Slashdot Mirror
A Closer Look At Oracle's (Legal) Linux
A reader wrote to us with Matt Asay's Infoworld piece digging into the legal background of Oracle's indemnification offerings for Linux. Turns out, things are not quite so rosy as PR would make it seem. I know, I know...suprise all around. You can read Oracle's FAQ about it, but some of the tastier bits are that the indemnification covers *just* the kernel, and that whole thing about damage limits? Read what Matt has to say:'The indemnification is not in any way limited to the amount of money a customer has paid Oracle.
Apparently, Oracle's legal department missed the memo on this one. If you read Section J of the agreement (Limitation of Liability), you'll note that while Oracle offers unlimited indemnification for consequential damages related to an infringement claim (and that only for the one package, the Linux kernel), it caps all other damages at the amount you pay to Oracle.'
Sounds reasonable to me!
What bits in the Linux kernel does Larry think violates someones patent.
davecb5620@gmail.com
I'm done with it all. If my linux is "illegal" then I might as well pirate the hell out of all software and share it with everyone I know. IP law is stupid and broken if linux is illegal.
Who cares about Oracle linux. Redhat AS is damn good, Centos is a great free copy, and Ubuntu and the others are awesome for home/tinker/easy to use... How can they come so late to the game and even get near what redhat and Debian have done?
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Your wait is over.
One of the things I liked about Linux was the fact that it did not have so many legal issues.
I'll start distributing "Vista - The Non Child Molester version". All the other Vista versions are pedobear-approved.
'Once scientists, even the dim-witted social scientists, get muzzled, the Western Civilization is finished.' - oldhack
"We take responsibility for any and all damages that could possibly happen as a result of any bug in our products. For example, you can sue us into the ground because a kernel bug ate your multi-billion dollar document or allowed an intruder in who stole trade secrets. " With love, EvilRyry Enterprise Linux Systems, Inc. Honestly, what do you expect. Any company will take pretty limited responsibility for their product, not just oracle. Even a small bug could be the death of the company. MS for example takes no responsibility for just about anything that could happen with their products.
How is it not obvious to, well, everyone that this is a bunch of nonsense? Why is open source software more likely to contain stolen code than any product from Microsoft or Oracle or any other proprietary vendor? (It is not, of course, because it is easy to find.) Like most matters of “intellectual property” the reasoning is totally inverted. We should have indemification licenses for closed source software, not open.
Why bother.
You fail the Turing test. Please refactor your source and try again.
Let me preface this by saying I have no idea what I'm talking about and this is all guesswork. Then again, this is Slashdot..anyways:
Looking back at a previous story, they mention:
Weren't most of the SCO lawsuits stating that only the Linux kernel contained their IP? Perhaps this is what Oracle had in mind when only offering to cover the kernel for purposes of indemnification.
Either way, I'm not very knowledgeable on the topic, but the linked article came off as kind of nitpicking
This is all part of M$'s plan anyways. Partner with someone and then sue the rest of the market for stolen code so that they can no longer operate, then the icing on the cake is assimilating the partner into M$ as a "friend" so that they can take their friends money. And oh, look no more competition!
tuck3r
At some point oracle should take a look at their own legal standpoint and community reputation (if Larry Ellison cares about that).l and search for centos. If you really want to have some fun, grab the centos source, and start matching the typos in the centos patches against the 'oracle developed' patches in their source.t ible-linux/ http://ultramookie.com/wayback/2006/10/29/do-it-ri ght-oracle/ and http://thebs413.blogspot.com/2006/10/oracle-lookin g-past-ellisons-rhetoric.html
Some basic facts for people to be aware of:
1. Dubious rebuild practices: They seem to be using centos as a buffer to Red Hat. See http://oss.oracle.com/linux/legal/oracle-list.htm
2. Dozens of bloggers and community members are already calling it a failure. see the following for your current opinion: http://ultramookie.com/wayback/2006/10/26/uncompa
Oracle seems to be walking a very fine line with overall compliance with the GPL. They have taken some patches from centos and removed the user attribution.
Personally, CentOS http://www.centos.org/ has already proven to be a top notch alternative to RHEL, and while there's no indemnification, it works far better than oracle linux seems to at this point, and they provide more community support than oracle seems to want to.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
> If you read Section J of the agreement (Limitation of Liability), you'll note that while Oracle offers unlimited indemnification for consequential damages related to an infringement claim (and that only for the one package, the Linux kernel), it caps all other damages at the amount you pay to Oracle.
Then I have exactly the amount of indemnification I need.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
There's really not a fine line. If they're actually removing author attributions, they are in full-blown violation of the license. It may be overlooked by some, but if they did it on purpose and continue to do it, Eben Moglen, RMS, and those authors themselves certainly won't overlook it for long.
...that use both sides of the "just the kernel" argument to serve the purposes. This one bitches that indemnification "only covers the kernel" but whenever there are security or other negatives behind the typical Linux distro, fanbois always proclaim "Linux is just the kernel." You can't have it both ways!
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
From an IP perspective, seems that they do. And it also seems pretty extensive. From here: Apparently this is nothing new in the arena. Companies use shady patent laws to create 'protection' rackets providing insurance. I guess this is to protect from patent trolls by pooling a lot of patents in one lot. Most companies cross-license patents instead of litigation making an even bigger pool(see IBM). Ironic considering what patents were designed to do, don't you think?
"You're everywhere. You're omnivorous."
Last Week I was trying to install a mod into Oracle's 10g web server.
running apxs was hope less. The version of perl that Oracle shipped
included libraries that did not exist. How good is it that "use strict"
would not load, And after switching that perl , oracles apxs wanted
to load *.o files that Oracle did not ship. In effect Oracle's version
of Apache will only work with software shipped by Oracle. And
the perl software and libraries shipped by Oracle are useless.
I have to ask my self why Oracle shipped them in the first place.
When they do that to a Linux distro I expect a computer that can only
run Oracle software. How useless will that be?
Open source indemnification is FUD that was started by SCO.
As an individual, you will not be sued for using Linux.
If you are a mega company, and you resell Linux, perhaps someone will lodge a "trivial patent" lawsuit or other lawsuit at you.
But that could happen with other software that you re-license. And that's what the lawyers are for. And hopefully patent laws get fixed someday.
You are confused.
This is GPL code, not BSD code.
They can remove ANYTHNG THEY DAMN WELL PLEASE because that is what the GPL license allows for. Their only requirement is that they release the source of their derivative work to anyone who recieves the binary version of same. If the source is available such that you can whine about something like this than they are in compliance with the license that the code is actually released under.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Read the GPL. You can change anything, you just can't touch attribution.
That's why the BSD license is compatible with the GPL.
"Free as in speech" doesn't mean you are not obligated to give credit where it is due.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
Nonsense. It allows unlimited modification of the code, but it also REQUIRES inclusion of a copyright notice by the author--so no, they can't just remove those attributions and remain in compliance.
No relation to Happy Monkey
They can remove ANYTHNG THEY DAMN WELL PLEASE because that is what the GPL license allows for.
Any of the source. Removing any part of the license or the license grant means that this user's contribution is no longer licensed, period. Every person who contributes to a GPL'd file is making a derivative work and has joint copyright on the derivative version. They must be identified and also grant a license under the GPL. In fact, removing copyright notices is itself a criminal offense under copyright law. And if you replace it with your own you can be sued for fraud. Plus probably $750/file in statutory damages for copyright infringement (hey, if a 99c song is a work, so's a source file).
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
OSRM released a study that showed there were no high risk patent problems with the kernel. Oracle has just seemingly taken the results of that study and made some wild PR statements.
Thanks but no thanks. I'll stick with Red Hat.
Hehe. This is the only exploit in the GPL that I've found. Set up a network of programmers to continuously fork the code, like playing rugby with ownership, such that the comment lines containing all of the credits fill up so much space that it eventually breaks something, somewhere, in the system attempting to compile it. This includes the possibility that the text readable file size to hold all of the credits is too large for the filesystem on which it resides.
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
At some point oracle should take a look at their own legal standpoint and community reputation (if Larry Ellison cares about that).
He doesn't.
Dozens of bloggers and community members are already calling it a failure
He also doesn't care about what people named Mookie or BS think, either. Whether it's a failure or not will come out on Oracle's next quarterly report, or maybe a few after that; you can't rule out the possibility that this is a loss-leader aimed at expanding Oracle market share. Every dollar that isn't paid to RedHat could be used to get a Oracle product instead.
Here's what I got out of your links, which were quite helpful with facts but slightly fuzzy with their conclusions from where I sit:
1) Oracle's Linux is at the moment a slightly broken copy of CentOS, and shouldn't be bothered with yet. I don't think this really matters. The people Oracle wants to sell this product to aren't the kind to install the first release, anyway; my guess is that what the bloggers are being used for is product beta testing, which they seem happy to help out the company with.
2) RedHat couldn't deliver a product this cheap on their scale of operations. So what? That doesn't answer whether or not Oracle can leech their work, re-skin it (either directly or indirectly), and then sell it at that price with the economy of scale their enormous operation has. You can bet that Oracle execs are world-class experts on how to manage a tech support operation in a way that keeps costs under control, lessons RedHat certainly didn't have a mature view of yet during the time period discussed by your second link.
This whole thing is just posturing right now; I'm going to wait until at least the second major revision from them before making premature judgements.
When I saw that, (legal), i was like, first of all it's suggesting that other linux is illegal, plus of course it's legal because Oracle has money. It doesn't matter what you do, whether it's legal or not depends on whether you can back it up with lawyers or weapons. What a nice world we live in.
So, does this mean I can download the latest version of Maya and not have to worry about corporate lawyers? Sweeet....
Here is a site pnac.info that goes through the neocon thinktank PNAC, that has analysed what they said long before 9-11 or the iraq war, where these plans came from, etc. I mean, they have it all laid out, and you can get the original docs and read them. Basically, they are profit driven and israel-firsters, it's a dual allegiance. Smash the middle east, regime change nationa after nation, transfer the assets to some large multinationals and make sure that "greater zion" is free to expand in this century. In essence, empire builders with their own agenda. Thugs in other words, just very, very powerful thugs with a hefty dose of group megalomania.
oil, fresh water (check a map with iraq, most fresh water in the arid middle east), central location of military bases for outward expansion in all directions, and fight the israeli battles at every opportunity.
The copyright notice is the inclusion of the GPL license itself.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
How could Oracle, or any responsible company, indemnify anything BUT the core engine of an OSS project? The rest of it is an agglomeration of smaller inputs from enthusiast programmers, most of whom are untraceable anyway. If one uses FireFoxm as an example, the 'community' is the product's worst enemy to begin with.
You are the one confused in this matter.
Read the damn license that I've been writing code under for ten years. I'll tell you this: if you remove my attribution from any of my GPLed code, expect a summons.
I've allowed a couple of project maintainers, with my permission, to place my code under the project's ownership and copyright with just a notice of thanks to me. That was my choice, and it was determined by the project maintainer and myself to be better for the projects involved. I do not give anyone free reign to steal credit for my work. Neither does anyone else using the GPL.
The very idea that a license that grants rights on top of a copyright could even remain in effect by invalidating said copyright is absurd.
GPLed software is not in the Public Domain. A GPLed work is a copyrighted work which the authors have decided to share with the other people in the world who are willing to share their changes to it. The Public Domain consists of works on which the copyright period has ended or which are specifically placed into the Public Domain by their authors.
According to U.S. law and international treaties to which the U.S. is a party, copyright applies to all published works almost anywhere in the world unless copyright is specifically disclaimed by the author. In fact, works completed and fixed in a tangible form are covered without publication in the U.S. Copyright does not require registration to exist, but you do have to register before bringing a n action in a U.S. court for infringement. Yes, there are exceptions. The U.S. for example does not enforce copyright on works published in certain other countries which themselves are not party to international copyright treaties. Before I get jumped all over for being Ameri-centric by noting U.S. laws, please notice that the company in question is a U.S. company operating in the U.S., so it is U.S. law that has jurisdiction.
I'm not a lawyer. If you want or need specific legal advice, contact a lawyer. The above paragraph is paraphrased from the website of the U.S. Copyright Office. Go to the The Copyright Office website yourself if you want to know more. Again, consult an attorney with specific knowledge of copyright issues if you want legal advice pertaining to a copyright case.