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

whee

[ir]

It's SCO all over again.

Re:whee

[Stumbles]

Sure does seem like it and frankly I have not been able to work my brain around the notion this agreement DOES NOT violate some aspect of GPLv2. And maybe, just maybe that's what Microsoft was REALLY after.... to get Novells right to distribute GPL code revoked. If that were to happen it seems to me it would put a big hurt on Novell. Microsoft is not known, nor has it been known NOT to stab a company in the back or setup a chain of events that in the long run damages or distroys it's competitor.

Re:whee

[Bing Tsher E]

Microsoft owned SCO at one time. In fact, the Santa Cruz Office of Microsoft became SCO. I have a machine here in my collection with pre-SCO Microsoft Xenix installed and running on it. Microsoft in their pre-MS-DOS days developed the first port of UNIX to run on the Intel 8086 processor, called Xenix. When Billy decided he didn't want to do UNIX anymore, it was all split off to become SCO.

SCO was an entity formed by Microsoft. It was once owned by Microsoft.

Re:whee

[Mspangler]

"It's SCO all over again."

I wonder if that is more true than we think?

In 2002 SCO sold something Unix related to MS, and also something to Sun for a total of $24 million. In the MS case, this something was supposed to allow UNIX apps to run on Vista, at least on the professional version.

Now, it has come out that SCO was NOT ALLOWED to sell Sys V technology to anyone without Novell's permission. But they did. Now, like buying a stolen car, MS won't be held liable for having the code in their possession, but they aren't allowed to use it either. So they would be out the money, and they would have to pull the code out of Vista a whole month before it's launch date. Disaster city.

However, if they go to Novell, they can buy the code from the people who CAN sell it. Actually, Novell may have knocked on MS's door, as it took until last spring for Novell to pry the contract out of SCO detailing exactly what was sold to MS.

So, Bill has to upchuck cash to keep Vista on track. And the rest of this is smoke and mirrors to cover Bill's butt, and to give Novell a marketing edge with the pointy-haired IT manager set.

The payment to Novell worked out to $686 for each of the 350,000 SLES. Interestingly, SCO gets to keep 5% of the revenue from Sys V licenses. 5% of about $240 million is $12 million, right in the middle of SCOs 2002 technology sales revenue. So Novell just had MS cough up the other 95% they were due?

It's currently my favorite conspiracy theory :-)

samba

[msh104]

just like the samba team, I don't think that this agreement with microsoft will bring good fruits. what I like about the open source movement is that it provides you with software that allow you to go to sleep at night without worry. the software that will result from this agreement will be everything except that.

Re:samba

[dvice_null]

Actually there is something we could get from this deal. We can now say that even Microsoft thinks that Linux is good, since it is spending a lot of money on it. We just need a huge marketing campaign and what evern evil plans Microsoft has, it will backfire them.

What's the problem?

[October_30th]

I don't see what the big problem is. If you've written software, you've probably released it under a license. Neither Novell or Microsoft can legally break that deal.

So, what's the problem?

For Novell, it's all about the money

[Salvance]

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. But they're in an unenviable position of trying to turn a profit. That's the double edged sword of large companies getting in the open source game. 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).

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. The key is to pick our battles - e.g. to ensure that the entire Linux kernel, and all "typical" programs are open source and protected under the GPL (or other similar license).

Where's Linus durring al of this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Where's Linus durring al of this? I mean he's vocal as all hell when the GPL3 drafts start floating around, but on this he's silent?!

Re:Stop your bitching

[Bruce Perens]

Actually, the Samba developers did say you couldn't do this in their copyright license. Novell is deliberately attempting to make a loophole in that license. It's sort of a "screw you" gesture from Novell to Samba to abuse their license that way.

Bruce

Divide your enemies

[greg_barton]

Microsoft is just now getting around to "art of war" type tactics: divide your enemies. "He will win whose army is animated by the same spirit throughout all its ranks." They're trying to divide the open source movement's spirit.

Everything up to this point has been driven by hubris on their part. Now, they're finally serious about fighting open source.

This is gonna be fun. :)

Re:They have every right.

[T-Ranger]

Hey, Bruce.

In another comment on this subject, I noted the clear parallel between this deal and the actions of Novell and Red Hat offering indemnification over potential SCO lawsuits. RH defence was/is "its not a problem, but if it is, we offer insurance" (i.e. no real legal defense, just financial), whereas Novell offered "its not a problem because we own that code anway, but if it is, we offer insurance" (i.e. both a legal defense, as well as financial backing for any failure). These offerings applied to paying customers of the respective companies. I dont recal any significant attention to these deals.

How is Novell gaining legal standing to offer its paying customers protection against MSFT today any different from Novell and RH offering insurance against SCO to their paying customers yesterday?

Clearly there are many, many, scenarios where "commercial" and "non-commercial" (paying and non-paying being better words, I question the whole Samba letter with them getting this confused) users get different rights. Lets say there is a company, NerdCo, which sells some OSS package. With a purchase of said package, the paying customer gets a coupon to, say, ORA's Safari service to read the book. Some non-paying customer comes along, downloads the software, and then goes over to Tim and demands access to the book. Tim would tell the non-paying customer to go fuck himself, politely, of course. Support call centers, same deal.

This whole problem also points out an internal inconsistency to the FSF theory of the universe. One of the long-used examples of how to eat while writing FOSS was to sell warranties against problems. The FSF thus encourages software developers to treat their paying and non-paying users diferently.

The scenario a month ago was that MSFT had patents on various technologies and could at any time, sue anyone. Novell made a deal with MSFT that possibly violates the GPL (or rather, trigers a violation of the GPL), and probabaly violates what puritans think of as the spirt of the GPL. Others, pragmatists, and almost definitly most large companies wouldnt agree with the spirt-violation (or be willing to ignore it...). Novell has only introduced another scenario where they treat their paying customers and their non-paying users diferently, something that all developers do.

Re:Pure FUD

[Tim Browse]

They do NOT have a history of aggressively suing patent infringers. In fact, they've started promising that they WILL NOT do this

They're Microsoft - they don't need to actually sue patent infringers. They just need to ask them to stop - most organisations don't want a legal fight with MS. Especially if they're just some guy writing an open source application (the example I linked to seems to be a really good case of MS behaving like a jerk for no particularly good reason).

poor opensuse...

[towsonu2003]

I wish someone could salvage opensuse from Novell's [now dirty] hands...

GPL Version 3

[Morosoph]

There's a simple way to make Novell uncompetitive: release your code under the GPL version 3. What's touch and go in version 2 is clarified in version 3.

Novell, most likely, won't be licenced to use your code. You get the additional benefit of community defence against future antisocial and free-riding behaviour.

Re:GPL Version 3

[albertost]

I dont know if I missing something here, but I guess most code from the GNU project will be released under GPLv3... if Novell wont be able to used this code, arent they already in trouble?

Re:Opposite

[shywolf9982]

I don't have any idea of what your business is, but my personal experience points right in the opposite direction.

I work for a design, communication and advertising agency, and we've used Windows for our storage systems before the society was reorganized (putting me in charge of IT).

With windows, we had load of problems:

• software RAID support sucked: we don't have the money to buy SCSI server that satisfy our storage requirements (2TB, RAID 5) and our experience with SATA hardware RAID has been unpleasant. But if you let the os do, you get a bandwidth on file transfers that is simply too low (note that people work directly on server, due to ceratin security/privacy policies we have to follow)
• Exchange has been a pain in the ass all way long. Works perfectly unless someone asks you to retrieve some mail he accidentally deleted out of the backups. A single mail? Are you sure you don't want to rollback your server configuration to the time of the install?
• Mac cannot be integrated too well
• Updates being a general pain in the ass: Windows 2003 Server tried several times to install updates for MSDE SQL Server 2000, despite the fact that was not installed on the system, and making the update process fail at every iteration.

Since we do webdeveloping aswell, we didn't had much time to lose after the servers administration: once you get them up and running, they shouldn't need to be checked every day for hours.

Windows sadly, was a whiny bitch and constantly asked for some attention.

Since I switched to Fedora Core for all the servers, none of the above problems have surfaced, except an hardware failure on our router (an old WWI Pentium box, that apparently died from exhaustion).

So my conclusion is that half of my problems with windows arise from the fact I do not know how it works in detail, and that I find it harder to find solutions for Windows issues rather than Linux issues onto the net.

This has a precise reason, but I bet you can see it clearly aswell: and from now on, refrain from generically bashing technologies you never tried to use, without giving specific details of what the matter is.

Re:Stop your bitching

[Bruce Perens]

I think the key to winning this in court would be to discover in a court proceeding the un-published agreement between Novell and Microsoft and to make a case to the judge that the agreement between the two parties and the actions that they are to take under those agreements have the same effect as a license. It seems pretty clear to me that the circumlocutions they have gone through - covenants with each other's customers rather than each other - have no intent other than to provide the effect of a license while creating a legal fiction that no license exists.

Bruce

Reply: GPL Version 3 ....

[OldHawk777]

I agree, I am not overly worried about Novell Suse and MS destroying OSS, GPL, FSF, GNU, Linux, ....

There was a GPL, a GPL-2, soon the GPL-3 will spread to cover OSS. Novel Suse wants more market share from RedHat and others, MS is trying to survive and may become a late-future OSS OSD. MS is evil, but maybe will repent their sins in the far-fetched future or fail/lose market share like IBM, GM, Novell, .... It is do or die time for many software companies including ... will they have something to offer in the future that customers want.

Eventually, 3 to 10 years, the international community, US, and UN will demand reasonable IPR laws that protect innovation, private R&D and personal use, commerce, and ownership. Today's IPR are just industrial-age theft of property, exploitation, extortion ... fraud which is protected by legacy Luddite governments (US, EU, UN ... them) controlled by the special interest plutocrats.

Long-winded but accurate objective perspective of US and politics today.

GPLv3 does not prevent deals of this type.

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone is seems to be assuming that draft GPL V3 is not vulnerable to deals of this type. It is actually more vulnerable! This is because of the following change:

In GPL V2 we have:

For example, if a patent license would not permit royalty-free redistribution of the Program by all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through you, then the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to refrain entirely from distribution of the Program.

The corresponding section from GPL V3 reads:

For example, if you accept a patent license that prohibits royalty-free conveying by those who receive copies directly or indirectly through you, then the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to refrain entirely from conveying the Program.

Note how "would not permit" has been changed to "prohibits". What the authors of GPL V3 do not seem to realize is, that a patent License does not have to prohibit anything! All "prohibiting" is done by the U.S. code. A patent license can grant some rights while failing to grant other rights. This is not "prohibiting".

The ironic thing is the GPL works the same way. The FSF has been boasting for years that the GPL is not a contract. See:
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200312142 10634851

It grants some rights and fails to grant other rights. This is explicit in the GPL:

5. You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works. These actions are prohibited by law if you do not accept this License. Therefore, by modifying or distributing the Program (or any work based on the Program), you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so, and all its terms and conditions for copying, distributing or modifying the Program or works based on it.

You see! The GPL does not prohibit anything! All prohibiting is done by title 17 of the US code. There is no reason that a patent license could not do the same thing with Title 35 of the US code!

The change from "would not permit" to "prohibit" does make sense. If "would not permit" is read as "fails to explicitly allow" then the "for example" statement is not an example! Let us look at the "for example" statement in context:

7. If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent infringement or for any other reason (not limited to patent issues), conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this License, they do not excuse you from the conditions of this License. If you cannot distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not distribute the Program at all. For example, if a patent license would not permit royalty-free redistribution of the Program by all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through you, then the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to refrain entirely from distribution of the Program.

What if you accept an agreement, which is a patent license, that does not impose any conditions or obligations on you that are inconsistent with GPL? This could happen, for example, if all the patents mentioned were invalid! Or it could happen if you were the recipient a patent license that was a unilateral grant of rights and you never agreed to anything. (Like the GPL). If "would not permit"; is read as "fails to explicitly allow" then the "for example" statement could apply even though the two sentences above it fail to apply. In short you could have an "example" that is not an example of anything!

That is why I believe that "would no

Re:Tomorrow...

[BlenderFX]

If new versions of GCC, libc, etc. get licensed under the GPLv3, that means that Novell will be allowed to use the old versions, which means no updates whatsoever. I doubt that Novell will hire programmers updating their own forks of the some of the most essential parts of GNU/Linux. So GPLv3 is a solution to the problem.