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'."

Comments

They have every right.

[MarkByers]

'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.

Re:They have every right.

[peragrin]

The thing is now every code that comes out of Novell is now suspect. if Novell contributes code to Samaba the deal provides MSFT a recourse to attack Samba and use the Novell deal as the scape goat. Even if the code in question wasn't what Novell donated.

It's not about it being against the GPL, it's provide MSFT with an excuse, and an attack point with which to target open source developers.

Novell donates, code to firefox, and now Microsoft can sue the mozilla foundation for patent infringements, because of that, unless of course the mozilla foundation coughs up some money of course.

Re:They have every right.

[Freed]

Uh, the idiomatic "right to ..." phrase typically means "moral justification to ...".

Re:They have every right.

[Bruce Perens]

The particular patent deal that they made is against section 7 of the GPL and also other parts of the license.

Novell is attempting to create a loophole in the license with a legal fiction. By paying Microsoft to make a covenant to Novell's users directly, instead of to Novell, they are attempting to get us, and whatever judges eventually rule on this, to believe that no patents are being licensed even though the effect is the same as if they were being licensed.

There is also the matter of the spirit of the license. By violating that, they are making a clear "screw you" gesture to everyone whose code they are running. There are now a lot of angry people who will now go out of their way to get business to go elsewhere than Novell. Have you noticed that SCO's business went completely down the tubes? Novell's going to have a hard time avoding that.

Bruce

Re:They have every right.

[AJWM]

So if this agreement can allow Linux and MS to finally actually talk to each other,

The only thing that has ever stopped Linux and MS from "finally actually talk[ing] to each other" is Microsoft. Every protocol and file format that Linux and Linux software uses (except 3rd party proprietary stuff that just happens to run on Linux) is open and published. Further, copyrights aren't infringed by code that re-implements an interface (see "abstraction, filtration, comparison") so Microsoft has always been free to write code that interoperates with Linux kernel and applications.

The fact is, Microsoft has deliberately gone out of its way to change file formats and protocols to make such interoperation as difficult as possible.

- - - -

Because they said they wouldn't in the agreement.

Bwa ha ha ha!! LOL! This is Microsoft we're talking about. Besides which, they reserved the right to revoke that agreement any time they want.

Remember Vader's lines: "I am altering the terms of our agreement. Pray that I do not alter them again." Or as an MSFT exec said to Bob Metcalfe of 3com after MSFT screwed 3com on OS/2 LAN Manager: "You made a mistake, you trusted us".

See also the fable of the frog and the scorpion (and variations thereof).

Re:They have every right.

[Bruce Perens]

There is no non-trivial software program that does not infringe a granted patent. I am not kidding. If you enforced them all, the whole software industry would grind to a halt.

Bruce

Re:They have every right.

[node 3]

Actually they have every right to do whatever they like as long as it is within the law.

That's a tautology. In other words, "they have the right to do what they have the right to do." It doesn't really mean anything. Regardless of whether Novell has the legal right or not, or the moral right or not, your sentence means the exact same thing. Which is to say, it has absolutely no bearing on what the SAMBA team wrote.

I suspect they weren't talking about legal rights, but right in the sense of "moral or proper". Such as, "you have every right to be mad at me for what I did".

And no, Novell has *NO RIGHT* to do what it appears they are doing, even if they have every legal right to do it. The sentence is not contradictory because the word "right" is being used in two different ways. If you are still having a hard time with that, imagine I wrote, "it's wrong of Novell to do what they appear to be doing, even if it's entirely within the law". The two sentences mean the same thing.

Re:Stop your bitching

[acvh]

"First, Novell isn't making deals on behalf of others."

well, yes, they did. the deal was done on behalf of Novell's customers. the deal is specifically designed to indemnify Novell's customers from patent lawsuits brought by Microsoft. thus, Microsoft can pursue a patent suit against Samba, but if you bought a Microsoft approved distribution you won't be penalized.

Re:Stop your bitching

[acvh]

you are also correct. however, the downside here is that if users, especially businesses, feel a need to take advantage of this "protection" then Novell has succeeded in delegitimizing other distributions. i'm no GPL geek, so I don't know specifically what the license has to say on this, but if programmers or vendors are forced to question their rights to code or distribute then we've lost something.

Re:Profit model isn't working

[David Off]

> 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

Re:whee

[WindBourne]

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.

Novell destroyed themselves.

[khasim]

At a philosophical level, Novell probably didn't want to sign the agreement with Microsoft either ... heck, Microsoft basically destroyed them as a leading software provider.

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.

But they're in an unenviable position of trying to turn a profit.

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.

On one side, they offer massive resources that can champion and push forward technologies that groups working in their spare time cannot. On the other, they must find a way to recoup some of those expenses, which sometimes lead them down the path that we've all worked hard to stay off (namely, software patents, commercialization, and closed sourcing parts of their product).

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.

Unfortunately I think we'll just have to deal with some closed source Linux programs and some software patents for technologies that required massive investment.

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.

Why are you posting here?

[khasim]

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.

Re:Opposite

[BlueStrat]

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