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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)."
You miss the point of the op-ed. Yes, software implementations are copyrightable and licensable. Perens isn't saying that MS should make their implementation of CIFS anything other than they already do. However, it's been a hallmark of competition for a competitor to simply look at the way the product works and the reverse engineer it. They can then license their implementation any way they choose. And this has happened the SAMBA project engineered their own implementation of CIFS and it runs on any *NIX system that wants windows file sharing compatibility.
However, what Perens *is* saying is that if Microsoft patents certain features or qualities of its implementation, then if SAMBA wants to make an interoperable product, they have to pay royalties to Microsoft in order to be able to use the *patented* (not copyrighted) technologies. And it's this type of IP patent abuse that has got Perens and the entire computing world (except those with legal monopolies gained from unjust patents) scared $hitless.
http://starboard.flowtheory.net/
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.
Normally, you would be right, but Microsoft has been found guilty of illegaly abusing a monopoly. This trial is in the penalty phase, not the "did they do it or not" phase; Microsoft is being punished.
The very heart of "punishment" means that Microsoft is going to have to do things that they do not want to. The fact that this is an anti-trust trial means that they are going to have to do things that hurt themselves and help their competition. GPL software represents some of their strongest competition, so a "punishment" that does not help GPL developers is not a punishment at all. Remember, they have been abusing their competitors and their customers.
In the past, when Microsoft did whatever they damn well pleased, they broke the law. They cannot continue to do whatever they damn well please to correct this.
Thomas Galvin
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".
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.
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
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
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
Interesting. I believe this tall tale to be attributable to this: There are, of course, provisions in the GPL that protect your right to resell GPL software at any price.
I'm not convinced that licensing your own code under the GPL means that you can't make a profit selling the stuff. Asserting that the mere existence of GPLed software makes it near impossible etc. etc. is basically complaining about the existence of competition ("Yer honor, they can't sell it that low! I'll go out of business!") Hehe. That bit was very nicely done. That google search seems to indicate that some people take this kind of rhetoric seriously, though...