Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Promises Not To Sue Moonlight 2.0 Users
darthcamaro writes "Moonlight 2.0, Novell's open source implementation of the Microsoft media framework, is now available and comes with a new patent promise from Microsoft. Any Linux user can use it now without worrying about being sued: '"A really important change in how the community and individuals will see and use Moonlight is a change and extension to the patent covenant that Microsoft provides to Novell and its end users," Brian Goldfarb, director of Web and user experience platforms at Microsoft, told InternetNews.com. "We're now increasing the reach of the agreement — Microsoft's commitment not to sue Novell or Novell's customers now extends to redistributors."'"
Estoppel?
#!/bin/csh cat $0
Please use our format, even if we didn't sell you anything to view it, we promise we won't sue!
Now that's marketing in action.
"Moonlight 2.0, that's Novell's open source implementation of the Microsoft media framework in now available and with comes a new patent promise from Microsoft."
I, in turn, promise not throw a chair at Steve Ballmer's head.
Just how effective is it to hear "use our stuff - we won't sue!" as the marketing message?
Guess it's time to try a little test...
I promise not to sue anyone who buys my iphone apps.
There. We'll see how that works out for me.
*ducks under the desk for cover from the coming flames*
No. Moonlight does not currently support DRM.
Without the DRM pack it is totally worthless. Plus it is far behind silverlight.
IT'S A TRAP!
I'm not the slightest bit interested. The only time I've ever used Silverlight is when I've watched SkyTV online in the UK as a media thingy for your browser. It doesn't interest me elsewhere (and I doubt whether that alone will sustain it long-term), as any kind of 'new' development platform (ActiveX 2.0?) and I'm certainly not interested in using it on non-Windows platforms because said media stuff doesn't work regardless. Just stop trying to legitimise Silverlight on other platforms because you aren't gaining any traction and stop using it to legitimise all of your patent bullshit. Anyone who works under that kind if duress, from a competitor no less, is stir-fry crazy.
Estoppel. Seriously. It would really help the tone of this endlessly recurring argument if people would just look this one up.
Rgasuya aata! : I have been coding Perl and cannot tell where my fingers are now!
The problem is not being sued.
The problem is that we don't necessarily want this MS-driven environment to become popular among devs.
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
The summary specifically says Linux and the article linked to doesn't expand that statement. What about running it on *BSD, Haiku, Minix, RTEMS, etc.? Reading a quote in the article carefully says "redistributors". What is a redistributor? A Novell reseller?
As a result of today's expansion of that deal, Moonlight users will enjoy protection under the patent covenant regardless of whether they're using Novell's (NASDAQ: NOVL) Linux distro or another distributor's.
"A really important change in how the community and individuals will see and use Moonlight is a change and extension to the patent covenant that Microsoft provides to Novell and its end users," Brian Goldfarb, director of Web and user experience platforms at Microsoft, told InternetNews.com. "We're now increasing the reach of the agreement -- Microsoft's commitment not to sue Novell or Novell customers now extends to redistributors."
The first sentence is the author's so reflects their interpretation. The second is a Microsoft person who uses the phrase "not to sue Novell or Novell customers now extends to redistributors". So who does that actually cover?
If somebody starts screaming "NO! I'M NOT GOING TO KILL YOU" what should you do? I don't know about you, but I'm running as fast as hell away from that person.
When Steve Balmer says "Fucking Eric Schmidt is a fucking pussy. I'm going to fucking bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to fucking kill Google." we are not supposed to believe this is an actual threat, but when he says "we won't sue you", we're supposed to believe he's telling the literal truth?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Like MS will really care about what a US Judge will say considering how "harshly" they where punished for using their monopoly to stifle, cripple and/or destroy competition in the USA. Even to the point of putting code in Windows to generate fake error messages, remember DR-DOS/Win 3.1?
As to MS customers, like Joe Idiot Public will even notice, much less care, what MS does to f*ck over Linux. For the most part JIP doesn't even know there is ANYTHING besides Windows. Seriously, I once read a post on another tech board claiming that OX10.x was nothing but an app running on top of Windows. I hope he was a Troll but I doubt it. As long as he can email his mistress, manage his Fantasy Football team and surf porn you will not hear a peep from them no matter what MS does.
Windows Update.
So, yeah, no much.
It is by my will alone my thoughts acquire motion; it is by the juice of the coffee bean that the thoughts acquire speed
Really, what's to prevent them from waiting until the tech is firmly embraced, then changing the deal?
Lando Calrissian?
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Perhaps Linux users would feel better if Microsoft was actually hosting the downloads, etc? Maybe pay for a token part time developer?
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
That's nice -- why don't Microsoft just release a version of Silverlight for Linux, themselves? Why depend upon some other group? Sure doesn't make me confident in Silverlight/Moonlight's future prospects for maintenance on Linux, that's for sure.
It is by my will alone my thoughts acquire motion; it is by the juice of the coffee bean that the thoughts acquire speed
And what do you think will happen if/when MS succeeds in pushing Flash out of the marketplace?
Just how much peace/love/flowers/self-restraint Microsoft's legal department will have once they no longer need to woo users away from Flash?
What happens to developers? Just in case, we fork out Novell's moonlight tree because they got bought by someone (*cough* mysql, *cough*), will the conventant apply to us? Or does it only apply to code written by Novell & redistributed by others? Does this indirectly kill the freedom to modify & redistribute? like that firefox logo thing?
Alright, I admit it, I do have an axe to grind against silverlight (and flash too, I guess). But this covenant just goes on to establish precedent in terms of patent coverage ... (yes, note my domain, I've been through this before).
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
Okay, but you'll have to wait until they come out of RIAA court.
Table-ized A.I.
Here, looked that up for you on m-w.com:
estoppel
One entry found.
Main Entry: estoppel
Pronunciation: \e-stä-pl\
Function: noun
Etymology: probably alteration of Anglo-French estopere stopping, from estoper
Date: 1531
: a legal bar to alleging or denying a fact because of one's own previous actions or words to the contrary
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
Then why make a promise in the first place, just make it free. There's a reason behind this "promise."
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
Estoppel. [...] look this one up.
It would probably help even more if you told us what it meant.
Let me Google that for you.
And what do you think will happen if/when MS succeeds in pushing Flash out of the marketplace?
If Microsoft succeeds in making Silverlight match Flash feature-for-feature, people who want to make cartoons on Newgrounds won't have to pay $700, go back to school to qualify for academic pricing, or commit copyright infringement to get a copy of Flash anymore.
Verbal contracts don't mean sh&t in modern business since they are open to "selective memory" or "contextual interpretation" of a statement.
They may be fine for getting someone to mow your lawn but for anything else, especially anything involving a MegaCorp, if its not in writing its not binding.
Hmmm....
As was (once again) pointed out on Groklaw recently, this sort of language is a restriction that is incompatible with the GPL. (GPLv2 section 6, much more explicit about patents in GPLv3 section 11.)
Far safer to avoid Microsoft patented technology than to rely on such a promise.
My alma mater's sporting event internet streams recently moved to CBS All-Access, and I've been missing out on them since All-Access uses Silverlight. I've been trying the Moonlight 2.0 betas though, and they still don't work, probably because the site is using Silverlight 3.0. And I'm sure that Moonlight 3.0 will come out just after All-Access moves to 4.0.
"Really, what's to prevent them from waiting until the tech is firmly embraced, then changing the deal?"
A broad-reaching statement that they wouldn't sue?
I'm sure someone would bring it up in court if they did sue.
This element stood out for me:
"Moonlight includes the Microsoft Media Pack, which is a set of proprietary codecs that Microsoft has licensed from their own patent holders and makes available to Moonlight users, free of charge."
Kriston
Judge them by their past actions not words. It's the same old trick we have seen again and again. If you embrace this standard, you will be extended and extinguished. I won't be surprised if there is suing down the line too, despite these promises, which no doubt only cover EXACTLY what there is now, under EXACT circumstances. They are fighting not just for their dominance but their way of doing software. It just takes my breath anyway anyone buys it to this. But these tend to be people who believe everything will be .NET/Mono and the whole thin client thing, sorry cloud thing too. Not sure how fat apps fit into the thin client view, but there you go....Maybe it will work better than it did last time with Java and thin clients, maybe BECAUSE of MS's embrace, extend, extinguish. But if it does, it will do nothing but greatly harm any platform not MS's, which harms everyone. Think IE without Firefox turning up, or Windows (Vista) without Linux netbooks turning up.
One of the main reasons I got into open source software is because I didn't like the idea that newer versions of software could cost anything.
Why invest time in learning Photoshop when this version costs $600 but the next version may cost $3,000.
Some might say, just keep using the version you already bought. What happens when you can't buy a computer that comes with an OS that your version is compatible with?
Microsoft saying, "We won't sue users of Moonlight 2.0", is saying what about 2.0.1, or 2.5, or 4.0.
There's nothing to worry about; the program is named wontsueforsure.
No the best way to do it is to not do every fucking thing over port 80. Try FTP or SFTP, the browser is not the only damn thing a computer can be used for and there are more ports than just 80.
Damn kids these days.
I am no fanboy. My machine has an NVIDIA card and tuns of closed-source games on it.
That said, I am not stupid. I know that if Silverlight ever becomes a dominant force in the realm of content delivery, MS will stab me in the back by either deliberately slowing development on the Linux version, or making it incompatible with the latest version that runs on Windows.
We should stick with Flash. It may suck, but at least it isn't controlled by a monopoly OS vendor who lacks any kind of ethics.
If RMS was never born then there would be no GNU. There would be no Linux. There would be no Apache. There would be no mainstream, payable internet at that time. There would be no netbooks. There would be no 3G modems in laptops. There would be no Android. The Intel atom would have never been created. There would be no Firefox. There would be no... well... want me to go on?
Here be signatures
This is an important question.
Microsoft has already tried selling patents that could undermine Linux to patent trolls. If they have embeded patented methods in Mono/Moonlight, they could spring the trap at any time by selling the patent or transferring it to a proxy (like SCO).
Interestingly too, the promise very specifically only covers Moonlight.
"This patent covenant only applies to Moonlight and the version of Mono that ships with Moonlight," Goldfarb said.
The failure to extend the promise to Mono would suggest Microsoft would still like to retain the option of preventing any non-Novell Linux distro from including the full Mono at some point in the future.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."