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Novell Goes Public with Microsoft Linux Deal
InfoWorldMike writes "On the back of defending the agreement this week, Novell did as promised and published details of its landmark November 2006 Linux partnership agreements with Microsoft. Linux advocates are expected to scour the documents for signs of how the agreement may affect Linux and whether anything in it will put Microsoft or Novell in potential violation of the upcoming version 3 of the GNU General Public license (GPL). The GPL is used in licensing many components of the Linux operating system. Open-source advocate Bruce Perens said he would be looking to see exactly what Novell was given through the deal and whether there is any requirement for the Linux vendor to defend Microsoft's patent claims. 'What I'm actually looking for is, to what extent was there a violation of faith?' he said."
Link to actual agreement
I am no lawyer (but I do read contracts from time to time, as a 'hobby'), but this is really an odd 'covenant'. The agreement appears to not state what products are actually covered by the patent covenant, in bizarre ways. For example, "Clone Products" are not covered, "Clone Products" being presumably things like Mono and OpenOffice (as they duplicate Microsoft APIs and products); yet all such products already designed at time of signing are exempt, i.e., they are covered. Yet, the following projects are not subject to the exemption: "Wine, OpenXchange, StarOffice and OpenOffice", i.e., they are not covered. So OpenOffice appears to not be covered.
Likewise Samba would presumably be a "Clone Product", and not covered as well, except by the exemption due to its existing at time of signing. Yet this might not cover additional functionality added later. It just isn't clear.
No actual products are named aside from the quote above, and even they are not stated as being covered or not (just not exempted by a particular subsection). So, reading this, I can't tell whether Novell customers are in fact covered or not, in any way. The assumption was always that the agreement did protect them from patent lawsuits. But that assumption may have been wrong.
Is the contract specifically designed to not mention any products, effectively letting it be ambiguous and perhaps of no legal use - that is, only effective for PR purposes?
Am I the only one on slashdot with such a limited vocabulary?
There, fixed that for you.
Sadly, the answer is probably no.
I for one welcome our Zealot Overlord ... oh wait, he has been that way since before I was born?
The damage is done alright, but it is Novell that has taken a hit to their credibility. Everyone already knew RMS was a bit of a zealot, for better or worse, this won't change that. It has however ruffled the feathers of quite a few in the FLOSS community, and it could very well cause Novell to lose supporters in favor of Redhat, IBM or even Canonical. Whatever criticism you have about RMS it is hard to deny that helping Microsoft spread their FUD and trying to get a competitive advantage by splitting the OSS community is far worse than anything Stallman has ever done.
Stallman has enough handlers to help keep him out of the realm of shrieking in your face. He's actually matured, and gotten better at convincing strangers that he has some real answers for their concerns.
Richard has been prophetic about this: his concerns at the Novell/Microsoft deal, and about software patents in general, were exposed as completely correct when Microsoft started its recent claims of hundreds of patent violations without naming a single patent.
"it is hard to deny that helping Microsoft spread their FUD and trying to get a competitive advantage by splitting the OSS community is far worse than anything Stallman has ever done."
Unless, of course, what he does is to split the OSS community.
You rightly called this deal FUD. It will go away with time. RMS won't, so it would be far better for us all if we could keep him just to THIS side of insanely divisive, and this deal isn't going to help that any.
The GPL is used in licensing many components of the Linux operating system.
Finally a summary that contains a very much needed and comprehensive definition of the GPL. That's something every geek's been dreaming about since Slashdot was born!
You know, companies are mostly free to make deals with other companies provided no laws are broken.
Microsoft is free to use GPL'd code, provided they follow those (GPL, LGPL) agreements.
OTOH, if **any** company doesn't follow the agreement - GET THEM!
Too many of them - http://gpl-violations.org/
Linksys being the most famous: http://lwn.net/Articles/51570/
Personally, I'd love to see Microsoft found guilty of violating the GPL/LGPL, but I know how hard they work to ensure that doesn't happen - at least a few years ago they worked really hard.
OTOH, OSS developers should also respect when a company decides they don't wish to be part of any OSS-based licensing. Personally, I avoid doing business with those companies, unless absolutely necessary and I keep the amount of business to the minimum possible.
The Free Software / Open Source "community" is and has always been split. That's its greatest strength. Some people (like RMS) are into Free Software for idealistic reasons. Other people (like Linus) are into Open Source for practical reasons. People disagree about everything on every level - from the topmost philosophical level all the way down to the implementation details of the code. There's enough room for everyone and, frankly, the discussions and flamewars are healthy.
Raj Against the Machine! http://social-butterfly.appspot.com/
...Novell and Microsoft agree to provide a combined offering consisting of SLES and a subscription for SLES support with Microsoft Windows Server, Microsoft Virtual Server and Microsoft Viridian. It looks like Microsoft has given up and just started naming their products appropriately....and that's the way the cookie crumbles.
Microsoft hereby covenants not to assert Microsoft Patents against each Non-Compensated Individual Hobbyist Developer (also referred to as "You") for Your personal creation of an originally authored work ("Original Work") and personal use of Your Original Work. This pledge is personal to You and does not apply to the use of Your Original Work by others or to the distribution of Your Original Work by You or others. A "Non-Compensated Individual Hobbyist Developer" is an individual software developer (i.e., a person and not any corporation, partnership or other legal entity), including a developer of open source software, who receives no monetary payment or any other forms of consideration that can be valued monetarily for their creation of their Original Works. The fact that You may be employed as a software developer by, and receive a salary from, a corporation, partnership or other legal entity, does not disqualify You from treatment as a "Non-Compensated Individual Hobbyist Developer" under this pledge, provided Your activities related to the creation of Your Original Work are performed during Your free time and outside the scope of Your employment. The Microsoft Patents subject to this pledge are all patents issued world-wide to the extent they are owned or controlled by Microsoft or its majority owned subsidiaries. For additional information on obtaining rights under Microsoft patents to contribute Your Original Work to an open source project, please see Microsoft's Patent Pledge for Hobbyist Contributors. WTF is that? This is meaningless drivel. The whole point of free software is freedom to work on it community. If all I do is mod code at home and use it at home it ain't open and I'm not free. This also puts a big cloud over free software use commercially, ie. when i participate in and/or lead free software projects are part of my day job...which is a big component of this. Free software is a treasure trove of problem solutions. They are effectively saying you can work on or use that software without paying M$.
I like Suse. I've used it for years. I use OpenSuse and hope it will keep itself clear of that but I'm looking for alternatives. Ubuntu has a chance but anything that puts GNOME first is crap. I don't like Mono or the rest of Miguel's M$ fan-boyism. I don't want M$ crap in my life and haven't had it there for years.
grandparent: "far worse than anything RMS has done..."
You guys are nuts. I ask you, what evil has RMS done to the Free Software community?! Starting it in the first place? Seeing into the future of the software industry and writing the GPL to protect the community (1991) or doing it again in 2006-07? Ever ask yourself *why* he does what he does? I'll give you a hint. It's to keep Free Software Free.
parent: "Unless, of course, what he does is to split the OSS community"
RMS didn't split the OSS community, the "open-sourcers" split the Free Software community. So if you've got separation anxiety, blame Torvalds, Perens, and that whacko Raymond who may write good software, but don't have the desire or the ability to protect it. Name one OSI license that will help protect Free or "open-source" software as well as the GPL against the enemies of Free Software.
If it weren't for RMS, Moglen, the FSF, and now the Software Freedom Law Center, all you "open-source" folks would be working for Microsoft or some other proprietary software developer.
Open Source is dead, because it doesn't mean anything. Even Microsoft can make open source software.
How could he have done so much excellent writing (e.g., his many manuals and a book of essays) and continue to be invited to speak all over the world if he had no ability to communicate? The basis of your entire post is nonsense. Even if you had a point, it is hardly _evil_ to sincerely express your beliefs. I'd say it's the opposite.
He's got foibles like anyone else. Your idiotic claim about him and Gates just shows you are talking out of your ass.
It's worth noting 3.4:
3.4 No Acknowledgement of Infringement. Nothing in this Agreement shall imply, or be construed as an admission or acknowledgement by a Party, that any Patents of the other Party are infringed, valid or enforceable.
Which will hopefully finally put an end to all the nonsense conspiracy theories that "Novell admitted that Linux infringes patents" etc., even though Novell have constantly re-iterated that such a claim was ridiculous. As I've said several times before, blaming Novell for Microsoft's recent claims is just completely unfounded, and in fact there's nothing new or particularly recent about it; Microsoft have always been flooding the market with falsities about Linux's infringement on their patents.
Hopefully the published results will provide the community with a general better understanding of the deal, so that at least if they disagree/hate it, they do it for real reasons (which seems to be rare).
I wrote here at the time that the point of a secret covenant was for the companies to be able to sell the same peace more than once.
PHBs need to understand they can't buy peace -- Not ever. They have to take it by choosing to be Free and Open.
Novell's contributions to the OIN need to be reassessed now because the value of the patents they contributed may have been wiped out by this agreement. How many other OIN partners have worked a deal like this or outright licensed away their patents? Is the Open Invention Network a complete sham?
Novell took money from Microsoft. Microsoft always gets something valuable in return. I continue to believe the "something of value" was a pledge for Novell programmers to leverage MS IP in their products so that when this deal expired their customers would be hooked into paying MS licensing fees for products that run in Linux. It's the only way Microsoft encouraging deployment of Linux makes sense from a Microsoft point of view.
It certainly will be easier to do with Novell offshoring most of their development. High profile evacuations in their onshore development teams show an important trend. The FOSS developers who create great work because they have both skill and a passion for the "free as in liberty" aspect of open source software have fled. Offshore they can hire coders who are interested in personal liberty from the oppressed economic conditions of their community and are less concerned with the Freedom of others who fare better than them at a minimum. It's not a formula for good code. Passion adds considerable quality to the output - perhaps quality that cannot be had any other way. A software system is not a microwave oven.
Novell desperately needed that money from Microsoft because delays in their financial reporting caused by an audit of options grants allowed their major creditor to call loans that would have seriously impacted their operation. Somebody needs to have a close look at how this squeeze play was engineered. Its timing is suspicious in the extreme. It would not surprise me if both the investigation that triggered the audits and the creditor were both suspiciously motivated. All FOSS companies need to have a close look at their exposure to being leveraged in this way.
It is my hope and belief that Novell regrets their dance with the devil and they're trying to escape his fee. We will see if they can do it. In any case it should be more clear to all that dancing with the devil is a dangerous game.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
The real damage is that the very thought this agreement will cause Stallman to pretty much COMPLETELY lose it, in the flying-blind-in-the-land-of-batshit kind of way. I can't imagine his behavior will get more reasonable anyway,
Actually, this agreement shows that Stallman's behavior is completely reasonable. It's you who is "batshit" because you still just don't get the kinds of dirty tricks companies like Microsoft are trying.
with his credibility already stretched and the tensions already rife within the community, it doesn't bode well. Open infighting amongst the FOSS community is just what we need right now......
There is no "infighting", and fairly little disagreement in the FOSS communities. Mostly, it's just laissez faire. Compare that to the kind of cut-throat competition and dirty tricks going on in the commercial world, where companies not only screw each other but also screw the customer.
Even if you look at individuals, Stallman and Linux may be abrasive, but they are far more sensible, rational, and smart individuals than Ballmer or other commercial industry leaders.
The damage is done
The only "damage" from this is to Microsoft's reputation: Ballmer has shown that he is impotent: he can't stop open source. He can't name any patents, and he can't even get Novell to license their patents without paying Novell hundreds of millions of dollars. And their attempts at getting agreements through FUD are being undermined by license changes within a few months.
The last few months have shown only one thing: Microsoft's technology is worse than open source, their patents are worthless, and their dirty tricks aren't working either. Yes, there's big damage, and it's to Microsoft's reputation.
In the new dawn emerging from the FOSS revolution we are finally getting what we really need to move technology forward: light. These back room deals for contingent permission to use intangible ideas and leverage market share will not stand the light of day. All deals are eventually exposed. This leads to some business ethics lessons that should have been the standard all along:
Now let us set out to innovate good products and sell them on their merits, m'k?
Help stamp out iliturcy.
If the goal is the best software, then the GPL is largely irrelevant. If the goal is the best open source (or Free) software, then the need for something like the GPL ultimately depends on whether or not the open source development model is more effective than the closed model. If it is, there isn't much of a need for preventing proprietary additions, because any temporary advantage from closed development will be negated over time, by parallel open development. If closed source is actually a more efficient development model, then something like the GPL becomes much more important. I don't know which is the case.
I'm not ideological, so I'm glad to be able to benefit from the incorporation of BSD sockets into proprietary software. If Windows 3.x/9x, SunOS, Mac OS and others hadn't been able to take advantage of BSD sockets code, it almost certainly would have prevented BSD sockets becoming a de facto standard. I don't know which networking API most of us would be using, but my guess would be something designed by Microsoft. Thanks to BSD sockets, all of these systems can interoperate well, and open source systems like Linux are actually useful as network servers, serving mostly Windows and Mac OS clients.
I don't see how it could be any other way, and it's great that everyone can try out "their thing", but sometimes having a standard is more important than its merits. For example I'm sure you can find lots of reasons why we should drive on the left or the right side of the road - but it sure as hell is easier when everyone drives on the same side of the road.
For example: No matter what program I run, I'd like the "Open file" dialog to look the same. No matter what I'm trying to print, I'd like the "Print" dialog to be the same. When I'm trying to find out why my video doesn't play, it'd be great to have one video backend. It finally looks like everything is starting to standardize on ALSA for sound. Linux is the epitome of "The great thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from!". It's getting better, but still could use a lot of work.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
If it was it would have had a much better IDE and GUI that resembles Visual Studio.
Did you know that C#, Visual BASIC.Net, etc Microsoft gave the EMCA the rights to allow the standards for those languages to be given out to open source software?
Not only is there Mono, but also DotGNU that does a version of those languages.
They are not clones, but they are trying to make the languages available for multiple platforms. They also make Dotnet available for multiple platforms, because C# and Visual BASIC.net use Dotnet as part of their standard framework.
The reasons why they aren't clones is because you cannot take Visual Studio code and compile it on Mono and DotGNU unless you modify the code and tweak it. That is because Mono and DotGNU are written from scratch and not actual ports of Visual Studio.
OpenOffice.Org is not a clone of MS-Office either. It was written from scratch. The only thing it has in common with MS-Office is the MS-Office format files it can save as and read, and possible some primitive VBA support.
Mono and DotGNU are open source "alternatives" to Visual Studio, not clones.
OpenOffice.Org is an open source "alternative" to MS-Office.
Linux is an open source "alternative" to MS-Windows.
Tux is an open source "alternative" to Mickey Mouse.
Linus Torvalds is an open source "alternative" to Bill Gates
None of them are clones of the other.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Stallman has enough handlers to help keep him out of the realm of shrieking in your face. He's actually matured, and gotten better at convincing strangers that he has some real answers for their concerns.
Yep. The problem with him dealing with people directly is that he's never had any real ability himself to hide what he is. The tremendous value inherent in the mouthpiece strategy is that said mouthpieces can be people who know how to sound infinitely more diplomatic, sane, and reasonable than Stallman himself, so he gets more supporters, (who because they don't know better, foolishly assume that Stallman himself is as sane as his representatives sound) and his genuine megalomania also stays safely hidden away from people who would otherwise have serious ethical problems with following him if they knew about it.
Stallman needs to communicate with people via third parties for exactly the same reason that Darth Vader ended up needing to wear the black suit; the outer appearance needs to be made at least vaguely palatable, because the genuine, internal reality is in fact truly monstrous.
No, the conspiracy theory going around was that Novell agreed to those claims as well even though they've continuously denied it. That this deal hasn't been good for Novell is another myth a lot of people apparently like believing, curiously enough. While in actual fact Novell's stocks have gone up, they've got quite a few more Linux engineers than before, and SLE adoption is greatly increasing. Not exactly doing badly, are they?
Well, then I suggest you stop using their software. You can start by canceling your Slashdot and Blogspot accounts and stop using Google and Firefox
Exactly my point. He ends up creating a scenario where his word, his ideology, is law. If you don't like it, your only alternative ultimately ends up becoming hardly using a computer at all. If that isn't raw authoritarianism, I'm not sure what is.
You've just proven my point, and you've done it very openly, for all to see. I either think and behave in exactly the manner that Stallman and people like yourself specify, or my right to use software at all becomes forfeit.
I thought the way ZDNet described it once was actually very insightful:- Free as in Do As I Say.
This is why Stallman is a problem, and this is why I feel as opposed to him as I do.