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.

[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: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: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

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.

Re:Stop your bitching

[Bruce Perens]

The purpose of section 7 of the GPL (and the rest of the GPL, which reinforces section 7) is that we must all hang together or we will surely hang separately. It's written to prohibit any one party from making a patent deal that the rest of the community will not benefit from. Novell's deal surely, clearly, inarguably violates the spirit of that - and that's a very clear message to the people who gave Novell that license. I contend that it also violates the letter.

Thanks

Bruce

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

Re:whee

[kimvette]

(chronology and events altered slightly for creative license)

Microsoft introduced Xenix, spun it off and begat Santa Cruz Organization -- The Old SCO(tm) and it was good; an affordable x86 Unix environment.

Novell was a very proprietary company which improved their products v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y ('80s through mid '90s) so SCO a group of engineers and execs left Novell and begat Caldera. Caldera bought DR-DOS after the Windows incompatibility fiasco (deliberate sabotage by Microsoft), declared that "OSes want to be free" and opened up their DOS source for all to see. Caldera begat Free DOS, and it was good.

Novell saw their market declining due to interoperability problems introduced by Microsoft, and by utilities introduced by Microsoft which were promoted for use for bypassing Novell's per-seat restrictions. Novell examined their positions, saw that Unix had a strong future, so they bought the IP for Unix, assigned SCO as the license broker for Unix IP, and saw that it was good.

Caldera looked upon the Free DOS and their gaining a decent following, and declared that open source looked promising, so they introduced a Linux distribution that was a bit ahead of its time. They looked upon their package management and update download-equipped open-source Linux operating system and saw that it was good.

Santa Cruz Organization saw its Unix product's future shrinking, and even with their 5% comission on Unix licensing they could read the writing on the wall for their core product, so they sold the "SCO" name and Unix products and contracts to Caldera, and thought all was well. The New SCO renamed Caldera Linux to SCO OpenLinux and claimed that it was good, and all was well.

Enter the serpent who goes by the name Darl McBride; a sneaky if not clever demon who felt that he could tempt investors to take a bite from his fruit of profit. He declared that Linux Stole SCO Code and thart SCO in fact owns the IP to all Unix-like OSes. In doing this the serpent indeed deceived them and got them to take a nibble with his declaration that Linux infringed upon his Unix IP and that all Linux users must pay him $699/processor/Linux box. Linux users grumbled to the Lord.

The serpent bit AutoZone's and Daimler Chrysler's heels, took them to court, and the judge did stomp on the serpent's head, crushing it, and rendered its vemon harmless. Linux users rejoiced, singing "O where is SCO's sting?"

Serpent McBride of SCO, relentless in his evil, pursued Lord Novell and Lord IBM into court. The courts did chuckle, but granted the serpent access to the throne. McBride shouted "I will own Linux! I will own Unix! Users will bow down to me and I will be like the most high Novell!"

Linux users, seeing through the deception, grumbled to the Lord, and proclaimed "Woe unto SCO, for they are evil and their king Darl McBride shall surely perish." The Lord IBM and The Lord Novell heard their grumbling and took offense at SCOs actions. They dragged SCO back into court, presented their counterclaims, saw SCO's stock plummet, and it was good.