Slashdot Mirror
SQL Server Developers Face Huge Royalties
superpat writes "The Register reports that Microsoft licensed SQL Server technology from Timeline. Trouble is, they didn't license the tech for use by MS customers... After 3 1/2 years in the courts, the final judgement rules that MS SQL Server customers must pay Timeline patent royalties. The argument that Microsoft said it was OK is no defence, apparently." News.com.com.com has another story.
Microsoft should be responisble... THEY infringined on the patent by selling it outside of the agreed scope!
www.superdorf.com
I'm not one of these extremists who will advocate free software for everything in the world, even if it doesnt fit a given situation, but this is a case in point for free software like MySQL et al.
A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
If these companies can sue Microsoft for distributing code which is burdened by patents; and if they win what does this do about OSS licenses? Does it matter if the developer knows a given peice of software violates a patent? We'd all stop making OSS software if we were liable for retroatively paying patent licensing fees for users to operate the software we contribute to.
In particular, the BSD license doesn't say anything about patents, should it have a clause like:
THIS SOFTWARE MAY BE COVERED BY PATENTS
AND THUS MAY NOT BE USEABLE WITHOUT
APPROPRIATE LICENSING BY THE OWNERS OF
THOSE PATENTS; THIS LICENSE IS NOT A
GRANT OF PATENT AND THE DEVELOPER
EXPLICITLY DENIES ANY RESPONSIBILITY
FOR PATENT LICENSING REQUIRED TO USE
THIS SOFTWARE.
Just wondering? How do other licenses handle it? Is there a clause in the GPL for this?
Hehe, funny thing is if it wouldn't raise the ire of antitrust lawyers is that the easiest and quickest solution would be for MS to buy this company. Why they didn't after incorperating their patented tech into their products and instead turned around and bought this companies biggest rival I have no clue on.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Great. I can just see it. Now my boss is going to have EULA's examined by the company lawyer before we can think about installing software.
Now after you design a solution and pick the products, you get to hear the legal department say; "I'm sorry, the EULA for that software doesn't provide us enough protection. Find another platform."
Sheesh!
If you are never moderated, do you really exist?
This article just demonstrates the tip of the iceberg for the problems that are going to be cause by software patents. Its about time patent offices woke up and refused to patent *any* software or software techniques otherwise the only winners will be lawyers and the only losers will be consumers due to restricted choice.
This is what happens when the patent office changes its mind and starts allowing something new. Since no one had been sending in software patents over the last 50 years, they don't have a ready supply of prior art in the form of thousands (or millions) of declined patents.
Once the business rules patents get into full swing, no small business will be allowed to operate at all without some risk of being sued out of existance. Once that happens, then the patent office will get fixed but I figure thats a few decades away.
Microsoft should be responsible...
I hope not. Beacuse if they are responsible for patent violations of their software by users then open source developers are going to be in for a world of hurt.
THEY infringed on the patent by selling it ouside of the agreed scope!
I'm sorry, but distributing code which violates a patent should definately not be infringing behavior; but IANAL. If it is, that is the nail in the OSS coffin. Now, if Microsoft explicltily claims that they will indemnify their users for patent violations... this is a different issue; but I very much doubt that Microsoft made any representations to this.
God help OSS developers if Microsoft is responsible. The PTO is who is responsible... for most likely (given their track record) allowing a bull-shit patent to go through.
And this is from a *confirmed* ANTI-MICROSOFT junkie, not one of your astro-turfers...
This should not affect any MS SQL user even if they developed customized code to run with it. This will affect companies that sell third party add-on/customization software for MS SQL. I suppose Timeline could press the user community for royalties and damage one of the best alternatives to Oracle but I doubt they will try. This is really about developers skirting royalties to Timeline by trying to piggy back onto Microsoft's developers lisence purchased from Timeline. The bad guys here are the unscrupulous or Imbicile third party developers.
The truth suffers more from convictions than from lies.
If MySQL was using patented code, just because it was open source licensed to you doesn't make you a valid user of that patented code. This is a case in point for using software which contains 0 lines of patented code. While in most cases that happens to be free software rather than proprietary, patents can encumber free software projects as well (and have many times).
MORTAR COMBAT!
So software patents are evil, except if they hurt Microsoft ?
Sybase's Adaptive Server Enterprise. All of the SQL Server, none of the royalties. :)
So what've they been doin in the courts so often? I thought they were just the best defense attorneys money could buy.
Never attribute to Hanlon that which can be adequately attributed to Heinlein.
The big losers here are going to be the vendors of large systems running on MS SQL and their customers. A good example would be some of the major ERP/CRM vendors who run on top of MS SQL. Those companies also are going to be targets of lawsuits. It most likely will not be the small shops who purchased MS SQL that will be hunted.
I'm glad my systems don't run on MS SQL.
Of course we torture people, we need the information --Gen. Pinochet
Trumpet ("We're making our own TCP/IP stack.")
Novell ("We're making our own file sharing.")
Adobe ("We're putting in our own type manager.")
Exact same deal as the Citrix or VMWare examples you gave.
You know, as little as I like MS SQL Server (for it's licensing, and price points vs. scalbility), it's REALLY powerful. MySQL does NOT do subselects. It's default installation doesn't support transactions. Splitting tables across files is not supported. The developer tools are nothing compared to the combination of Prolier (for tacing all events, and selectivly reporting on events, and execution times) and Query Analyzer (which allows you to display/edit/run queries, and can also diagram the internal execution, and optimizations of a query).
Basically, although the price may be nice, and the fuzzy feeling of using software which is created by a company nice enough to release it for free, it's simply not condusive to quick development of large applications. Which, if you're a dedicated individual with limited means, means that you'll just have to invest time into getting it right. Most developers, and development houses I work with really need to be able to get quick answers to their many problems, and MySQL would be innapropriate for them.
That said, all my businesses run off of MySQL.
- Dan
Now would be the perfect opportunity for you to look at what features you are missing against MS-SQL and start implementing them. Nothing like a market waiting to be tapped.
-- Who is the bigger fool? The fool or the fool who follows him? --
Bull. Microsoft's legal division is probably larger than most law firms. And since when do you have to be a law firm to break a promise.
IANAL, YANAL. If Microsoft retains one or one thousand lawyers, they are still responsible for notifying customers that certain value-additions to the server, sold or licensed by those customers (thus sub-licensing, what Microsoft has stated they are free to do 'unencumbered') those customers are liable. Apparently from evidence, Microsoft consulted on this statement before issuing it. That's what we call a smoking gun. I expect customers, if pursued will place the burden of treble damages, plus their own expenses and damages costs on Microsoft.
This of course all depends upon Timeline pursuing a list of all customers and investigating their products for infringement. They could bankroll the process with a settlement from Microsoft, however, I suspect to protect their underhandedly won and significant market, Microsoft will attempt to settle with Timeline, paying some hefty fee and renegotiating the terms of licensing. Since Microsoft has attempted to cut Timelines own legs off (buying their main distributor) expect Timeline to request a pound of flesh.
Lacking a settlement, here's yet one more argument in favor of buying software and services from Anybody-But-Microsoft. One would think they were coached on this whole preposterous strategy by the same team that coached them initially in the antitrust trial. i.e. some truly stupid, arrogant and overconfident lot.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Sure thing, chicken little. That would be why most free developers avoid patented garbage. You are familiar, I'm sure with some of the efforts such as Portable Net Graphics format? While it's disgusting that there would be patents on something so obvious as a file format that uses well know compresion routines, free developers obey the law even when it's stupid.
The irony is that you can trust the major distributions of free software more than you can trust M$. M$ knew that their developers would be in violation of Timeline's patents and licenses, yet told them they were OK. That's right, the people taking your money LIED to you, while the free software people with nothing but their reputation at stake, have not. Well, what do you expect from closed source crap? It's a lie from start to finish.
The sooner people give up trying to make money off silly patents and closed source binaries, the better off everyone will be. The result of this kind of business model has been massive waste, from overpriced code that everyone has to use to keeping people from using reasonable techniques to the cost of the litigation to tell the difference. And all of that is before you count the costs of the Microsoft upgrade train and the massive intentional waste of changed document formats. Barf!
And this is from a *confirmed* ANTI-MICROSOFT junkie, not one of your astro-turfers...
You post looks like pure FUD to me.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Ahh, but you forget how few countries accept the idea that code can be patented.
Ahh, but you forget how much of the global gross domestic product is tied up in countries that allow patents on algorithms running on generic computers. For instance, Fraunhofer holds patents on MP3 in Germany, most of the rest of Western Europe, Canada, the USA, Korea, and Japan.
Will I retire or break 10K?
This is the most insightful comment I've seen on the subject of software patents. Thinking back to my introduction to patents, for something to be patentable (in the UK at least) it must be:
1. Novel
2. Inventive
3. Capable of physical embodiment.
And over many decades (centuries even) patent practice has developed and matured. The same case can be made of trademark and copyright law - there is a long trail of established case law. This body of case law will help not only in dealing with disputes but also in guiding the patent offices when awarding patents. And not only case law, but maturity in the process of examining and granting patents.
The advent of software patents (in the US, still don't have them over here) is a step change, and introduces the patent process to an arena where there is no case law, and no established maturity in the process of examining and granting patents.
Now, the US patent office could tackle this in two ways:
a) they could set the bar for the granting of software patents very high, and themselves get involved in wrangling with big corporations about patents which they have declined, or
b) they could just grant any application which comes in, in which case they will not be involved in any disputes between patent holders and alleged infringers.
Whatever the merits of the two cases, it is now too late: there is a large body of software patents which, instead of being use to protect an inventor from having his ideas copied, is used by large corporations to selectively bully other corporations (large and small) in a game of bluffing poker played with legal fees.
The only silver lining is that all patents expire, and being able to cite an expired patent which covers what you're doing is a cast iron defence (assuming you waited until it expired before distributing your version).
And the dark cloud on the horizon? The possibility of patent terms being extended, in the same way as copyright terms, by similarly Mickey Mouse organisations.
Dunstan
The last scintilla of doubt just rode out of town
If you want an OpenSource comparison, you would have to go to PostgreSQL.
Osenbaugh appears to be threatening legal action against some SQL Server developers
So...will Ballmer and Co. decide to indemnify the DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS when the DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS get SUED SUED SUED?
Maybe, just maybe, this (or the Caldera situation) might spur some reform of the patent process vis-a-vis software and busines processes. I'm not holding my breath, though.
GF.
Lots of petrified grits
Umm, why not just skip steps 3-5? Works for me.
-Charlie
A prime example of why Software Patents are just wrong. These types of works are copyrighted. Software apparently gets to have it both ways. Why is it in the better interests of the public to encourage legal action on a grand scale for work that should be only copyrighted, not also patented? Of course, its copyrighted too, but once a corporation gets that patent on a little piece of the work, it doesn't matter if somebody can reverse engineer it. It's still "theirs". You stole their idea!
from Article I, Section 8:
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
Software programming patterns and techniques are a discovery? Does anyone really believe that? Perhaps only legislative action can fix this. I imagine it will cost the economy at large billions of dollars before that happens. I suppose it comes down to whether the big guns in software marketing with lobbying dollars and political influence (Hi Bill!) swing for/against the issue. A court may take issue on whether this qualifies as Invention, but I doubt it they'll see it the right way.
Anyone seen my low uid? last seen 10 years ago while panning the #@$# out of Taco's 'web based discussion system'
I still remember days when being a programmer meant legal concerns were far distant from me.
Now, I'm following news like this, and wondering what it means for my job. It means a time where patent law, copyright law, business games, and acts of Congress can vastly affect my job, and lawsuits and patent claims can suddenly pop up and change the playing field.
I wonder at the CIS majors coming out of college are aware of the bizarre amount of issues that they may confront.
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
Oh sod it, I'll go get more drunk and try to forget all the problems that are out there because of MS, eventhough its just for one night.
Software is a written work, protected by copyright law. The strong protection of Patent law was not drafted with such works in mind.
If we held all writing to this standard, one author might patent the "murder mystery" and sue other authors for royalties.
This is a broken law, and all coders are victims. Let's not be happy now just because MS is getting burned.
Because for the most part Sybase develops its own software. ;-)
Until Microsoft finds a way to adequately compensate Timeline, there is simply no way out of this. Timeline is not about to initiate vast numbers of individual lawsuits -- they don't have to. All they have to do is cherry-pick a few customers here and there and use BSA-style intimidation tactics. The publicity from the lawsuits or payoffs in lieu thereof will trigger a crippling Fear/Uncertainty/Doubt about SQL Server, AND ALL THE OTHER MICROSOFT PRODUCTS THAT MIGHT HAVE LATENT PATENT ISSUES! No reasonable person can have confidence in ANY Microsoft product until this issue is settled and some reassurances are given about how future patent issues are to be handled.
I can't help but think this entire situation would have been quietly settled if the offender was anyone other than Microsoft.
An agreement between two parties cannot bind a third party. As an employee of your company, you cannot bind your company to a contract, unless you are a lawfully vested agent of that company. In short, any EULA you may agree to can only bind you.
Bullshit.
The company is liable for any software that is installed on their machines. Whether they knew about it or approved it is irrelevant. That has already been held up in court on multiple occasions.
And BTW, any time you are installing software on a company machine or for the purpose of doing company work you are acting as an agent of the company. There is no need for any formal or official declaration that you are a "legally vested agent", it's implied when you are employed by them.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.