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Legal Counsel Advises Against Accepting OOXML Pledge
ozmanjusri writes "A legal analysis of Microsoft's Open Specification Promise (OSP), which was purportedly written to give developers protection from patent risk, says the promise should not be trusted. According to the Software Freedom Law Center, 'While technically an irrevocable promise, in practice the OSP is good only for today.' This is on the back of a chaotic ISO meeting to resolve outstanding specification problems. The session was described by Tim Bray as 'Complete, utter, unadulterated bulls**t. This was horrible, egregious, process abuse and ISO should hang their heads in shame for allowing it to happen.' The advice would seem to throw more doubt on OOXML's suitability as an international document standard. Microsoft responded to these assertions stating that they've already taken steps to answer these concerns"
Love the irony. And does it surprise ANYONE that lawyers are advising against trusting Microsoft's pledge?
You can't effectively revoke the GPL, once you've licensed your code using it--in any of its versions. The cat's out of the bag once you've pledged it. There is no mechanism to call it all back, once released in this way. You can fork your own code, go a different direction, but the basis of that code is GPL for better (and rarely worse).
Re-write it? Easily done in most cases. The copyright nature of the release remains for the duration of the law in effect at the time the work was copyrighted (or lefted, or whatever).
The arguments you've heard about revoking GPL don't hold water, I'm afraid.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Don't take other people's GPL modifications to your code and commercial license them! You aren't the copyright holder to that stuff. You have to pay them or otherwise get the rights from them before you can do that.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
An interesting case is this article discussing exactly that.
Eben Moglen was contacted (lawyer for FSF) and said that CPhack had that problem, and was never resolved.
The best explanation is that explicit language would be needed to be added in the GPL and other type-like liceses to hold true. As it seems, as long as there is not intertwining copyright interests, redacting the GPL seems legal. Yuck.
If I own the copyright to some code and I release it under the GPL, I do not give up my right to release it under a different license. I can't stop other people from using and distributing the code I released under the GPL, but I can make a derivative and release it under any license I choose. I think this is mostly a clearer way of stating what you meant in "basis of that code is GPL".
Another reply points out that there haven't been any court decisions about whether it can be withdrawn; the cphack case looks like a weak test of this to me, if the release wasn't agreed to by both copyright holders(are they joint holders?), then it isn't a question of the revocability of the GPL, but a question of whether the code was ever released under the GPL. I doubt any court will end up agreeing that someone can intentionally release work under something like the GPL and then later take it back, but that doesn't make the presence of GPL notice a magic provenance stick.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Microsoft, in contrast, hasn't bound itself to the GPL during the development of any existing OOXML implementation. Microsoft has also behaved in a very hostile manner, for example spreading FUD about their patents (we still don't have the list) covering our existing software. So, we don't have much reason to read their agreements in a favorable light.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Sounds a lot like the GPL...
Very true - which is why it is a stupid idea to use the GPL for a file format.
Doesn't work that way. Once you've accepted the code under a license (GPL), then it stays under the terms of that license. If you sold someone your house, and all of a sudden said "I actually didn't want to do that, give it back", do you think you'd have a snowball's chance in hell of getting it back without paying for it and negotiating with the people there as the owners? If you want to release future versions of the software under a different license, feel free to do so. But you can't retroactively relicense something.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
Funny thing is, he links to the IBM ISP saying that it is exactly the same as the OSP... However, if you follow that link and read the IBM doc, it says nothing about being able to revoke the promise for future versions of the same spec the way the OSP specifically states.
Further, he links to the SUN agreement saying that it is the same as the MS one in regards to implementations, SUN explicitly gives you the right to implement ODF 1.0 *AND ANY FUTURE VERSION* of ODF. This 100% contradicts what he says in his article (he says sun and IBM also have provisions that limit the applicability of the promise to a single version or set of versions of the specs in question). He is either willfully misrepresenting or he is ignorant.