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MS-Sun Agreement Leaves Opening For OO.org Suits
newentiti writes "We all know Microsoft paid $900,000,000.00 to Sun and they also signed a LIMITED PATENT COVENANT AND STAND-STILL AGREEMENT. The agreement basically states that Microsoft will not sue Sun for any patents for the next 10 years and vice versa. What's really interesting is that according to this story the agreement had a special provision that lets Microsoft sue anybody, including Sun, over OpenOffice.org. I wonder what Microsoft had in mind?"
Please notice that items like Star Office ARE included in the agreement, so I don't think this belies any patent cases against end-users. The biggest difference between Star Office and Open Office is that one is under the control of Sun, and one is not (or at least less-so). Therefore, Sun would obviously not want to be held responsible for things beyond it's control, such as outside coders blatantly putting in patented/copywrited material into Open Office.
That said, I this is Microsoft and their legal actions have rarely been that benign in the past.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
They want to leave any dirty trick open just in case.
2 years and no mod points. Join reddit. Because openness is good.
visa versa
Jesus Christ. How hard is it to use simpler terms if you don't know that the *complex* ones mean? Lets atleast try to keep it a little professional editors. Please.
Microsoft is great at spreading FUD. They have a stated goal to rid the desktop world (since they can't compete on a server level) of other OS's. Hence, they wish to have us stop using OO. I personally say, bring it on.
They can go ahead and sue a non-profit organziation. I wonder what kind of goodwill that'll bring.
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The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
I honestly think that this was just because Sun doesn't necessarily have a say in what goes into OpenOffice.org. Without this, the open-source world could simply just stick any technology into the OpenOffice.org codebase, and viola, Microsoft can't sue for infringement. I'm not a fan of software patents, but I think this really does make sense from a legal viewpoint, and is not necessarily an underhanded legal move by Microsoft.
Engineering and the Ultimate
Its pretty obvious that Microsoft wants to preserve their right to sue, but I'm surprised that the deal with sun provides an exception. If the two agree that there is a real prospect of Microsoft winning a suit over OpenOffice.org, I would think that Sun would want to be protected and would have held out until Microsoft agreed. And I would think that Microsoft would have agreed, if they really wanted the deal with Sun, perhaps with the likely damages subtracted from Microsoft's payment to Sun. So what this suggests to me is that Microsoft's legal strategy involves a suit in which for some reason it would be difficult to avoid naming Sun as a defendant but in which Sun does not anticipate actually have to pay any significant damages or litigation expenses. I'm not sure how this situation would arise - maybe a situation in which MS has to name everybody initially but would then drop Sun as a defendant after discovery?
The most obvious reason to have such an exemption is the FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) factor. Microsoft is probably deadly-afraid of small busineses (that will someday be big businesses) standardizing on OO rather than paying a king's ransom for MS Office licenses. By leaving these businesses to wonder if they will be sued or whether OO will disappear due to litigation, some of those businesses will consider ponying up the money for MS Office.
Ummm, isn't OpenOfice administered seperate from Sun? In which case why would an agreement with Sun cover OpenOffice?
One could equally say the agreement left open the possibility of suing people over Linux, or indeed washing machines.
I doubt Sun wants to enmesh itself as responsible for washing machines anymore that they would OpenOffice... yes I understand where OpenOffice comes from, but ask yourself if you;d want blurry lines if you were Sun.
Perhaps the spin on the reportage is a little askew. I'm not sure one can infer any intent on Microsofts part.... unless of course MS are planning on suing makers of washing machines.
Sun can't change the name of OpenOffice.org (the .org is part of the name btw). They can change the name of StarOffice which is their branded version of OpenOffice.org.
And I doubt the legal agreements are so loose that simply changing the name of the product invalidates the contract. They pay the lawyers big money for a reason.
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
I RTFA, and it mentions Open Office, not OpenOffice.org, which are actually different things if I'm not mistaken. I wonder if the name difference would stand in court.
they only way to deal with the tyrant of Redmond is a war of attrition...
no quarter, no mercy, just cut em off completely, send msft to the recycle bin of history forever...
msft is not to be trusted under any circumstances...
this has already been done both in my office and at home...
Haven't you noticed agreement's effective date - This Limited Patent Covenant and Stand-Still Agreement (the "Agreement") is entered into as of this 1st day of April, 2004 (the "Effective Date") See this url http://sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/709519/00011931 2504155723/dex10109.htm
You think wrong. Copying (source or object code) is covered by copyright. Patents apply even if you developed something entirely on your own in a remote cave on a desolate island. No distinction is made between software and other things in US patent law. Reverse engineering has nothing to do with patents either, that's covered by copyright as well (and at least in Europe is explicitly allowed for interoperability purposes, I don't know about the US).
Donate free food here
simple solution. a one way stand alone converter hosted and "written" in china.
.doc open fine in Ms office and get's past the extremely stupid PHB's, HR and Secretaries that DEMAND .doc format.
.doc extension.
.doc .xls and .ppt files and making a copy in the OO.o formats.
an Office to Open Office converter would be great! you do not need to convert the other direction as items saved as rtf and renamed to
simply give OO.o the option to save as rtf with
personally a Msoffice to sxw distiller would be a great item to have, think of it running as a daemon... finding all
You can still do that, for the most part. Just save your documents in Rich Text Format.
Phear The Phat Penguin
Consider that Microsoft may reasonably be looking after their own self-interest. In this case, I think it may be fair for them to try and prevent individuals outside of Sun to incorporate something into OpenOffice that is owned by them. I don't see it as a "pre-emptive" strike but merely a reservation of rights. Sun is still free to utilize what they wish for SunOffice - they just can't distribute it back to the open source community.
This is not a troll. I don't like Micro$haft but I don't see this as the evil, bad thing everyone else says it is.
What it will eventually boil down to is, how do they utilize (if they do) this provision?
There's a gorilla from Manilla whose a fella that stinks of vanilla and has salmonella.
Nope. If Micro$oft is alone in any suits, they're just "being Microsoft". If someone else is with them, "it must have merit".
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Microsoft has started drafting talent they think can teach them the mindset of OS. Unfortunately, Microsoft is so set in their ways WRT capitalism (to an extreme) they don't know how to deal with things which aren't done for the [sole] purpose of money. They seriously do not know. They've tried to employ the overused FUD by making the suits think ownership is an issue because someone can write code, sell the package and the source, the new owner can modify the source, sell the result and the source, etc. This bothers Microsoft - again, they don't understand this and it bothers them. It's like trying to sleep with sand in their bed and they can't sweep it out. And that just makes them more frantic. So now they're going to look at the same ownership cycle and throw the law at it. The question is: why should they care? They're selling things, OS folks are selling things.
Perhaps they feel they can compete on that one level but worry all subsequent "generations" of the OS making the repeated sales + builds somehow threaten their business model? If so, they're going to have to admit they've lost a competitive edge. That won't bother them because that then removes the label monopoly.
How can you have a monopoly if you don't always (or nearly always) have the competitive edge [on the grand scale]?
Just remember...
______________________________________
My Trunk Monkey can beat up your Trunk Monkey.
http://www.suburbanautogroup.com/ford/trunkmonkey
Major cock-up on the MS legal team's part - unless they wish to sue for inclusion of patented technology in a defunct product. No, I'm not trolling, it's just that the agreement mentions "Open Office" and not "OpenOffice.org" (the name OO.org had to take for trademark reasons). Unless their ambiguous wording ("the product developed by Sun and generally known as Open Office") would hold up in a court of law, they really have no-one to sue - unless they want to litigate against the product which got to the name first (highly unlikely).
According to one of the posts in the article, there is no such product called "Open Office" (4th post down as of 9/15/2004 6:00 GMT). The product mentioned in the agreement (legally speaking) may or may not refer to OpenOffice.org, which is what the news story is referencing. Why can a news story get it wrong and not a legal contract? Because legalese is all about semantics. News stories don't have to be to have a Slashdot discussion.
The post in question states:
This is stated here, in the Trademark section (which they claim was last updated 2003-07).Did Sun's legal department pull one over on MSFT's legal department? Was it a mistake? Was Oo.o defined earlier and then said "referred to herein as 'Open Office'"? Was the agreement between Sun and Microsoft dated before the official communication of Oo.o? I don't know, but it appears to be pretty clever, and raises some intriguing questions.
One way or the other, this won't stop me from deploying Oo.o. It's an excellent product, and saves $400 per PC (nearly 40% of the cost of a complete system).
-Turkey
There is no product called "Open office".
The agreement refers to 'the product developed by Sun and commonly known as "Open Office"' and this most certainly refers to Openoffice.org.
The name "openoffice.org" was chosen because "open office" was trademarked by some other company, but not for software.
Sig for sale or rent. One previous user. Inquire within.
We know that Sun cannot be sued by Microsoft for patent violations. We know that Sun is looking at buying SUSE Linux.
When and if Microsoft unleashes its patent war against open source in general, against Linux and OpenOffice in particular, Sun and all customers of Sun will be immune.
Thus, Sun will be the only company allowed to sell Linux and OpenOffice, aka, StarOffice and will be Linux's sole distributor.
What does Microsoft get out of the deal? First, Microsoft does NOT want Linux destroyed. It needs to have at least the appearance of competition to keep government regulators off its back. That competition will come from Sun.
Second, Linux will be greatly hobbled because instead of the entire world working on Linux, there will be only one source with which to compete.
Basically, Microsoft will destroy Linux but keep the appearance of healthy competition in the marketplace.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Because Sun has the deepest pockets. Who else will they sue for OpenOffice? The developers, most of who make much less than the cost of pursuing such a case?
Finally, Microsoft would lose for many reasons (prior art, fundamental differences between the implementations etc...)
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
Actually, there's a very apt quote from the movie the American President:
"I'd been operating under the assumption that the reason Bob spends so much time and energy shouting at the rain was that he simply didn't get it. Well, I was wrong, Bob's problem isn't that he doesn't get it; Bob's problem is that he can't sell it. We have serious problems to solve, and we need serious people to solve them. And whatever your particular problem is, I promise you, Bob Rumson is not the least bit interested in solving it. He is interested in two things, and two things only: making you afraid of it, and telling you who's to blame for it. That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you win elections."
Replace Bob Rumson with Microsoft, and you have a clear match.
The Penguin Producer
It would be so nice in a perfect world if users just used rtf or something a little more compatible, but that's not gonna happen any time soon. I think this is the single biggest threat to moving people off windows...they can't read their files.
I'm not anti-social, I'm anti-idiot.
So: they will use a stick and a carrot. The stick: lawsuits against prominent OOo developers for patent infringement. The carrot: MSOffice for Linux. I predict within the next 6 months, since every day that OOo is free makes it harder for MS to squash it.
MS Office for Linux is not going to happen. Microsoft's power comes through control of the desktop platform. If they ran office on Linux, a lot of people would lose their only reason for sticking with Windows. Besides, the vast majority of people using OOo are using it on Windows, not Linux.
Sure their desktop is under assault from Internet malware but has this eroded their market share in the slightest? No. As long as the applications people want to run only run on Windows then Microsoft will continute to dominate the market. I hate Windows but I run it at home because the games I play don't run on Linux. As for Malware, I'm behind a firewall, and I don't use IE or Outlook so what do I care.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
How does one become less ignorant if one does not ask questions? I've never heard of a "domestic partner" used to mean anything other than homosexual partner. Your message was enlightening, but your presentation wreaked of being an arrogant shitbag.
This isn't gonna work unless the rest of the world, and especially EU will do software patents. MS might be able kill Linux in the US, but it's no good if they can't kill it in the EU, and JP, and BR, and everywhere else. And right now there is a tremendous resistance against it in the EU, and different comittees are overturning each other's decisions. There is huge money in it, and there is a huge fight going on.
Software patents go like this: the way of obtaining the number 3 by adding 2+1 is hereby patented. Therefore if you're in a school, you must do 3+0 or 4+(-1), unless you're willing to pay license for 2+1 additions, at $0.05/action. You're welcome to prove that it's prior art, if you got the lawyers, but beware, we got more lawyers and deeper pockets and we can drag it out for 10 years in court. We will patent the stupidest things, because the patent examiner is on our team, we regularly take him out to golf, plus we inundate him with so many stupid claims, that even if he tries to pick on the details and fight them one by one, something WILL get through, sooner or later, and what doesn't get through, we'll keep reapplying until it gets through, SOONER OR LATER.
Real inventions don't happen in patents, they happen at universities, in published science articles, and they come out no matter what, out of ego, whether patented or not. Talk about stupid things patented like the 1-click shopping patent for amazon? Can you say "DUH?"