The moderators value my opinion highly because they know me for a long time - some of them 10 years - and they have enough experience with me and with what plays out after I tell them something to understand that I'm usually on target. I don't believe you can expect the same sort of reception when you identify yourself as "SunFan". People would think you're a PR flack - it could well be true.
I don't want to cherry-pick the Solaris software. That might have been useful 5 years ago, but no longer. But I am very concerned about those patents, and the way the patent grant - valid only for Solaris developers - is positioned as a legal threat to the Linux developers, but promoted as if it's a bigger deal than the IBM grant that was valid for more than 50 different licenses including the one used on Linux.
That sort of deceptive publicity needs to be countered. And that doesn't reflect poorly on the maturity of the debate.
When someone threatens you, and tells the rest of the world that they are committing a philanthropic act, it is not FUD to set the story straight. Sun's "grant to the Open Source programmers" is written to threaten the Linux programmers, and indeed anyone who isn't working on Solaris. And yet they promote it as deserving greater recognition than IBM's grant, which was for all Open Source licenses that existed when IBM made the grant.
Sun's conduct is deceptive, and setting the deception straight is hardly FUD.
My arguments are not premature. There is an implicit patent threat written in the terms of the so-called grant, coupled with publicity that is intended to make the grant look like a great philanthropic act toward the very Open Source developers who are threatened. What other method do we have to counter deceptive publicity than what I am doing?
The way one argues for abolishment of a bad law is to cite concrete examples of abuse of the law when they are at hand.
This is not like the social welfare argument you raise. In that case, some poor people just want to live. It's more similar to having a thug on your street who walks around waving his gun at you, and promotes himself as doing a public service. He bought the gun legally, and has a proper permit. But he's no policeman, and his gun-waving clearly is a threat. Should you tell your neighbors to deplore the thug and that his publicity is a lie, and point out his bad example to others, including the legislature? It would be a good idea.
Yes, but what we should care about is wether the consumer benefits, not its impact on Linux or any other OS.
Your sentiment would be correct if this were an open market and a level playing field for all competitors. When software patents are brought into the picture, they are first used to intimidate the customer away from what otherwise might be a technically superior product, and then later on actual lawsuits can be brought to remove that competitor from the market. When a product and competitor are removed for non-technical reasons, quality in general declines due to the decreased need for the remaining products to compete. Prices increase for the same reason. And the consumer loses.
This is in exhibit A to the MPL 1.1 applied to Mozilla products, here. If you look at the MPL itself the exhibit is there at the end in template form. A Mozilla relicensing FAQ is here.
It is the unfortunate truth that the occupation of engineers today is to marry together other peoples copyrights and patents to construct a derivative work, often one intended to be sold as a product. When I learned to use a soldering iron, I did not think of myself in those terms, but they were true then, and became even more true as ICs happened and then as programmable devices came about.
We are approaching a point beyond which the art of engineering will be so seriously hindered that only very large companies will be able to approach the creation of software products. Legislative action will be necessary. But will the big companies win that legislative battle? They are winning it so far.Bruce
The only fellow who tried to establish technical superiority of Solaris that I've heard of so far was not personally up to the task.
I am sure they have some stuff that's better in Solaris, for now, and Linux has some stuff that's better. Two years from now, if Sun and its buddies do not mount a patent attack, that will not be true. Linux will have completely overtaken Solaris. And that's why I fear the attack will happen.
Bmetz: agreed, but be sure not to confuse the IBM patent license from the Eclipse copyright license. This is essentially a patent matter, as we could care less what Sun does with their code if they don't want to be good sharing partners, but we have to care about their patents.
It seems you don't understand the issues. The CDDL is a copyright license. We can live with other people having any copyright license they want for their own software. We simply won't touch that software if the license is unacceptable, and we will make sure everybody knows if the license is unacceptable.
In contrast, patents can be used to prevent us from making our own software. And at $3 Million per defense (per the 2003 economic survey of the American Intellectual Property Law Association), we can not even afford to fight a patent that should not have been granted in the first place.
In other words, your friends are holding a gun to our heads and you want us to appreciate them.
The mozilla license has a paragraph that says: you can convert this license to the GPL and mix it with GPL software legally. Sun deleted that paragraph, and made sure that its patent grant wouldn't cover GPL software.
In contrast, when IBM, Eclipse founder, made its own patent grant, it covered GPL software and software under all OSI accepted licenses at that time.
There appears to be a certain difference in intent.
Well, sm00th, I'll explain why this might matter to you. If you are satisfied with the Sun or MS product, it might not matter. But the fastest developing OS technology today, the one most likely to bring you future improvements, is not the one from Sun or MS, it's Linux and the vast collection of Open Source that rides on top of it. Now, we are seeing the first shots in a battle to hinder those Open Source folks, and bring fewer benefits to you the customer. And the war is not fought with technical superiority on a level playing field. It's fought with the FUD of patent lawsuit threats and then, probably, real lawsuits. That's not how the best product wins. And when the best product doesn't win, you're numbered among the losers.
Everything we've heard about Sun's strategy so far seems to be geared to act as a "spoiler" rather than a partner in the Open Source community. The most egregious part is the implicit threat: we've got 1600 patents held over your head, Linux users, and we've got an agreement with Microsoft about them...
I have discussed this twice so far with one of the PR people listed on the press release regarding the 1600 patents. Never has there been a mention of "bugs" in the license.
And the story keeps getting worse: They can sue Linux developers over those patents. They can sue their own Open Source partners. Now we hear it's part of a new IP licensing arrangement with Microsoft.
I am having very much trouble getting a warm fuzzy feeling of trust like the one I would want to have about a company before contributing to their software.
So even if IBM's grant did apply to Sun's license and code, Sun wouldn't be protected from a patent counterattack if they sued a GPLed project.
They probably have a patent cross-license, so this might be moot. Early in its history Sun had to settle a patent suit brought by IBM, for something like $21 Million, which might not sound like much for Sun now but it hurt a lot then. The settlement probably came with a cross-license.
I suspect that the major force in the way of a fork will be the fact that not all of the system is Open Sourced. Some critical pieces will remain proprietary. This will include some device drivers, some filesystems, and I suppose enough of the kernel core to keep the project from being useful in a fork.
Tee hee. Two can play at that game. I am a BSD user since 1981. When PC BSD came out, USL vs. BSDI wasn't the main thing holding people back. It was the fact that BSD didn't have an IDE disk driver.
MS got early control of the market because they won a sweetheart deal with IBM.
So you would disagee with Linux User awarding OpenOffice the award for best OpenSource program and disagree with Jon Hall for presenting them with the award.
The proper link is here. Slashcode always embeds a space if you paste in a long link without using the proper HTML.
The award was part of "Networking Industry Awards 2003", was for "best software" and did not represent that it was a judgement about the community involvement in the project. Maddog was there to get his own award. Organizations who give awards are usually in it to get publicity for themselves. Thus, don't read too much into them.
The list of OpenOffice project leads is here. Although some of the leads don't work for Sun, very few of them seem to be volunteers. The collab.net folks are Sun contractors, etc. It's difficult to judge who is behind an @openoffice.org address, and there are a lot of those.
[The GNU project's] goal was a return to that community spirit.
I agree. And I see this Sun move as less than entirely community-spirited.
It's not clear to me when the BSD license originated. When I was running Berkeley Unix in 1981, I think just before 4BSD came out, they required that you show them your ATT Unix license before they would send a tape.
The rationale behind the BSD license was that since the taxpayer had already paid for the work, he should have maximal usage of that work. In contrast, most modern Open Source work is not federally funded. I am happy to use the BSD license on my own work when someone pays me to do so. If I'm the one paying, GPL is justified.
Don't be silly. In contrast to BSD licensing, proprietary software manufacturers had no intention of reciprocating and providing Stallman with access to their code. Their existing licenses at the time did not admit that possibility, and still do not. Stallman could not make a larger work with compatible licensing, he could only offer his work for someone else to parasitize, without any return to Stallman or the community. And I don't see any reason why he should have done that.
The FSF was there first. It's the job of those who come later to be compatible with what already exists. But you are wrong about not being able to combine GPL and BSD works. GPL software and BSD software can be integrated together. The licenses are compatible with each other and the resulting larger work will be under the GPL. CDDL and GPL work can't be integrated that way. Their terms are not compatible.
I agree, their participation so far appears to be cynical and they seem to intend to operate as a "spoiler", fragmenting the Open Source community rather than supporting it. Otherwise, we would see them dual-licensing with CDDL and GPL, and their patents wouldn't be barred from use in Linux.
OpenOffice should be second in importance only to the Linux kernel among Open Source developers. And yet it has almost no developer community - IMO due to Sun's conduct. It's not clear that Sun has learned anything from that.
I think the current IBM grant does not include the Sun license, but it does include MPL-derived licenses that are very similar in their text. IBM would probably not be able to justifiably resist a call to add the CDDL.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't want to cherry-pick the Solaris software. That might have been useful 5 years ago, but no longer. But I am very concerned about those patents, and the way the patent grant - valid only for Solaris developers - is positioned as a legal threat to the Linux developers, but promoted as if it's a bigger deal than the IBM grant that was valid for more than 50 different licenses including the one used on Linux.
That sort of deceptive publicity needs to be countered. And that doesn't reflect poorly on the maturity of the debate.
Bruce
Bruce
When someone threatens you, and tells the rest of the world that they are committing a philanthropic act, it is not FUD to set the story straight. Sun's "grant to the Open Source programmers" is written to threaten the Linux programmers, and indeed anyone who isn't working on Solaris. And yet they promote it as deserving greater recognition than IBM's grant, which was for all Open Source licenses that existed when IBM made the grant.
Sun's conduct is deceptive, and setting the deception straight is hardly FUD.
Bruce
My arguments are not premature. There is an implicit patent threat written in the terms of the so-called grant, coupled with publicity that is intended to make the grant look like a great philanthropic act toward the very Open Source developers who are threatened. What other method do we have to counter deceptive publicity than what I am doing?
The way one argues for abolishment of a bad law is to cite concrete examples of abuse of the law when they are at hand.
This is not like the social welfare argument you raise. In that case, some poor people just want to live. It's more similar to having a thug on your street who walks around waving his gun at you, and promotes himself as doing a public service. He bought the gun legally, and has a proper permit. But he's no policeman, and his gun-waving clearly is a threat. Should you tell your neighbors to deplore the thug and that his publicity is a lie, and point out his bad example to others, including the legislature? It would be a good idea.
Bruce
Your sentiment would be correct if this were an open market and a level playing field for all competitors. When software patents are brought into the picture, they are first used to intimidate the customer away from what otherwise might be a technically superior product, and then later on actual lawsuits can be brought to remove that competitor from the market. When a product and competitor are removed for non-technical reasons, quality in general declines due to the decreased need for the remaining products to compete. Prices increase for the same reason. And the consumer loses.
Bruce
Bruce
Bruce
Bruce
We are approaching a point beyond which the art of engineering will be so seriously hindered that only very large companies will be able to approach the creation of software products. Legislative action will be necessary. But will the big companies win that legislative battle? They are winning it so far.Bruce
The only fellow who tried to establish technical superiority of Solaris that I've heard of so far was not personally up to the task.
I am sure they have some stuff that's better in Solaris, for now, and Linux has some stuff that's better. Two years from now, if Sun and its buddies do not mount a patent attack, that will not be true. Linux will have completely overtaken Solaris. And that's why I fear the attack will happen.
Bruce
Thanks
Bruce
It seems you don't understand the issues. The CDDL is a copyright license. We can live with other people having any copyright license they want for their own software. We simply won't touch that software if the license is unacceptable, and we will make sure everybody knows if the license is unacceptable.
In contrast, patents can be used to prevent us from making our own software. And at $3 Million per defense (per the 2003 economic survey of the American Intellectual Property Law Association), we can not even afford to fight a patent that should not have been granted in the first place.
In other words, your friends are holding a gun to our heads and you want us to appreciate them.
Bruce
The mozilla license has a paragraph that says: you can convert this license to the GPL and mix it with GPL software legally. Sun deleted that paragraph, and made sure that its patent grant wouldn't cover GPL software.
In contrast, when IBM, Eclipse founder, made its own patent grant, it covered GPL software and software under all OSI accepted licenses at that time.
There appears to be a certain difference in intent.
Bruce
Bruce
You can't be serious.
Everything we've heard about Sun's strategy so far seems to be geared to act as a "spoiler" rather than a partner in the Open Source community. The most egregious part is the implicit threat: we've got 1600 patents held over your head, Linux users, and we've got an agreement with Microsoft about them...
I care a whole lot.
Bruce
And the story keeps getting worse: They can sue Linux developers over those patents. They can sue their own Open Source partners. Now we hear it's part of a new IP licensing arrangement with Microsoft.
I am having very much trouble getting a warm fuzzy feeling of trust like the one I would want to have about a company before contributing to their software.
Bruce
They probably have a patent cross-license, so this might be moot. Early in its history Sun had to settle a patent suit brought by IBM, for something like $21 Million, which might not sound like much for Sun now but it hurt a lot then. The settlement probably came with a cross-license.
Bruce
Bruce
Tee hee. Two can play at that game. I am a BSD user since 1981. When PC BSD came out, USL vs. BSDI wasn't the main thing holding people back. It was the fact that BSD didn't have an IDE disk driver.
MS got early control of the market because they won a sweetheart deal with IBM.
Bruce
The proper link is here. Slashcode always embeds a space if you paste in a long link without using the proper HTML.
The award was part of "Networking Industry Awards 2003", was for "best software" and did not represent that it was a judgement about the community involvement in the project. Maddog was there to get his own award. Organizations who give awards are usually in it to get publicity for themselves. Thus, don't read too much into them.
The list of OpenOffice project leads is here. Although some of the leads don't work for Sun, very few of them seem to be volunteers. The collab.net folks are Sun contractors, etc. It's difficult to judge who is behind an @openoffice.org address, and there are a lot of those.
Thanks
Bruce
I agree. And I see this Sun move as less than entirely community-spirited.
It's not clear to me when the BSD license originated. When I was running Berkeley Unix in 1981, I think just before 4BSD came out, they required that you show them your ATT Unix license before they would send a tape.
The rationale behind the BSD license was that since the taxpayer had already paid for the work, he should have maximal usage of that work. In contrast, most modern Open Source work is not federally funded. I am happy to use the BSD license on my own work when someone pays me to do so. If I'm the one paying, GPL is justified.
Bruce
Don't be silly. In contrast to BSD licensing, proprietary software manufacturers had no intention of reciprocating and providing Stallman with access to their code. Their existing licenses at the time did not admit that possibility, and still do not. Stallman could not make a larger work with compatible licensing, he could only offer his work for someone else to parasitize, without any return to Stallman or the community. And I don't see any reason why he should have done that.
Bruce
Bruce
OpenOffice should be second in importance only to the Linux kernel among Open Source developers. And yet it has almost no developer community - IMO due to Sun's conduct. It's not clear that Sun has learned anything from that.
Bruce
Bruce