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Microsoft Excludes GPLv3 From Linspire Deal
rs232 writes to tell us that Microsoft is excluding any software licensed under the new GPLv3 from their recent patent protection deal with Linspire. "Microsoft has since been treating GPLv3 software as though it were radioactive. 'Microsoft isn't a party to the GPLv3 license and none of its actions are to be misinterpreted as accepting status as a contracting party of GPLv3 or assuming any legal obligations under such license,' the company said in a statement released shortly after GPLv3 was published on June 29. In addition to excluding GPLv3 software from the Linspire deal, Microsoft recently said that it wouldn't distribute any GPLv3 software under its SUSE Linux alliance with Novell, even as it maintains in public statements that the antilawsuit provisions in the license have no legal weight. "
Look, Microsoft is not an "Open Source" software company. Neither they, nor anyone else (including "Open Source" software companies), are obligated to distribute software under GPLv3. Indeed, contrary to popular beliefs, GPL is not the only real "Open Source" license.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Well, given that the GPLv3 was written specifically to make those "patent protection deals" untenable, this is a huge success for the GPLv3. Microsoft is essentially admitting that, legally, the GPLv3 does what it intends to do.
So, anyone who was bothered by the MS/Novell deal (and its variants) can and should encourage usage of GPLv3. Coders who want to prevent MS from using patent threats to splinter the community should consider adopting the GPLv3.
Since a certain number of important projects have already switched to GPLv3, this means that within a year or two the MS/Novell deal (and variants) will essentially disappear. As someone who was not happy with those deals in the first place, I say good riddance.
The loopholes were just that: sneaky ways to evade the intentions of most of the most important contributors in the realm of FOSS. I have no problem with businesses making money using FOSS, and many of them do it in a way that is not only compatible with the intentions of the GPL, but actively promotes the cause of free software. However, those businesses who were exploiting loopholes in the GPL knew that they were not promoting our interests, and therefore should not be surprised when the community shifts to close those loopholes. Such a shift will only alienate businesses who were not helping "the cause" anyways.
The GPLv3 is not perfect, and is not a perfect license. I don't think that every project should switch to GPLv3... for some the GPLv2 may be a better match. However GPLv3 was crafted to address a very real problem, and judging from Microsoft's reaction, it is doing a great job in that regard.
More importantly, GPLv3 serves as a reminder that choosing Open Source with the idea that "you'll never get left behind" is not a true position -- that all any given Open Source project really represents is the right to have the source code AS IT EXISTS NOW. In the future more restrictive licensing could be released that could impact you.
In short, GPLv3 really made "Open Source" more like "Closed Source" by clearly pointing out that what you may be allowed to do now you may not be allowed to do later (unless you fork and thus lose the community aspect that made it interesting in the first place).
After all, who's to say GPLv4 won't say "you must release any changes back to the community whether you distribute or not" ?
GPLv3 is the best possible thing that could have happened to Closed Source vendors because it just kicked the chair out from under most of the arguments in favor of Open Source.
You say that now, but wait until Microsoft gets bitten by a radioactive license and turns into SuperEULA. You won't find it so funny then.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I'm not a lawyer, yet.
In a lawsuit, it is possible to argue multiple theories of liability, or multiple theories of innocence. As long as each theory is internally consistent, they don't all have to be consistent with each other. It's the legal version of throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks... and when you're just getting started, you don't want to leave stuff out by mistake, becuase there might be a chance that if you don't bring it up at the beginning you won't be allowed to bring it up later.
The classic example is: Your buddy says, "You bastard, you slept with my wife!" If this was a lawsuit, you might respond
a. No I didn't!
b. You said that I could!
c. She wasn't your wife!
d. I thought she was someone else!
e. I was insane!
This would be OK, becuase even though (d) seems to contradict (a), that doesn't automatically mean that (a) is invalid, even though BOTH statements can't be true at the same time. These are all alternative theories of how you might avoid blame/liability for the act, and in filing or responding to lawsuits, this practice is known as alternative pleading.
In that context, Microsoft's GPLv3 statement doesn't need to be consistent- although it is unusual to see this kind of logical construct outside of a court document. The press release reads like they're anticipating a lawsuit, and they're trying to get their story straight ahead of time... In this situation, their story is plausible deniability. and it doesn't matter which alternative theory ends up working, as long as one of them does the job.
So it's perfectly legit for MS to use alternate theories to justify their actions- it just reeks of bad faith when their public position is so openly contradictory. It does seem pretty odd that Microsoft is using legal tactics to write their press releases- almost like they've got something to hide.
Humpty Dumpty was pushed.
Specifically, you are getting the cart before the horse. Company XYZ doesn't pick an arbitrary project from SourceForge and, strictly out of the goodness of their heart, task several paid programmers with working on it - with the goal of someday using it. Rather, they start using an existing product which is established (Linux, Apache, etc), and after heavy use realize that contributing to it is in their own best interest. Linux was successful BEFORE IBM invested a dime in it. Apache was successful before any corporation officially contributed a single line of code.
How exactly do you think corporations are going to "block" GPLv3 code? By the time the sofware is worth blocking, it has either gained a following or failed. If it already has a following, the only choice the corporation has is whether to jump on the bandwagon. 90% of corporations are USERS, not developers. GPLv3 makes absolutely no difference to my boss since he's not planning on redistributing any of the code. If 7Zip comes with GPLv3 rather than GPLv2, you really think he's going to skip on it and pay $40/license for WinZip?
Support microSD: in a post 9/11 world, it is unwise to carry your data on media that you cannot comfortably swallow.
*Assuming others are contributing to it. If you're the sole copyright holder for your project, you can always do whatever the hell you want. Yep thats pretty much explains why BSD is the product of choice over Linux in many of the above cases. 15 years later BSD made it into mainstream products from large manufacturers (F5, OS/X and iPhone, etc) And the companies that try Linux (Tivo, Cisco) are treated as the enemy by GPLv3. Has GPL been like GPLv3 from the get go, would Tivo or Linksys ever consider using Linux or would those be BSD products?
-Em
RelevantElephants: A Somatic WebComic...
It might be a very beautiful garden, but your code will never get out.
Not quite. You can take code out of the garden and modify it for personal/internal use, and you don't have to share those changes. You only have to put your modifications back into the garden if you redistribute them, and putting them back in the garden is the only way you are allowed to redistribute those changes.
This ensures that changes that are redistributed are available to the original authors, and the community at large. That 'walled garden' is always open, and anyone can use it.
Other licenses allow you to take code improve it, and then redistribute it in proprietary walled gardens that may restrict who can use it. Why would I want to contribute code to be used in someone elses proprietary walled garden... where one day I might be required to pay a license covering the code I wrote and contributed.
The only serious objection Linus has is over TiVo-ization. He thinks it should be OK.
... wha??
He says he is angry that FSF is claiming to protect freedom while taking away a certain freedom from companies like TiVo.
But the freedom that FSF is taking away is the freedom to take away freedom from users of the software. Thanks you Linus, great protector of
But keep in mind the politics that Linus has to deal with. There are many developers who would have to sign off on GPLv3. One of the biggies is Greg Kroah Hartmann of Novel, who owns the USB subsystem. Novel no doubt takes GPLv3 personally. Greg has actively tried to discourage even the "or any later version" clause from being included in kernel patches.
On top of that, even if everyone wanted to go GPLv3, they would have to track down hundreds of developers. So it's just easier for Linus to say no to GPLv3 in any case.
"that all any given Open Source project really represents is the right to have the source code AS IT EXISTS NOW."
What gives you any better choice?
When you buy Windows Vista, and you agree to the EULA, what exactly is it giving you the right to, except the license to run the binaries AS IT EXISTS NOW?
I "get" the purpose of GPL3. I "get" why companies like MS object to it. What I don't "get" is why this is an issue. The GPL2 is still there. BSD is still there. Apache is still there. Use those.
But implying that the GPL3 is taking something away from users is pretty silly. You know the score before you start... you get the candy for free, but you have to always share it with anybody who asks. If that's not okay, then don't use it! It doesn't limit your rights in any way.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
SuperEULA: able to transform customers into pirates with a single click!
(Ninjas of the world, beware)
The real story is how Microsoft changed its patent covenant, after the deal with Linspire was already finalized. Is Microsoft free under that deal to alter the patent covenant however they want - making it useless?
Not that the deal was useful for anything previously either. It doesn't cover 'clone products' - which perhaps includes OpenOffice and Wine, and it doesn't cover 'video game applications designed to run on a computer', nor 'unified communications', nor a long list of other things. Does it cover anything at all?
Don't they know that coreutils and tar form a good chunk of any Linux distribution? And Samba's used to talk to MS Windows?
Don't they know that those packages are GPL v3?
In other words, Microsoft ether has to rewrite those packages themselves, break the distro into an unusuable state, or drop any Linux deals.
Or give up on the patent saber rattling.
--
# Canmephians for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.net";
I agree with you that a BSD license is superior to a GPL license if you're looking to build a business around the software. So why are so many companies using GPL licensed code? Why are Microsoft and Novell trying to make money from a Linux distribution when they could have selected a BSD distribution instead?
Karma? What's that again?
Samba had been encoding/decoding network packets in a very manual way, with a collection of ugly macros to do the job. Samba-TNG was forked largly to switch over to doing RPC via IDL (an Interface Devinition Language, which gets processed at build time to produce *.c stub/wrapper functions to do the marshalling and unmarshalling).
The main Samba team learned their lesson. They switched to an IDL for Samba 4. Samba-TNG has been a very close clone of the Microsoft implementation, warts included. Samba 4 is far better.
Thus Samba-TNG has served it's purpose: teach the Samba developers that IDL is a good idea. Done. Mission accomplished.