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Why the Novell / MS Deal Is Very Bad
jamienk writes "PJ from Groklaw has taken the time to really explain the big picture of the Novell/MS deal and how it all fits into the SCO case and the strategy some have employed to attack Free Software. If you thought PJ was becoming too shrill before, or if you haven't understood what the big deal is with Novell's agreement, it's really worth a read." From the article: "This is Groklaw's 2,838th article. We now have 10,545 members, who have worked very hard to disprove SCO's scurrilous claims, and we did. We succeeded, beyond my hopes when we started. But here's the sad part. As victory is in sight, Novell signs a patent agreement with Microsoft..."
Better explanation here: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2068769,00.as p
Novell also retained the unusual right to require SCO to follow its directions to amend, supplement, modify or waive these licenses and, if SCO does not comply, Novell can do so on SCO's behalf.
Ubuntu isn't made soley by volunteers, although volunteers play a big role in it. A lot of companies pay people to work on linux, and they do it because it fits into their business plan.
MS is probably never going to come after you for license money. But they might go after big companies that support linux -- IBM, RedHat, etc. And they might scare large enterprise customers away from linux.
If these things happen, your free ubuntu starts to wither and die. All of a sudden there aren't the hardware drivers you need, the fancy new desktop software, etc.
Linux is an ecosystem, and all of the parts need to be healthy in order for it to continue. While this situation doesn't threaten you personally, it does effect other vital members of our ecosystem, and if they go down, we're all going to be a lot worse off over the long run,
Nah, this deal affects all of us. It basically says Microsoft is going to start suing users of Linux (except Novell's customers). Not that they are, but it makes people who care about this stuff nervous. As for Ubuntu, well, they could be in for some new and different pain soon. They're putting proprietary video card drivers into the default install of the distro. That's clearly illegal. Kernel developers could sue them. Not that they will either, cause they're pussies. You shouldn't want to run that stuff anyways. If you wanna run proprietary software, go run Windows, or buy a Mac.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Well, for one thing, Novell owns a company (now a division) called Ximian. The people behind Ximian are the people who originally developed GNOME. I believe that they are still active in the Gnome project. If I were you, I'd think about switching to Kubuntu.
Ok here is the deal as I see it through the eyes of a developer, sysadmin and ultimate decision maker when it comes to our linux environment. I am also the developer of quite a bit of GPL licensed code spread across the globe(not kernel). Novell and MS broke the spirit of the GPL with their little agreement, I don't care if it was legal, bottom line it is not in the community spirit. I will not ever run, recommend others run, help with others issues with any novell distributed software.
Bottom line I work for pointy haired bosses but they will not under any circumstances question what distro I run in the enterprise...novell put that in your pipe and smoke it. EV1 learned a valuable lesson and Novell should have taken note of what happens when you try to bend the rules.
Linux can't easily go to GPL3... it is expressly GPL2 without the upgrade clause. Some key developers are DEAD.. you'd have to track down an heir and get them to legally sign over the work to GPL3. Not that parts won't be rewritten, but even then somebody could always claim you "stole" their work by rewriting it under the new license... you'd have the same problems as abandonware apps do now. That's why the FSF sponsored projects require the source be signed over to them and placed on their servers... then they can relicense at will. You of course are free to maintain your own version of your work if you wish, but not the official version.
So basically anyone who purchases Novell's Open Platform Solutions is also paying a Microsoft tax, as Novell's new partner Steve Balmer noted, "because open-source Linux does not come from a company -- Linux comes from the community -- the fact that that product uses our patented intellectual property is a problem for our shareholders" and Steve expects to be paid.
No mitigation of infringement, no proof of infringement, no analysis of the patents to even verify if Microsoft actual has valid IP. Nope, but Novell does us all a favor and bypasses all that boring routine. Thanks but no thanks.
That is easy to imagine, linux would be where OS/2 is. That's how Microsoft cooperates.
I look at where linux is today and I don't think it needs anything from Microsoft.
Linux supports more devices "out of the box" than any other operating system ever has. Yes, even FreeBSD.
r face.c
The other key highlight of this talk was:
Closed source Linux kernel modules are illegal.
Closed source Linux kernel modules are unworkable.
Closed source Linux kernel modules are unethical.
So who the hell is this guy? He's Greg Kroah-Hartman. Who the hell is that? He's a kernel developer. His name appears 149 times in my kernel sources (Ubuntu patched, 2.6.15). And, perhaps more tellingly it appears at the top of the files:
drivers/pci/pci-sysfs.c and
drivers/pci/search.c
both of which contain many functions which are called from functions in this file:
NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-8776-pkg1/usr/src/nv/os-inte
What's that? It's wrapper for the closed source NVIDIA kernel module. What license is that under? The NVIDIA Software License. It's basically a proprietary EULA with a redistribution (without modification) exception for distros. It sure aint the GPL, or "as free" as the GPL (which is techically what the GPL requires for derived works).
So Greg.. why don't you sue them? You've made your position clear, fight them. If you havn't got the money, contact the FSF, assign your copyright to them, get them to fight. Given the choice between opening their source code or not being able to distribute their software at all, NVIDIA will choose to open their source code. How can I be so sure? Cause people buy their chipsets to integrate into things like set top boxes and other devices that run Linux. They need that embedded market, that's why they released the drivers in the first place. The problem is that no-one is making them choose.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Novell didn't really sell Unix to SCO. SCO became a Unix licensing agent for Novell, but technically SCO does own the title to the Unix contracts. SCO collects money on these contracts, remits 100% to Novell, and then Novell pays SCO a pittance for its duties (5%). In order to protect its interests, Novell retained the right, "at its sole discretion and direction, to require SCO to amend, supplement, modify or waive any rights under, or assign any rights to, any SVRX licensee". If SCO failed to abide by this direction, Novell retained the right "to take any such action on behalf of SCO". Novell exercized this right in June 2003, August 2003 and Feb 2004, and is now asking the court for Summary Judgment to force SCO to recognize these 2+ year old waivers. Read the motion, it goes into great detail. Hope that helps enough that you don't have to though, that's the general gist of it.
Here's the facts:
1) SCO is suing IBM because SCO believes SCO copyrighted code is in the Linux kernel.
2) Microsoft and Novell signed an indemnity agreement regarding patents.
3) There is no relation between the two. SCO isn't suing IBM over Microsoft patents, and Microsoft isn't indemnifying Novell's customers regarding SCO's copyrights. These are two seperate issues, and trying to conflate them is evidence only that your tinfoil hat is on too tight.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
SCO are trying to assert legal ownership of key IP in the Linux system, and in Linux as a whole. They're sued IBM as a way of establishing this right, and for their pains they are currently being slowly flayed by IBM in the courts.
Novell bought SUSE, one of the big commercial distros. If SCO succeed in their suit, Novell has to buy a licence from SCO or stop distributing Linux. Additionally, Novell reckon that if there is any proprietary IP in Linux, they've got a better claim to it than SCO, and they can prove it. So in the case of SCO, Novell are on our side.
At the same time, Novell have entered into a deal with Microsoft. Most of it seems to be smoke and mirrors, but what it appears to boil down to is that in return for Novell paying a royalty to MS, MS will help their competitive position with respect to the other distros by threatening to sue rival distributors, developers... almost anybody really. Even SUSE users aren't safe, since MS can cancel the agreement with anyone, any time and for any reason. So it's pretty much a promise not to sue unless they really feel like it. Reassuring, huh? Novell also agreed not to use their patent arsenal to defend Linux against MS, and in return, they get a big pot of cash.
In this case, it's rather harder to approve of Novell's actions. The deal may not have any legal implications for linux users anywhere, but the patent agreement is going back on a promise they made earlier to the Linux community. On top of that, it's just not a friendly act towards the rest of the community. Other objections have been raised, such attempting to circumvent the PLL, but I can't see how that works, and neither can Mogen Eblen, so I think the whole thing's a combination marketing-and-barratry-deal.
There are some reservations still as to what else may have been agreed upon. A lot of people are concerned that Novell may try and inject code that clearly violate MS patents into one or more open source packages. Mono and the new OpenOffice fork are particularly worrying in that regard.
So to sum up:
Bad Guys:Microsoft, SCO.
Self-Serving Opportunists:Novell
Good Guys:Linux devs, distributors other than Novell and SCO, users
Caught In The Crossfire:SUSE devs
Hope that helps. Have a nice day.
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
WTF are you talking about? I just looked at the Linux kernel license, and it's GPL. The GPL covers the kernel source itself, not third-party kernel modules. This means, that if you were to write a driver for Linux that is not included in the kernel source, your driver would not be part of the kernel, but would be your own work that you could put under the helm of an arbitrary license. This is exactly what NVIDIA is doing.
NVIDIA just wants to protect its right to conceal its chip architecture from its competitors. After all, NVIDIA DOES provide drivers for Linux, Solaris and FreeBSD. And if they were to pull them, users could still migrate to different hardware.
(And besides, which 3D accelerated graphics adapter would you suggest that has a GPL-ed driver?)
A broader base of drivers that can (and will) be shipped with GNU/Linux distributions only helps to enlarge the user base.
Nobody wants to use Windows. Me neither. But I definitely wouldn't run Linux if I couldn't make use of my hardware. So, NVIDIA's driver is the ONLY reason I'm using Linux. I have an NVIDIA card. I have no interest in using Linux with the non-3D open-source NVIDIA driver that comes with X.org (that'd be like using standard VGA in the year 2006). And I'm sure many people feel this way about the issue.
Read the Halloween Memos. They do, in fact, expend effort to crush what they see as their only real competition: http://www.catb.org/~esr/halloween/