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Samba Team Urges Novell To Reconsider
hde226868 writes "The team responsible for Samba has just asked Novell to reconsider its recent patent agreement with Microsoft, arguing that the agreement is a divisive agreement, effectively splitting the open source movement into groups with and without commercial status. Samba argues that with this move Novell is disregarding the will of the people who write the software sold by Novell and that Novell has 'no right to make self servicing deals on behalf of others which run contrary to the goals and ideals of the Free Software community'."
"Samba argues that with this move Novell is disregarding the will of the people who write the software sold by Novell and that Novell has 'no right to make self servicing deals on behalf of others which run contrary to the goals and ideals of the Free Software community'."
In other news the sun is hot, water is wet, and... wait... yes, I taste spit in my mouth!
Come on now, what part of Microsoft + Patent + Open Source is anywhere close to what "open" source should be?
I keep telling myself I'm not the desperate type.
'no right to make self servicing deals on behalf of others which run contrary to the goals and ideals of the Free Software community'
Actually they have every right to do whatever they like as long as it is within the law. There is nothing specific in the GPL that says they cannot make a deal with Microsoft. The only thing that will stop companies from doing things like this, is if they lose customer support. If you don't like it, don't buy their products.
I'll probably be modded down for this...
Novell has 'no right to make self servicing deals on behalf of others which run contrary to the goals and ideals of the Free Software community'."
Bullshit. First, Novell isn't making deals on behalf of others. Second, Novell have every right to make the deal they made -- if the Samba folks don't like it, they should have said so in their copyright license. They didn't.
Also, from the Samba post: "The goals of the Free Software community and the GNU GPL allow for no such distinctions."
Guess what? It doesn't forbid such distinctions either.
Listen up, folks: nobody cares about your intent. The law is about the wording of the document. That sucks, but that's how it is right now. If you don't want people to do certain things with your code, SAY SO AHEAD OF TIME, IN THE LICENSE.
REM Old programmers don't die. They just GOSUB without RETURN.
> Ultimately people won't pay you money for something that they get for free elsewhere.
oh I don't know, it has worked for hookers for thousands of years for much the same reasons people will pay for OS: service level agrements and a no quibble contract
Considering that MS, Novell, and SCO have been interwined for 20 + years, Yes. Keep in mind that Novell owned SCO at one time and sold it off to Caldera. Of course, Caldera was a start-up from who? Novell's own Ray Noorda. Now, I liked Ray, but the whole Novell, SCO, Caldera is an inbred world. The best thing that Novell could have done was kept the SUSE team together for diversity. But they dismantled the group. What is left now, is a group that is trying to figure out how to take over the number one spot from Redhat without regard to the long term impact of the linux world. These guys think very short term. Once they increase the value of the company, they will break it apart and sell it off. Remember what happened to SCO? Same thing.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
"Yes". "Yes". And "it helps, yes". I need all of my software to run together flawlessly. I can't have some hacked together stuff that that may or may not interact well. So yes, it most definitely helps. In my business, I need an OS that lets us do regular stuff (email, web, blah, blah, blah), but that's not really important. Any OS on any computer will do all of that. My IMPORTANT functions, though... accounting, cash registers, etc. all need to work together perfectly. If they don't, we have to close our doors, and I have to fire lots of people. So yes, I would give significantly more weight to a Linux that has MS's stamp of approval.
I am still trying to figure out why I should give a damn what Novell does? So Novell has this nice new agreement with Microsoft. Since I don't use Suse, Netware or anything Novell makes that I signed a legally binding agreement for I am not bound by anything Novell does. Novell's agreement can't trickle back the Linux programmers, because the programmers agreeed to the GPL, not the Novell agreement. If you do use something Novell has, then remove it, and keep your project moving without it. If Novell adds code to your project, and you are under the GPL, then they must agree to the GPL legally. If Microsoft wants to sue "commerical" opensource what was stopping them before this agreement? What stops them after this agreement? Its an agreement between Novell, who does not own a majority of GNU/Linux, and Microsoft, who does not own a majority of GNU/Linux. I didn't sign the agreement, none of the other open-source people signed the agreement, Novell signed the agreement. Let Novell agree to this, tell them to shove this software up their ass, and get another distro. Thats competition.
You are not legally bound by what Microsoft and Novell does.
Selex
"At your expense"? Like, what, exactly? If you wrote any OSS code, and gave it away, then there is no expense for you if it is used by Microsoft or anybody else.
I think reality is, novell wasn't making a penny on linux and suse, in fact most likely losing money hand over fist. They have already replaced some C** folks. I think MS cash infusion was about their only hope.
I don't like what they did, I think it might not even be legal, it is certainly a blow to open source, but once a company is driven by stockholders who demand endless money in perpetuity, and to have that amount actually increase, for their one time "capitalist" investment...this is what happens.
I also don't think (I cannot emphasize this enough really) software as a stand-alone business is going to survive, not in any huge big way really..there is no need. 40 years ago to a few years ago, yes, now..nope.
Software as part of a normal business, sure, in house tweaking and customizing, yep, but stand-alone it is headed the way of the dinosaurs. Open source is about designing,building and *sharing* of tools freely and Freely, whereas USING those tools within another legit business is where the long term cash with software is.
I feel its so much better that it happened now, Fail-Fast is always better. Good to have answers early on.
If we don't want such things to happen, why don't we move to more restrictive licenses? Should we actually expect people (or even worse, corporations) to always act in good faith, even when there is no obligation to do so? Why not put it all down in paper then. IM(H)O, Open Source still has not found a balancing act between pragmatism and staying true to the cause. Which is why we have issue with GPL v2 and v3. The deal (according to Eben Moglin) violates GPL v3, but v2-v3 debate is now more like a 50-50 split.
Lets all go GPL v3, or shut up.
Anyway, it is not that I found something terribly wrong with the deal. Mainly because it changes _nothing_ for existing users. It is just that Novell customers get an additional benefit. Meanwhile the Open Innovation Network still protects Open Source patents,
the Mono team still maintains that the have not violated any patents, good news for getting Open-Office to open Word 2007 XML files (and more compatibility) and some other. But on the other hand, it does create a division and give Novell somewhat an unfair advantage.
Life is just a conviction.
It looks as though Hovsepian has went for this in an attempt to provide a pathetically weak selling point (customers won't get sued - yer!) and to get his hands on a few hundred million which will make Novell's upcoming financial results not look completely disastrous. If that latter point is indeed true, then that really is truly sad, because it means that Novell are simply hopping from one quarter of financial results to another, trying to make them look good, trying to get worried investors off their backs and trying to maintain the ridiculous overheads that they still have as a company.
We have exactly 6 people. We need software that works out of the box, no questions asked. There's little room for error, either as far as time or money goes. Any time spent twiddling with software is money lost. It's that simple.
Under American patent law, if you use a product made by a company that did not have a license to a necessary patent, you can be sued, not just the company.
An implication of the Microsoft-Novell agreement is that Microsoft could sue any Linux (or Samba?) user who did not buy it through Novell. It major lawsuits start happening and Microsoft wins the lawsuits, Linux will disappear from corporations in America, or they'll all go through Novell. If Linux isn't open, there's no point in using it.
Melissa
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
> software that works out of the box, no questions asked.
Are you sure you want to do that?
You want it to work right out of the box, WITHOUT FIDDLING, and you're using Microsoft software. If you wanted it to work 'out of the box', at least use a Mac.
Novell destroyed themselves.
The only thing that Microsoft did was release WinNT without the license broadcast that NetWare boxes did. I could use one license and setup 1,000 WinNT boxes on a network. If I used the same license on 2 NetWare boxes on a network, they'd broadcast their license codes, see that they were duplicates and shut both boxes down. "Piracy" gave Microsoft the edge.
After that, it's been 100% Novell fuck ups.
Why buy SuSE when for a LOT less money you can just hire Linux developers to write the code/apps you want? You spent $210 MILLION.
Okay, you own SuSE now, why is it easier to run GroupWise on Windows than on Debian? Microsoft is a bigger threat to your existence than Debian.
Why haven't you ported the look and feel of you NetWare apps (inetcfg, nwconfig, etc) over to SuSE?
Service Pack 6 for NetWare 6.5 is over 800MB. Compressed.
As is every other company out there. McDonald's manages it, yet their costs have got to be higher than cooking healthier food, yourself, at home.
No. The problem is when closed source companies don't bother to understand the Open Source environment and believe they can treat it the same as their closed source products.
Which is exactly what Novell is trying to do.
Instead, Novell should have spent a one tenth of the money they spent on SuSE and paid lots of programmers to port Novell's money-making products (GroupWise, eDirectory, ZENworks, etc) to Linux. Go ahead. Try to get eDirectory running on Ubuntu. It's pretty easy on SuSE, but damn hard on Ubuntu.
Oh really? You mean like Oracle? Their stuff is still closed. Yet they seem pretty happy with running it on Linux.
This message posted with 100% Ubuntu Edgy Eft.
Can't they just inform Novell that they no longer have the right to distribute Samba under the GPL, but instead must either fork it or work out commercial licenses with the Samba code contributors (good luck with working out a deal with each copyright holder)? Other project teams could do the same, and Novell will have a hard choice to make:
1. Fork each project where distribution rights have been and choose to fork, becoming incompatible in the near-to-mid future
2. Reconsider the deal, pull out, and work with Redhat, Canonical, IBM, et al, ensuring compatibility, and create a strong front against Microsoft's monopoly. They could also form clean room reverse engineering teams where binaries are decompiled and notes are taken on the architecture, then hand those notes (but NO decompiled code examples) to the open source developers. This way. legal, clean-room implementations of Samba, wine, etc. can be created WITHOUT tainting of GPL and BSD code by Microsoft.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Not just linus. This could force a lot of people to go to GPLv3 and possible get some last minute revisions in it to try to prevent some things Microsoft may try. The result would be problematic for many open source projects. Software will need to be rewritten in cases where people won't consent to "upgrading" their license. Non GPLv3 projects might not be able to include applications with GPLv3 licensing because of the attempts to stop them from running on drm'd hardware.
Then again it could just be a lame attempt to get into the linux community which microsoft has avoided for so long. Just don't turn your back on Microsoft and let them stab you.
MidnightBSD: The BSD for Everyone
From your description, you're a prefect client for Microsoft.
/.?
So if there's no time or money to be wasted, and time is money, why are you wasting time on
Instead of wasting time here, you would (more logically) be better off spending time on various Windows tech forums. You'll want to learn MORE about the systems that you use right now than spending time chatting about systems that you aren't going to use. (And you've detailed the reasons that you aren't going to use them.)
Strange how that works.
Yet you do 'porn stuff' and your website is down.
Yay for Microsoft indeed....
I can't have some hacked together stuff that that may or may not interact well.
If this is the case, then you're definitely using the wrong solution. MS only interacts well with MS (if even then..interoperability in MS solutions isn't universal or without its' own problems), with only a few exceptions. Even those exceptions are usually a result of the work of people outside of MS, reverse engineering things with, at the very least, no help from MS...that is, if MS doesn't actively work through multiple means to impede or halt any such efforts outright.
One of F/OSSs' main strengths is the ability to interoperate without artificial barriers for the sole purpose of increasing corporate profits, lock-in, and marketshare.
There are F/OSS alternatives available already to accomplish everything you've cited. I know, I've done it. A few minutes' googling will usually result in multiple F/OSS apps/systems/OSs, etc to accomplish a given task. That you chose the MS solution is just that; *your* choice.
However, saying that you have no choice in order to stay in business and/or avoid firing employees is disengenuous. There *are* choices, you just *chose* not to avail yourself of them. Citing "peace of mind" and "interoperability" as reasons is facetious, as it has been widely acknowledged that both qualities are present in spades with current non-MS approved/certified F/OSS solutions.
If you're so concerned about the welfare of your employees, perhaps the money you could save using F/OSS solutions could be used to hire more employees or increase benefits/pay rates of current workers.
Just my 0.02
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
and avoid them like hell. Anything done under such debatable license, and anything done in conjunction with microsoft, i would avoid like hell.
Microsoft is not trustable in my opinion, in regard to freedom of anything. This is no 'j00B micro$oft eviLLaZ' type of thought - it is based on practical reasons : microsoft have never been a trustable ally in matters related to openness, freedom, and it is fat chance that they will - with all those shareholders.
So, i would avoid them like hell, and advise all my colleagues to do so always.
Read radical news here
"Not for your benefit" != "at your expense".
from my understanding, this shouldn't violate V2 of the GPL as it does not mention patents; however, I think there is a potential problem in it for Novell in that they will via the GPL be providing people with a license to indefinitly copy and distribute a program to which they via contract with MS have limited access to distribute. The question I have is what happens to Novel in five years when they've given everyone the right to redistribute the software under GPL 2? Providing a second contract for the patents would violate GPL 2 as that inherently would violate the clause preventing additional restrictions.
As an alternative, Novel could provide compatibility plugins under a different license and do a hybrid distribution much as exists with commercial distributions on the market. In a business sense, this is very powerful as it would give novel the ability to gain traction and provide a much needed service - a linux environment with better windows compatibility. OVer the course of this five years, it could in theory strengthen the adoption of linux amongst the crowd that need windows compatibility for smooth day to day function. What happens in five years is that they will have linux systems in their environment that hopefully are deeply embedded enough that transitioning back to windows quickly would be a challenge. In such a setup, they will be more free to transition to an environment w/o windows present.
I personally think this deal is not as big an issue as it is made out to be. What it does point out is the dangers of patent pacts to small businesses and independent inventors. I think that eliminating patent pacts as being anticompetitve is necessary to force competition. Of course this will just heighten the worries and abuse of the patent system, but maybe that abuse will force the big corps into supporting patent reform instead of using patent arseonals to smother the competition.
Sadly to say IBMs response to SCO largely reflects their abuse of the patent system. SCO attacks and they respond with countersuits using their massive stockpile of patents. While in this case, sco may be deserving of annhiliation - the method used is still that of a bully.
Attacking this deal is missing the target completely. Businesses will do what they need to to compete. Rules need to be changed to adapt to a changing environment. All this attention should be more strongly focused on patent reform and a stronger lobby needs to be made to see it happen.
alright, done ranting... if you got this far, you can go about living your life as u were.
When all else fails, try.
Likewise, if I donate my time and effort to an open source project, I want that effort to help others who can make honest use of my code (yes, including Microsoft), but I don't want it to be used as a cudgel against others (or, even, against my own efforts!), the way getting entangled with this Novell+MS plan has the potential to do (and given MS's past history, there's absolutely no reason to give them the benefit of the doubt).
"We need software that works out of the box, no questions asked. There's little room for error, either as far as time or money goes. Any time spent twiddling with software is money lost. It's that simple."
I hope to god you are not using MS software then.
evil is as evil does
I don't see why people get so upset about this. The agreement is pretty meaningless as far as open source is concerned. Microsoft probably made it in order (1) to spread FUD, (2) maybe actually get involved a little with Linux, and (3) to get cross licenses for Novell's patents. It's not like it's a huge amount of money for them, but it does help Novell, and Novell has actually contributed positively for the time being.
Maybe some non-GPLv3'ers will come to realize that the world is not as sweet and nice as they once thought... if the GPL license leaves open the possiblity for for the comminuity to get screwed... it WILL happen sooner of later.
I don't think Microsoft has intentions of being the next SCO. They just want a way to control some foothold of open source deployment. In process Novell is happy to get some solid sales going from their SUSE investment even if they piss off the open source world.
I don't see this as a dividing tactic but just a money making one. It's not as if half of the open source community is going to jump to proprietary software just because of one deal.
The initial question was whether someone wants to help MS "at their expense", and one's "wants and desires" most certainly *do* come into play here. If I don't want to help MS at my expense (for example), even if after my contribution has been made, I *still* don't want to see MS benefit. That's the point. Not that it is somehow going to cost me more after the fact.
Then it is clearly up to the person not to give away their efforts in the first place. When you give away code anyone can benefit - nambla, shin-ri-kyo, the pope, or nelson mandela -- anyone. If a person isn't prepared to let everyone use the results of his work, he shouldn't be giving it away in the first place. Just because he may not have thought through the implications beforehand is no excuse.
But there's more than just my past expense, there's my present and future expense. Will I want to further contribute to a project that I now know is going to be used against me?
That's circular reasoning, since there is no additional expense incurred by MS's use, by definition it is not being used against you. MS's benefit is not your loss, it is not a zero-sum game.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Yes, but I feel at least one important factor is missing in it, he failed to mention the red dressed archangle Pamela and her heavenly troops who rose from nowhere to hit SCO's litigation with facts and research.5 0515115448782
http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=200
605413? Yes, it's a prime.
"Novell donates, code to firefox, and now Microsoft can sue the mozilla foundation for patent infringements,"
That's a totally illogical and ignorant statement. Whether or not someone is in violation of a patent has *nothing* to do with who wrote their code. Such an idea totally confuses patents and copyright.
I can't believe the amount of bullshit that's been posted on slashdot since the novell microsoft deal. The deal is something that in no way shape or form puts microsoft in any position to threaten the open source movement (how could it?!), if anything it does the exact opposite. Yet, since it happened slashdot has been filled with fear mongers and bigots who can do nothing but spew shrill and incoherent microsoft bashing, and "deal with the devil" arguments.
The reasons that microsoft has been allying with various opensource companies like Novell and Xensource, and releasing open source software (wtl, wix, etc) are entirely clear and make total business sense. There's no need to construct some legally impossible and nefarious scheme about microsoft trying to sue open source companies, especially considering that part of the legal agreement microsoft made with Novell was to *not sue based on patents*.
I'm glad this happened. Is this enough to stop bitching whenever Stallman does something new? He's right, again. He's got brains and sure knows how to use it. Linus, are you following this? Accept GPL3, release kernel under it and everything will be sweet. Only bastards like Novell will end fucked-up.
Err - you and I cannot be thinking of the same Microsoft here. I've spent the whole of my professional career supporting Microsoft solutions and just as GNU/Linux have problems so do Microsoft's applications. But on to the next part...
Ah! Now I see what you really like about Microsoft's products - the "tight" integration of their business applications. This is probably the one thing that keeps businesses from switching. I have to admit that having nearly all of their business apps integrate with Office decently is a nice feature. It works most of the time. MS has had more than a few problems though. Overall, I will agree with you that there are many linux applications that aren't tightly integrated and could use a bit of polishing, but there are many, many programs that despite not being a tightly integrated family of apps, they DO get the job done and do it VERY well.
Microsoft is on the attack and they have a HUGE war chest! So a quick duck out of the way of this impending doom may just be Solaris. Whooo 'da thunk?
No man, you got it all wrong.
It's Joerg Schilling and his magentic personality that's going to draw people towards OpenSolaris in their millions!
My scenario is, I think, more plausible than yours.