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Microsoft Getting Paid for Patents in Linux?
kripkenstein noted an Interview with Jeremy Allison where the interviewer asks 'One of the persistent rumors that's going around is that certain large IT customers have already been paying Microsoft for patent licensing to cover their use of Linux, Samba and other free software projects.' and Jeremy responds
"Yes, that's true, actually. I mean I have had people come up to me and essentially off the record admit that they had been threatened by Microsoft and had got patent cross license and had essentially taken out a license for Microsoft patents on the free software that they were using [...] But they're not telling anyone about it. They're completely doing it off the record."
So you don't have to go through 4 image-laden pages
Novell-Microsoft pact not about interoperability, says Open Source leader
By: Don Marti
LinuxWorld (US) (09 Feb 2007)
COMMENT ON THIS ARITCLE
LinuxWorld OpenSolutions Summit speaker Jeremy Allison explains some tricky details of Linux/Windows interoperability, what the Novell/Microsoft deal really does for interoperability, and a vision for a future easy-to-administer network filesystem.
Don Marti, LinuxWorld.com: You've been in the news lately for leaving Novell over the controversial Novell/Microsoft patent licensing deal.
Jeremy Allison: That's true.
LinuxWorld: Now, when I talked to you a while ago, you said, "I don't give away my software. I cooperate with people who cooperate with me. How does that relate to what's going on here, patent licensing-wise?"
Allison: Well, kind of peripherally really. Essentially, this is going back to the misnomer of "free software." A lot of people, corporations included, hear the word free, and they don't think about the second meaning of the word free. They just think, "oh, it's without cost." And, of course, it isn't. And the cost is you have to reciprocate. You have to give exactly the same terms to people you give it to that you get yourself. It's the share and share a like kind of license. So, when somebody violates that essentially by negotiating favorite terms for themselves, that they don't want to give to other people, then that I object to strenuously, up to and including leaving a company because of it. This is why some people in the free software community like to say software libre, liberated software, although that doesn't quite mean the same thing in English either. But essentially it's a word meaning the second meaning of the word free, which is freedom.
LinuxWorld: We need an extra word for free in the English language now.
Allison: I'm sure Richard Stallman will come up with one. After all, he works at MIT where Norm Chomsky works. I'm sure Chomsky can come up with something.
LinuxWorld: That sounds like a good project that maybe he can get a Google Summer of Code student to work on for him. So, you're at Google now?
Allison: I am indeed. And you know what they say about Google? It's like Fight Club. The first rule about Google is you don't talk about Google. And the second rule about Google is you don't talk about Google. Now that's kind of secretive. But fun -- a lot of fun.
LinuxWorld: It's my favorite fajita place in Mountain View.
Allison: You don't like La Fiesta instead -- man!
LinuxWorld: I like La Fiesta for the burritos, but the fajitas at Google really have something going for them.
Allison: I'm still a La Fiesta man. In case people don't know, La Fiesta is the place where the SGI engineers used to go every Wednesday night. But this was back when they occupied the Google campus. It's funny. I ran into a guy I used to work with who was a director of engineering I think at SGI. We're essentially in the same campus. And we looked at each other and said, "It's kind of like coming home, isn't it?"
LinuxWorld: SGI put some of their internal man pages on the Internet in I think it was 1997.
Allison: Did they?
LinuxWorld: And one of the internal commands at SGI was the burrito command. Allison: Oh, I vaguely remember that -- yes, yes. You could specify your burrito.
LinuxWorld: You'd type in burrito, and depending on either the command line options you supplied or the contents of your ".burritorc" file, it would generate the appropriate burrito order and send it out with the fax server.
Allison: I do remember that, actually. I never used it. But then again I tend to like eating at home rather than eating on campus. It's nice to see the family occasionally.
LinuxWorld: Now the reason that you left Novell has to do with Microsoft and Novell setting up a deal to in effect pay Microsoft a patent royalty on copies of Linux sold.
Allison: That's right. I mean
You have no ambition, do you?
There are over 36 million lines of COBOL code in the world, and they are all raping children.