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OpenSUSE Opens Up to Questions About the Microsoft Deal
NewsForge is reporting on the recent IRC meeting that the OpenSUSE team held to answer a few questions about the controversial deal between Novell and Microsoft. The most prominent questions are highlighted and the complete IRC log is available from the article while the questions that didn't make the discussion will be posted on the OpenSUSE wiki.
Microsoft asked Novell to "put together a patent agreement" so Novell could market that protection to their customers
Does Novell often pay millions of dollars for "protection" for its customers when it does not believe that the threat has any substance?
Microsoft is the one making the threats.
Novell is paying Microsoft to NOT follow through on threats that Microsoft has yet to substantiate.
Not to mention the patent battle that could erupt should Microsoft ever file a patent claim against anyone using Linux.
WTF?
Thanks to some opensource proponent (was it the FSF?), MS knows where to look to find infringing code in the kernel! Someone did an analysis (to prevent software patents, which was not going to work in the U.S.) to convince every linux user that patents were bad by demonstrating how the linux kernel potentially infringed on 200+ patents. You're going to say "potential," but NO opensource developer will have the $ to defend themselves against MS. I predict MS is going to start suing like a motherfucker and linux is going to go away.
I was able to attend the meeting this morning and feel the text of this slashdot story is a little misleading.
People who are unable to attend can post their questions in the wiki before the meeting (the wiki link in the article). The questions in the wiki were reviewed during the meeting, and many were addressed. Some, however, were not specifically addressed as they were answered during the live Q&A earlier in the meeting. Therefore, all of the questions (live and on the wiki) were addressed in one way or another.
That being said, I think it was great to hear from Nat directly.
-m
http://www.invisik.com
This think reads like it was scripted by the PR department.
Also, I notice that they had things rigged so that they could censor any questions they didn't like. (Reasonable, an open forum would have been a mad house, but not exactly a process that builds trust.)
They also didn't say anything about which of their customers could redistribute what. The short answer appears to be "We aren't interested in developers."
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
That's completely wrong. Microsoft is suggesting that Novell needs protection from being sued. Unlike robbing someone, suing someone is a perfectly valid legal process. Legally, as far as I know and barring possible monopoly abuse, there's nothing wrong with what Microsoft is doing. Ethically, morally, logically, and ideologically, it's a completely different issue.
Yes, that is correct.
Microsoft is paying hundreds of millions of dollars for SuSE support licenses. Far more than Novell is paying Microsoft.
Now, when was the last time anyone tried to buy SuSE from Microsoft? Has anyone here tried to? No?
Okay, when was the last time anyone called Microsoft's tech support about a SuSE issue? Has anyone here tried that? No?
Well, it seems that Microsoft paid a LOT of money for licenses that it will probably never use and didn't seem to need in the past. You might want to look up the history of the SCO lawsuit and see how Microsoft also paid for SCO licenses that Microsoft will probably never use and didn't seem to need prior to that.
So, it looks like Microsoft paid for Novell's signature on that "patent agreement". Novell couldn't say "no" to that big of an instant payoff.
Now, go back and read about Microsoft's other "partners" and how Microsoft treated them. There isn't any reason to believe that Microsoft is suddenly going to play nice and fair with Linux (or Novell). Microsoft's who business model is based upon their monopolistic control of the desktop.
Eben Moglen read our agreement and hasn't said a thing about GPLv2 violation. It's abundantly clear that he doesn't think there is any.
Instead, he and Richard are using the community energy to try to get people to adopt the previously-controversial GPLv3 (which we support also)
Hey, this is actually a cool way to get GPLv3 accepted. Reading over the log, and seeing their responses, I feel a bit better about the deal. I'm still suspicious but I'm no longer at the point where I am ready to remove openSuSE from my system and install debian.
I really hope this works out, Novell has done a lot of great things in the past and I would like to see them continue their good work.
Do me a favor. Take your anger here for a moment and help me out, if you haven't done so yet. But no F-words there, please, it would detract from the document. Even if Novell tosses it off, it's point is already made to a lot of Novell users and VARs and investors and the press. They've been calling me.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Code which practices an algorithm or other technique which is claimed in a patent owned by MS. And MS knows it, and now it's in your program. Sounds risky.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
I think you proved their point. The deal essentially says that a lawsuit can happen but novell customers or noncommercial devlopers will not be sued. it does not contrary to your well thought out rant, provide any evidence that there is any infringing code and microsoft made it clear that they understood that to be novell's position. If you listen to microsoft's fud and take it as truth thats *your* fault. Emotion is ... not logical. Novell simply went one step farther than redhat or hp did by offering protection against lawsuits by actually getting a promise from a company. A potential lawsuit would kill mircorsoft as well if you read the transcript you would have been reminded of the microsoft linspire lawsuit that went so well for them. Also note that the much hates sco case has also gone along way in setting president. And its not looking good for people trying to "discover" infringing code in linux.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
its quite simple what Microsoft is up to....you see, according to game theory, a threat is only going to change the course of someones actions if it is credible, i.e. the other person thinks you will carry it out...so, in a lot of scenarios, the default textbook example being used being a nuclear holocaust scenario, a superpower using its nukes in response to some small event is not credible....for the simple reason that the other side will nuke back and the payoffs just dont make sense...or for instance when a child threatens to jump off a building cause it didnt get ice cream for pudding...te payoffs for it are so bad, that its threat isnt credible.
So, what to do what to do in this situation where my drastic course of action is not perceived as credible, being too over the top with horrendous payoffs? Simple. I scale down the size of the threat until it becomes credible that i might do it by making it a probabilistic threat...i.e.
"If you guys are not covered by my uber shiny end user patent agreement covenant there is the possibility that i might sue you...i dont know, i might, i might not...etc etc"....
That ladies and gentleman, plain and simple is what Microsoft is trying to do...they know a threat to sue linux developers or end users is not feasible because IBM would serve their rectums up to them on a plate for breakfast (owning as many if not more patents than they do) (i.e. that threat is not credible)...so they scale down the threat by introducing the possibility that end users might get sued (maybe, maybe not who knows)....voila the threat is a credible one, and theyve made a threat which might discourage end users from using linux....
We always made sure that the contract contained a clause that we're free to use any information we received this way to implement and distribute a driver under the terms of the GPL, and that the other party knows about that and agrees to it. This implies that there either are no patent claims on that code, or that the relevant patents are licensed to every potential recipient of the code automatically.
We are not going to change that policy.
Btw, points 1-3 don't protect anyone from having potential patent issues, they can only help with copyright issues. For patents, it doesn't matter how you arrived to implementing one of those.
People keep saying this, but there are counterexamples.
In 1997 Microsoft invested $150 million in Apple. The deal also involved a promise from Microsoft to make Office available on Macintoshes, and there was a patent agreement as well. Bill Gates appeared on the big screen at MacWorld to jeers and shouts. People said Apple had done a deal with the devil and was dead. But in fact the deal gave Apple the money and the breathing room to build itself up and they are far from dead now (though not the most open company in the world, obviously).
In 2004 Sun did a deal with Microsoft, were paid $1 billion, and signed a patent agreement with MS as well. This month they announced they are GPLing Java.
So while I agree that MS is a dangerous company and you have to be careful when you do anything with them, it's simply not true that doing a deal with them is always fatal.
Novell has not provided any useful precedent or other legal ammunition that ANYONE can use in ANY court case. We didn't acknowledge that there are any MS patents infringed by Linux. So this court case you're screaming about is totally unaffected by the Novell/MS deal. Microsoft has been spreading FUD that Linux infringes MS IP for years -- nothing changed in that respect here.
Another point I want to make. Open Source Risk Management is a company that makes its money by selling insurance on Linux IP infringement. So if you're worried that Linux infringes someone's IP, you buy their products. Two years ago OSRM went off and funded a study by Dan Ravicher -- whose PubPat is in my view a great organization -- that looked at Linux to determine whether it actually violates anyone's software patents. Then in August of 2004 (a few months after Bruce Perens joined their board, I might add), OSRM published a study stating that Linux infringes 283 patents, 27 from Microsoft. You can read about it here:
http://news.com.com/Group+Linux+potentially+infri
Here is a company that sells Linux IP insurance and therefore directly benefits financially from people's fear over Linux patent FUD, so they publish these ominous statements about Linux infringing hundreds of patents! This is realy work done by real people to examine specific patents and determine whether Linux infringes them or not.
On the other hand you have Novell who make NO such statement, who directly contradict Microsoft in the press when Ballmer goes off and says things like this.
So pardon me, but I think it's worth looking at the whole picture here.