Slashdot Mirror
Novell Injects MS Lawsuit Exploit Into Open Office
F.M. Petain writes, "It looks like Microsoft's first move in the 'Linux owes us' game is to move a Pawn. A few days ago, a Novell programmer, Noel Power, submitted patches to add VBA compatibility to Open Office's spreadsheet module. This is great for people trying to convert the business desktop from closed source to open source, but is this gift really a ticking time bomb? What happens when Microsoft declares that the VBA code was stolen?" The patches may have been submitted only a few days ago, but the code must be considerably older; the article claims that nine distros in adition to SUSE already support the VBA extensions in their versions of Open Office. (Linux.com and Slashdot are both part of OSTG.)
Simple. While the logic of the situation is obvious to anyone who knows anything about computers, The Ballmer knows he only needs to convince a judge who believes that the internet is a series of tubes through which he may attach a penis pump that Micro$oft's IP has been stolen. Although, I am somewhat curious as to what the relation is between Donald D. Thompson and Jack Thompson, apart from the rather obvious meeting of the minds, as it were.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
Q4. With this agreement, will Novell include Microsoft patented code in its contributions to the open source community?
r ce.html
No. Novell will not change its development practices as a result of this agreement. It has always been our policy in all development, open source and proprietary, to stay away from code that infringes another's patents, and we will continue to develop software using these standard practices. If any of our code is found to infringe someone else's patents, we will try to find prior technology to invalidate the patents, rework the code to design around the infringement, or as a last resort remove the functionality.
Novell is committed to protecting, preserving and promoting freedom for free and open source software.
http://www.novell.com/linux/microsoft/faq_opensou
Read the article. This functionality has been available in Debian, Fedora Core, and Ubuntu already. SuSE is just finally adding it...a little behind the others. So, tell me again how this is Microsoft playing a trick...by distracting SuSE from patching so they're the last one to implement what may be an important feature to businesses?
"Since when exactly does every little action by Novell employees deserve an article at Slashdot?"
Exactly? I'd say 03:37 PM -- Thursday November 02 2006. The moment we learned Novell was about to sell its soul and add the community as desert.
[alk]
Of course, but how is it more likely to occur in this case than in any other open source project? Because Novell and MS are both involved (although only Novell directly)? I'm just not ready to take that as proof of poison.
A higher level of caution does not justify the baseless accusations present in the slashdot summary.
This module was first documented a year ago from what I can tell. See the history on this wiki page: http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/VBA
While it seems that Novell does maintain and develop the code now, I'm sure somebody familiar with the ooo-build repository can track down the original author(s).
Given Novell's recent actions I'm thinking of going back to Red Hat
m o.xls works with the OpenOffice that is included with Fedora Core 6. I just tried it on this computer. So the "evil patch" is apparently already present in Red Hat's OpenOffice.
The macro that is included as a VBA demo in the article http://www.linuxtalk.co.uk/ooo_vba/hypocycloid-de
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
As far as eDirectory, and to a lesser extent Netware goes, I would respectfully disagree. eDirectory was and still is a very very good directory product. After fighting with inActive Directory for 3 years I would tell any enterprise with a large directory that is considering migrating off eDirectory that they are nuts - stay with it until Novell gives up the last gasp.
sPh
"That was a copyright issue, not a patent issue. Weak troll."
I swear this forum gets dumber (and lazier) by the minute.
"In 1993, Microsoft released MS-DOS 6.0, which included a disk compression program called DoubleSpace. Stac executives were outraged, as Microsoft had previously been in discussions with Stac to license its compression technology, and had discussions with Stac engineers and examined Stac's code as part of the due diligence process. Stac sued Microsoft for infringement of two of its data compression patents, and won; in 1994, a California jury ruled the infringement by Microsoft was not willful, but awarded Stac $120 million in compensatory damages, coming to about $5.50 per copy of MS-DOS 6.0 that had been sold. The jury also agreed with a Microsoft counterclaim that Stac had misappropriated the Microsoft trade secret of a pre-loading feature that was included in Stacker 3.1, and simultaneously awarded Microsoft $13.6 million on the counterclaim."