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Is the Microsoft/Novell Deal a Litigation Bomb?
mpapet writes "According to WINE developer Tom Wickline, the Microsoft/Novell deal for Suse support may one day control commercial customers' use of Free Software. Is this the end of commercial OSS developers who are not a part of the Microsoft/Suse pact?" From the article: "Wickline said that the pact means that there will now be a Microsoft-blessed path for such people to make use of Open Source ... 'A logical next move for Microsoft could be to crack down on 'unlicensed Linux' and 'unlicensed Free Software,' now that it can tell the courts that there is a Microsoft-licensed path. Or they can just passively let that threat stay there as a deterrent to anyone who would use Open Source without going through the Microsoft-approved Novell path,' Wickline said." Bruce Perens dropped a line to point out that most of the content actually comes from his post.
I distrust Microsoft about as much as any other /. reader but this article is just stupid. The author seems to be implying that because Microsoft has made an alliance with a Linux vendor they all of the sudden own all open source software ever created and can just sue people for patent infringement at will. What a crock.
People....CALM DOWN.
The world is not coming to an end. Microsoft is not coming to steal your children.
The nature of the Novell/Microsoft deal is somewhat irrelevant. The problem is the threat of Microsoft launching patent attacks against ANYONE over anything in SuSE. The public statements say that Microsoft won't launch a patent suit against noncommercial distributors or against Novell - that still leaves commercial distributors open to a patent lawsuit.
If THAT happens, Section 7 of the GPL kicks in and Novell loses the right to distribute GPLed code in SuSE. Section 7 is the 'liberty or death' clause which says that if you can't distribute GPLed code without some patent(or other) restriction being imposed on your customers, you cannot distribute GPLed code at all. The idea is to prevent code being proprietarised using legal machinery other than copyright - having someone offering GPLed code under a partial patent umbrella that effectively bars, say, commercial distribution, is exactly the sort of thing that section 7 was designed to prevent.
(My theory is that the main reason Microsoft had to offer patent protection to at least one Linux distributor was to skirt antitrust problems if it starts using patent law to crush competition. )