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Sun's Patent and Licensing Practices Examined
RMX writes "Groklaw has an excellent analysis of some Patent Questions About the CDDL. For /.ers who don't like reading a lot, the most important point is that 'it would be possible for developers co-developing Open Solaris to someday find themselves blocked from distributing code by a Microsoft patent infringement claim, while leaving Sun, because of their cross-licensing deal with Microsoft, free to continue to distribute the contributed code.'
The article also notes that 'The short answer why [some particular clause] is needed in the CDDL and not the GPL is that Linus Torvalds has not just entered into a cross-licensing arrangement with Microsoft, the relevant details of which are not public'. Makes you wonder what those relevant details are?" And reader rudy_wayne writes "David Berlind's column Will Sun's 1600 patents suck the life out of Linux? talks about Sun's open sourcing of Solaris 10 and the problems that occur due to the fact that so many open source licenses are incompatible with each other. One of his most important points is 'when a large company -- IBM, Sun, or anyone else-- donates code to the open source community with a one-off license, like the Eclipse Public License (IBM) or the CDDL (Sun) it gives those companies a way to donate their code to the open source community, which in turn can enhance it to the benefactor's advantage, without that code leaking into a competitor's product (with a non-reciprocating license) in such a way that it can be used against the benefactor.'"
This licensing/contract cr*p has become has gone too far.
The summary demonstrates just how complex and extremely difficult the whole IP issue is to comprehend. This demonstrated complexity is another reason why temporary granting of monopolies through the use of IP laws should be limited to ten years. When the legal arguments begin to take the form such that one person alone cannot possibly comprehend what is going on, how is a judge going to be able to make an honest and correct decision. What is going to happen when the complexity of these laws is so great that even a team of judges can not make an informed and honest decision.
Does it go on forever?
And the story keeps getting worse: They can sue Linux developers over those patents. They can sue their own Open Source partners. Now we hear it's part of a new IP licensing arrangement with Microsoft.
I am having very much trouble getting a warm fuzzy feeling of trust like the one I would want to have about a company before contributing to their software.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
You can't be serious.
Everything we've heard about Sun's strategy so far seems to be geared to act as a "spoiler" rather than a partner in the Open Source community. The most egregious part is the implicit threat: we've got 1600 patents held over your head, Linux users, and we've got an agreement with Microsoft about them...
I care a whole lot.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
It seems you don't understand the issues. The CDDL is a copyright license. We can live with other people having any copyright license they want for their own software. We simply won't touch that software if the license is unacceptable, and we will make sure everybody knows if the license is unacceptable.
In contrast, patents can be used to prevent us from making our own software. And at $3 Million per defense (per the 2003 economic survey of the American Intellectual Property Law Association), we can not even afford to fight a patent that should not have been granted in the first place.
In other words, your friends are holding a gun to our heads and you want us to appreciate them.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Absolutely. It's funny, I see cycles of RMS bashing, followed by swings towards recognition of his vision, followed by more bashing... lather rinse repeat. When OSS has a good day people love to nitpick about RMS's beard, his social awkwardness, what have you. When OSS is on the ropes, people realize that the only f'ing thing holding it together is the GPL and RMS's refusal to "find a middle ground".
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
I work for a company that has a cross-licensing agreement with Microsoft. One of our lawyers explained that if we write code that infringes on a Microsoft patent, we're covered. But Microsoft insisted on an exclusion for Open Source. If we use an OS product that infringes, the cross-license agreement does not apply; they can come after us and our customers.
Your sentiment would be correct if this were an open market and a level playing field for all competitors. When software patents are brought into the picture, they are first used to intimidate the customer away from what otherwise might be a technically superior product, and then later on actual lawsuits can be brought to remove that competitor from the market. When a product and competitor are removed for non-technical reasons, quality in general declines due to the decreased need for the remaining products to compete. Prices increase for the same reason. And the consumer loses.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.