unsurprising that the world's largest software company would be wary of doing anything that encouraged the spread of this meme. What is surprising is that most observers find it difficult to realize this and instead of applying Occam's Razor, resort to conspiracy theories about how MSFT wants to steal their code. Then again this is the same website where people bitch about Slashdot's responsibility to slashdotted webservers and how The Great Slashdot Whine Out will strike a blow for Freedom so maybe I shouldn't be so surprised after all.
Disclaimer:This post reflects my opinions and does not reflect the opinions, strategies, thoughts, plans or intentions of my employer
GPL software represents some of their strongest competition, so a "punishment" that does not help GPL developers is not a punishment at all.
That's some bull$hit straight up. Tell me this. If GPL be such strong competition and all that, why do they need some judge to save they a$$? Ya'll OSS fools need to get ovah the fact that if yo game was strong, you wouldn't need to wait for some court to MAKE Micro$oft cut you some slack. Don't nobody respect no whiny a$$ busta who always crying about how somebody else took they whatevah.
Fact is, none a ya'll OSS software be ready fo prime time. And when it is, like Apache which been tearin up $hit fo a while now, M$ cain't fsck wit it. So all ya'll need to do is quit stressin' about M$ and hone ya'll skills. When ya'll are better than M$ ya'll know it cause you won't need no judges or no punk DOJ bustas.
Na'am sayin?
Step three, vigorously prosecute anyone developing competing products that do not let you tax the proceeds.
The potential synergies of these power grabs are even more scarey than the grabs themselves.
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
The MPL/LGPL/GPL tri-licence is the preferred licence I think.
The NPL/LGPL/GPL tri-licence is only for stuff originally under NPL.
The most succinct explanation of what's acceptable and where is under "Acceptable Licenses" near the bottom of the licence policy page.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Scenario 1: An implementation can be released under the BSD license, which can then be 'forked' by a third party (the fork being GPL) and the original abandoned. Microsoft can do nothing. This license means nothing.
Scenario 2: For some reason in the license, the action outlined above is not possible. This must be due to something in the license. If it just says 'you may not relicense under GPL' you just relicense under the X license (say) and then under GPL. The only way microsoft can get around this is to say something like:
If you redistribute source of this program or of a derived work of this program this paragraph must remain intact, and the GPL or other IPR must not be used.
Now what do we call that, boys and girls? A viral license.
RMS's bogeyman was closed source, MS's is the GPL. They both discovered that if you want to release the source, you need a viral license. Unfortunately for microsoft, that makes their whole excuse for eradicating the GPL collapse. Oops.
Free Java games for your phone: Tontie, Sokoban
For example, the Linux kernel is GPL'd but allows non-Free modules to be loaded dynamically. Lots of Free programs may be linked against non-Free system libraries, e. g. on AIX or Solaris. Why can't we do the same with Samba? Of course, the module or library has to be optional, but so is a non-Free kernel module.
Between the DMCA and other laws passed for the express purpose of enriching large corporations at the expense of the multitude of small niche competitors, and the rampant abuse of patent law, software development in the United States is rapidly becomming a closed guild wherein only the large corporations who own portfolios of spurious software 'patents' can afford to play. When an independent software developer or a small software company discovers that fundamental computing concepts are locked up in idiotic patents which they can not afford to either license or litigate, they will, I believe, decide to do something else with their time. Why not? If every piece of software you release into the world exposes you to the threat of financially ruinous litigation, how can you release anything? That is exactly the environment Microsoft is creating.
Yet not all software is developed in the United States. At the moment the rest of the world pays lip service to US copyright and patent law, including the DMCA, because the US is such a large market. But what happens when it becomes much more expensive to do business in the US because of the cost of defending your products against patent litigation, or due to the need to purchase multiple patent 'licenses' for every product you sell? In this case, extensive portfolios of software patents become a barrier to trade and I would expect to see action in international trade court against them at some point.
History teaches us that when confronted with difficult obstacles people tend to find a way over, around, or through them. I believe that we will find ways around these spurious, artificial legal barriers as well. Being a simple sort of person, I imagine that we'll end up simply ignoring them. Even Microsoft can't bring 10,000 patent infringement lawsuits against every individual writing GPL'd or otherwise competing software. They'll pick a few high-profile cases as warnings to others but eventually people will figure out that Microsoft is not about to spent a couple of million dollars suing each independent developer. I expect to see cases where developers release software and then 'disappear' into the void, essentially becoming phantom targets. I expect to see developers release software in other, more innovation-friendly countries. I expect that net effect of the DMCA and current patent law will be, like the tax code of the IRS, simply to make most of us criminals, just because no-one knows all of the law or all of the moronic patents which have been granted. We live with it now, we'll manage to live with it then. The difficulty for a societal point of view is that once people begin ignoring 'bad' laws, they ignore the 'good' ones also. Injudicious use of intellectual property law in a misguided attempt at protecting software monopolists will simply result in widespread disregard of all intellectual property laws, including copyright.
"Sten". My name is "Sten". As far as you know!
Still, isn't decryption/decoding of standards compliance ommitted in the DMCA?
Yes, 17 USC 1201 permits circumvention aimed strictly at interoperability, but many judges have flatly ignored that provision.
I thought the Sony v Colecio settled that (I knew it's sony versus some other vid game company, as the other company won).
The issue in Sega v. Accolade was the Trademark Security System in the Sega Genesis console, which gave the program on the cartridge a short time to call a BIOS routine that displayed "Licensed by Sega", or the BIOS would halt the program. The judge ruled that copying Sega's code to do this was fair use (read the decision to see why). The Sega Dreamcast, Nintendo Game Boy and Game Boy Advance platforms use nearly the same system (except it's a piece of data in the header instead of a piece of code that must be called within time constraints), making it perfectly lawful for homebrew developers to put the logo data in the header as long as they don't cause trademark confusion (which can be avoided with a simple "NOT LICENSED BY $CONSOLE_MAKER" in the initial screen display).
The anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA don't replace Sega v. Accolade not only because of the interoperability exemption but also because the systems in the Genesis, DC, Game Boy, and GBA platforms don't control access to a work copyrighted by the console maker, and only (representatives of) the copyright owner can sue under 17 USC 1201.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I'm not trolling, but that's not a news piece. Yes, it's on their 'news.com' site, but it's an opinion column, written by Bruce Perens.
I'm not saying he's not right, it's just that presenting it as news is misleading.
..isn't GNU. It's LPF. Maybe this will help people finally understand this.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Whether or not this conditions is included, there's nothing a licensee can do that would affect the rights of Microsoft and its other licensees to use that specification.
It certainly looks like it is.
But the GPL and LGPL don't do that.
I and others believe that the people who came up with this aimed to imply, falsely, that the GPL and LGPL do place restrictions on bundled software, as a justification for banning their use for software based on Microsoft specifications.
I honestly can't see what these sections are supposed to protect Microsoft from, other than fair competition.