there is no language either in the GPL v3 drafts or in RMS's comments that says that Novell can't ship code under the GPL v3.
No there isn't, and I don't believe I've said there was. That particular piece of hand-waving was ooshiny doing some creative misinterpretation of my earlier posts, but frankly it seemed too juvenile a ploy to be worth correcting.
But the responsibility for clear communication lies with the communicator, so let me restate my position. Richard Stallman has declared his intention to include language in the next GPLv3 draft that will make the new Licence incompatible with cross patent deals such as that which currently exists between Novell and Microsoft. It is highly unlikely (IMHO) that the licence text will mention Novell or Microsoft by name. However, since Stallman refers to the Novell-Microsoft deal as an exemplar of class of deals he intends to block, it seems unlikely that Novell will be able to comply with the terms of GPLv3 while continuing their deal with Microsoft.
To put it another way: Novell is not being targeted, but the same cannot be said for their deal with Microsoft. The only functional difference is that Novell have the option of being able to comply, but only by discontinuing their patent agreement. If they choose not to do so, and they've given no indication that they will, then they will not be able to distribute GPLv3 software under the terms of the licence.
Novell has been saying again and again that there is no patent infringement, so I don't see anything "unprincipled" about it.
mmm... did you read Jeremy Allison's comments in TFA? I know they've been quoted many times in this discussion, but just to make sure we're all on the same page:
In case anyone might think I gave up too easily, here is a copy of a letter I recently sent to management on this matter.
[...]
For people who will point out to me we don't "technically" violate the GPLv2 here's an argument I recently made on the mailing lists.
"Do you think that if we'd have found what we legally considered a clever way around the Microsoft EULA so we didn't have to pay for Microsoft licenses and had decided to ship, oh let's say, "Exchange Server" under this "legal hack" that Microsoft would be silent about it - or we should act aggr[i]eved when they change the EULA to stop us doing this?"
So, this strongly suggests that a dominant faction in Novell management is quite aware that the agreement contravenes the intent of the GPL, and seem to think that's ok because they have only violated the spirit of the licence but not the letter.
Their behaviour may be legal, but it is hardly ethical.
They could mend a lot of fences by discontinuing the deal before the new GPL forces their hand. Then they could claim to have reconsidered. Otherwise, it reinforces the impression of a company with nothing but contempt for the free software community; one which is cynically willing to abuse the trust of others in pursuit of a private agenda.
I'll stick with "unprincipled", thank you.
if they distribute under the GPL v3, it doesn't mean that they are "breaking" their agreement with Microsoft
No. It will mean that unless they do "break" , "cancel", "abrogate" or somehow otherwise "cease to participate in" their patent deal with MS, they will be distributing the software without a licence to do so, since the patent deal will put them in violation of the terms of GPLv3.
It's really not that complicated:
Stallman says he will make GPLv3 incompatible with deals such as the Novell-MS patent pact
Thus Novell will not be able to comply with the GPLv3 while said pact remains in force
Unless Novell comply with GPLv3, they will have no legal right to distribute GPLv3 software.
Therefore Novell must either cease distribution, or discontinue their patent
so just to be clear: Novell will not be able to ship any GPLv3 versions of anything under the terms of their deal with MS, because
Where does the GPL v3 say "you can't ship this code if you have have an agreement like the MS/Novell" agreement? In fact, it doesn't. Novell can ship the code under the GPL v3 all they like, despite having whatever agreements they have with Microsoft.
The final version of GPLv3 has yet to be drafted. Perhaps you could show me the line where it says Novell can continue to ship GPLv3 code while continuing with their patent agreement? I'd be interested, if for no other reason than it would show you at least understand the hyperlink syntax.
No, what Stallman has "promised" is that the GPL v3 will make agreements like the MS/Novell agreement ineffective.
You still haven't actually read what
he said, have you?
It turns out that perhaps it's a good thing that Microsoft did this now, because we discovered that the text we had written for GPL version 3 would not have blocked this, but it's not too late and we're going to make sure that when GPL version 3 really comes out it will block such deals.
Sounds like a clear commitment to me. Also notice that he doesn't say "make ineffective" but rather "block".
now that we have seen this possibility, we're not going to have trouble drafting the language that will block it off. We're going to say not just that if you receive the patent license, but if you have arranged any sort of patent licensing that is prejudicial among the downstream recipients, that that's not allowed.
Which bit of that sounds like "distribution will still be permitted" to you? I'm genuinely curious.
Novell will likely choose to continue to ship the software under the GPL v3 and live with the fact that their agreement with MS then doesn't mean anything.
So the minute the GPL becomes incompatible with the deal, they'll break their agreement? It doesn't reflect well on Novell, but given that their business model is somewhat dependent on distributing Free Software, it would be a rational response, if a little cynical and unprincipled.
Of course that rather assumes that Novell's legal exposure would negligible. I find that a little hard to swallow, if only because Microsoft's lawyers, at least have a reputation for competence, and I would expect some sort of provision to stop Novell backing out so trivially. Of course, since the details of the deal are NDA'd we'll never know, but it's far from a safe assumption.
Still, you seem to accept that planned changes to the GPLv3 will make it illegal for Novell to distribute GPLv3 software
while they partake in patent agreements such as the one they recently made with Microsoft. And you seem to think that Novell will break such agreements, albeit only when forced to do so by the imminent collapse of their business. Fair enough, I agree. So why do you keep yelling "FUD" every time someone else says it?
Maybe you'd like to join with us in urging Novell to repudiate the deal without further delay? Then Novell get to emerge with some shred of integrity, and we'd have nothing to argue about. A win-win scenario, except perhaps for Microsoft.
I don't know
You obviously don't know a lot of things, and your thinking is fuzzy. That's why you should shut up and stop spreading hearsay and innuendo, instead of facts and sound analysis.
You're right. There are lots of things that I don't know, and my thinking could always be clearer. Nevertheless, I'm the one linking to references to support his arguments, while you are apparently so hard up for facts that you're reduced to quoting out of context to set up cheap shots. I think that speaks for itself, really.
Management really isn't interesting in hearing "It's free, just as long as someone is interested enough in supporting it"
Now let's not conflate roadmaps and support contracts.
or "Well, it'll have whatever features that it eventually has, as long as someone is interested in developing it" or "It may work with our other systems, if we can hire enough people to do it."
And I don't think I'm happy with the assumption that an open source projects's lack of a roadmap implies huge development costs for the deploying company.
When you're trying to get the attention of the folks that will authorize enterprise-wide systems, lack of direction, either perceived or real, can be the difference between "hmmm, that sound's interesting - we should investigate this" and "No".
I think the line to take is "it already works, it's free, and support is as good or better than you'll get from Microsoft." For added value, talk about the savings competitors are/will soon be/could be making and how your company will be in danger of falling behind if you don't leverage this
exciting emergent technological trend. You know - management speak.
And if it's not ready, then wait a year or two, or look to see if there's a project that's a little more mature. Look at the server market; FOSS didn't come to dominate that through having a shiny mission statement. We did it because the Apache devs did a bloody good job.
I'll take working software over glossy vapourware any day of the week
What is lacking in the world od linux for desktops is a vision, plans and roadmaps.
Well, there's certainly no shortage of project roadmaps. There isn't a single Plan to which all FOSS developers Must Adhere, granted. I think that's a good thing.
MS chase single visions, not because it's a good idea, but because they have to. They have to put out an integrated system and wealthy as MS are, their resources are finite, and increasingly consumed in the co-ordination of development rather than development itself.
The Free Software world doesn't have this problem. We can pursue lots of ideas in parallel, and let Darwinian selection dictate which ones survive. And we do. That's one reason Linux is evolving faster than Windows.
What the Global Vision thing does give Redmond is fodder for marketing. They can talk up this incredibly glossy vaporware development (Longhorn) and by the time they get to the feeble cut-down reality, everyone seems to have forgotten that all the sound breaking stuff has been dropped along the way.
But again we, we don't need that. People use FOSS not because of the quality of our advertising, but the quality of the software.
I doubt the ECMA would approve both and allow a patent bomb.
That's not a well founded assumption.
According to the
ECMA Code of Conduct in Patent Matters
there is no requirement that any relevant that patents pertaining be opened, merely that they are made available for licence under Reasonable And Non Discriminatory (RAND) terms.
The problem here is that RAND is not further defined, meaning that a company like MS can charge a peppercorn licence fee, and still place the licences out of the reach of FOSS projects who can't pass on the overheads to their customers.
Additionally, ECMA don't seem require the patents to be actually licenced, they just require a statement of policy from the patent holder. If the patent holder later declines to issue the patent, they may be excluded from further participation in that committee, but by that stage you could still have a whole hell of a lot of deeply entrenched patent violations, so I don't take much comfort from that provision.
Oh, and if they ask the patent holder if they have any undisclosed patents, and the holder doesn't respond, the technical committee is free to vote on adoption, and therefore presumably adopt, the standard anyway.
So, as it turns out, there's absolutely nothing in the ECMA procedures prohibiting patent bombs, at least in so far as Free Software is concerned.
IANAL, Groklaw has a bunch of them who examined this in detail at the time of the Massachusetts ODF flap.
Check it out!
Never mind, let's recap the important point: Stallman has
promised to make the incorporate wording into GPLv3 that will explicitly forbid
deals such that between Novell and Microsoft.
This doesn't seem to have sunk in from last time, so just to be clear: Novell will not be able to ship any GPLv3 versions of anything under the terms of their deal with MS, because Richard Stallman has promised that the GPLv3 will forbid them from doing so.
If he does this, and I can't for the life of me see why he would not, then that would prevent SuSE from shipping any subsequent versions. The standard GPL boilerplate would still give Novell the option of distributing the last GPLv2 version, but as the GP points out, that would leave them with a fork.
Rational enough? Or do I have to go through it again using smaller words?
So, please, stop spreading FUD.
"You keep saying that word; I don' think it means what you think it means"
I don't know whether you're trolling, stupid, wilfully ignorant or just plain in denial, but please stop spreading falsehoods.
I neither know nor care what [Microsoft] were thinking this time because it frankly doesn't matter.
And once again the missing word is "because".
Unlike you, I've given plenty of reasons in previous postings.
Well, if you think there is a post elsewhere in which you express yourself particularly well, feel free to link to it. I do sometimes look up a correspondent's posts on a subject if they seem have something interesting to say, but somehow, I doubt many people will leap to that conclusion based on what I've read so far. By way of example, here is the start of what I thought was quite a productive discussion on this topic.
I do find it a bit odd that you apparently expect me to look up your other posts, but can't be bothered to do do the same thing yourself. Never mind; in the interests of moving the debate forward, let's examine these pearls of wisdom.
In the end, Microsoft ends up giving several hundred million dollars to Novell. All the taking is "virtual"--a small face saver for Microsoft that has no real significance.
No sentiment there you haven't expressed in this one, Spending hundreds of millions of dollars as a face saving exercise does not sound at all like the Microsoft I've come to know and loathe. Can you offer any support for the notion? Oh, wait, maybe it's expressed on one of your other posts.
We'll see.
Your next
offering
at least had a little substance to it:
MS won't sue anybody for patent infringement because they know it's pointless. I mean, who are they going to sue? You? Me? RedHat? Fedora? My cat?
So we're all supposed to rely on Microsoft's lack-of-imagination being equal to your own? How reassuring.
Even if they have a valid and enforceable patent, it will be worked around within a day of them filing any lawsuit.
mmmm... just because we can fix buffer overrun exploits inside 24 hours, that doesn't imply we can get the same turnaround for patent issues. The exploits are often fixable in a handful of lines. A patent violation would require changing how something was done, which would mean a redesign, followed by coding and testing until we again had stable software.
The other thing is that patent litigation is expensive; just ask RIM. It's a game that favours those with deep pockets, and who has deeper pockets than Microsoft?
Furthermore, the Microsoft/Novell deal doesn't protect Novell or its customers: if there actually were a patent infringement lawsuit, everybody would effectively have to stop using the software until the infringing code has been removed.
As Kevin Renner might have put it, "that turns out not to be the case". This is from Novell's
press release (I'll use bold face to distinguish third party quotations from your own contributions).
The two companies also announced an agreement to provide each other's customers with patent coverage for their respective products.
So, people who have bought a copy of SUSE from Novell are quite explicitly exempt from any litigation Microsoft might bring.
The point is expanded upon in their Joint letter to the Open Source Community
Novell and Microsoft are providing covenants to each other's customers, therefore releasing each company from the other's patent portfolio.
So it seems that Novell could continue to sell contested software, even while the case was bein
It's a legal agreement between Microsoft and Novell and therefore binding only on them, nobody else.
Which doesn't imply that those details are not of interest to the community. Nor does it imply that we should not take an interest. For example, the deal between MS and SCO was a private agreement between the two of them. As we learn more about that case, it seems more and more likely (I suspect few would now dispute it) that the agreement was that Microsoft would pay SCO to try misappropriate certain rights to Linux and/or destroy the GPL.
At the time we were interested, despite it being a private agreement. As it turns out, our interest seems more than warranted. There are enough similarities here that "shut up and mind your own business" just isn't going to cut it.
That analogy doesn't work here
That analogy doesn't work here because...? Do you have anything more than bluster to support that assertion?
the only thing of any consequence you can do is not buy SuSE/Novell products
I can always discuss the deal on Slashdot. If we were to go by some of the responses, then some people would appear to think this tremendously damaging to Novell. Personally, I just think open debate is always a good thing.
Microsoft does a lot of stupid things with their money.
Couple of examples, perhaps? Microsoft's position of wealth and power doesn't seem to support your case here.
I neither know nor care what they were thinking this time because it frankly doesn't matter.
And once again the missing word is "because". Why is it that you think Microsoft's motives do not matter? Not, I assume, because they're so poor and weak and helpless.
If they are not disclosing it, then it doesn't matter.
Really? To whom, and on what grounds do they choose not to so concern themselves?
If two thieves make a pact to rob my home and steal my goods,
the details of their discussion still matter to me, irrespective of whether or not they both choose
to sign a non disclosure agreement.
Even if, as in this case, only one party is openly and implacably hostile, while the other , a relative
newcomer to our community has been seen in whispered discussions before accepting a large amount
of money.
So if it's all the same to you, I think I'll be the judge of what matters to me, thank you.
Microsoft will have had something in return for that money.
Yes: some patent licenses, a PR opportunity, and, most importantly, people like you spreading FUD.
A third of a billion for a promise not sue random windows users, and some PR? Do behave.
If you pull the other on, you may well find it has bells attached.
They received several hundred million dollars from Microsoft, without giving Microsoft anything or committing to anything.
Without committing to anything that they're willing or able to disclose. Microsoft will have had something in return for that money. I really don't think Novell's promise not to sue windows users us worth 300 million to Microsoft.
So we have to ask ourselves what Novell did agree to that was worth so much money. What are MS getting in return?
I doubt many people will buy into TFA's theory that MS are buying some sort of estoppel agreement and dressing it up as a cross licence. However there was a recent case where MS paid way over the odds for a licence they obviously neither wanted nor needed; on that occasion were bankrolling SCO for the big lawsuit. People are bound to be suspicious.
Novell staked its future on Linux. They may yet find that alienating the community is far more expensive in the long term.
Pick one of the following statements that best describes your feelings
I anticipate the destruction of my business by endless patent infringement lawsuits; I fully expect to see all those I have ever loved die in filth and poverty while I look on knowing that it is all my fault. My life is a barren wasteland without hope of redemption. OR
I fully support the Novell-Microsoft patent pact.
The Microsoft Survey:
Select one or more from the following list: I think the Microsoft-Novell deal is
Filesystems are journals, and primarily keep track of the things a child has done.
That fact that documents get saved, and can be access via the journal is almost secondary.
It's a shift in emphasis, and a restructuring of the storage metaphor in order to make the
system more accessible to young minds.
Of course, it may turn out to be cosmetic - almost certainly will unless they're using
something really exotic for the file system - but if the result is a better way to think
about computer tasks it could still be valuable
I wouldn't have said "heretic". Aside from a slightly belligerent
initial exchange, I've always found your position to be rational and
sensible. We differ a little on how active the community should be when
it comes to supplying Novell with feedback regarding their dealings with
MS, that's all. In any case, I don't really consider myself a follower
of St iGNUtious; I'm more a "linus" than I am a "richard" or an "eric"
Also, I must apologise if I mischaracterised your position. The intention
wasn't so much to put words in your mouth as it was to clarify your position -
but then I got carried away bashing one of my least favourite memes.
Certainly, any improvement in communications is always welcome, and I suppose
realistically, if we sit around waiting for business to build a universal
translator, we may be waiting for some time.
I would suggest that the FSF could provide that service, the legal side
is there but, to date, the PR side is not.
Not sure about the FSF in that role. They strike me as just a bit too
political and a bit too anti-corporate to gain much credibility in
business circles. I'd have though it was a better fit for the OSI. But then again,
opensource.org doesn't have any news since July 2005 when
they announced Michael Tiemann as interim president. So maybe not.
Of course, Bruce Perens has been doing this sort of thing off his
own bat for a while now. Have you seen his
petition, by the way?
It's rational, polite, and fulfils most of your criteria for a
community statement. It isn't as clear as some of Mr. Perens'
writings, perhaps, but it gets the point across. And it has
going on three thousand names to back the point, many of whom have
some interesting points of their own to add.
Then there's the Samba team's open letter, which I think does a much
better job of laying out the FOSS position and why we find Novell's actions so
objectionable. Sadly, Novell have already read and dismissed this one. In fact,
Novell's response across the board so far has been "you might think that,
but this is why you're wrong". It makes a fellow wonder just how we
can demonstrate how seriously we take this issue, except by voting with
our feet.
I suppose... I think part of the problem is that Novell suffers from that
disease which leads organisations to believe they can solve problems by
altering the perceptions of others rather than by amending behaviour
in themselves. Once a company starts to think like that, it becomes
almost impossible to hold any meaningful dialogue with them, because
any unwelcome opinions get routinely passed to PR as problems to solve,
without any requirement that they pass through the brains of the people
making the decisions.
It also tends not to work very well with the FOSS community.
One of the first things you learn as a developer is to watch out
for who can walk the walk, and who's just talking the talk.
Incidentally, speaking of the Samba Team,
if you haven't seen it, check out Jeremy Allison's
column in the latest Linux User and Developer. He goes to
some pains to point out that as a Novell employee, he can't
really criticise them in public, then points out that the
Samba team is under no such prohibition, and provides a link
to the Letter To Novell. He also finds some interesting parallels
with the RedHat/Oracle dustup as well.
In all other respects I agree completely with you and must say that I've
enjoyed the discussion. In fact I don't think it unreasonable to say
that this the sort of discussion that should be taking place between
the FOSS community, FSF and corporate world now.
Agreed. And thank you - I've enjoyed the discussion too.
You seem to be suggesting that because business is getting increasingly
involved with FOSS, it's the responsibility of the community to adapt
to commercial procedures. That seems to be something of a meme in the
community: The idea that somehow we are all desperately in need of
corporate involvement, and that unless we bend over backwards to keep
industry happy, our efforts as amateurs and enthusiasts are sure doomed to
failure.
I'm not ready to accept that. It seems to me that FOSS made a
useful operating system from scratch with little or no corporate
backing, and frequently in the face of corporate scorn and opposition.
and that only once we had something useful did business begin to
take an interest.
We have something that many business want. But if they want it, they
will have to deal with the community on our terms, not theirs.
I can accept that Novell is following standard business practice, and
that's all very well if the deals pertain to NetWare, or something else for
which they own all the rights.
On the other hand, they are making agreements concerning
software which they do not own, and which concerns lawsuits aimed
at the other distributors, developers and users of this software.
Furthermore this deal involves getting a considerable sum of
money ostensibly in exchange for something Microsoft neither wants
nor needs.
Somehow it doesn't seem at all reasonable to say that this is
none of the community's business.
Free Software is a relatively new thing. Some established business
methods aren't going to work where Free Software is involved, and
I think we need to evolve new ways of doing business in this sphere.
Like you said, it's a case of "Adapt Or Die", and that goes for
Novell-The-Communications-Software-Company just as much as it does
for Microsoft.
I value corporate involvement, but again, not "at any price".
And if Novell-The-Communications-Software-Company can't get
its corporate head around that idea, well then I'd sooner leave
the dessicated remains of the company hanging from a gibbet
than I would have us all sit around the campfire singing
kum-by-ya while Ron Hovsepian and Bill Gates sell us all down
the river.
The moment that the maintainers feel unhappy about the deal and start
to vocalise or leave because of it should be the point at which the rest
of the linux community shut the door to Novell.
mmm... but this is where the patent distinction becomes important.
If the attack involves patents, then its entirely possible that there
could be nothing to detect. Suppose for a second the upper echelons of
Novell are up to no good. All it takes then is for Mr. Hovsepian
to say "make SUSE compatible with Feature X". SUSE devs on the Novell
payroll do as instructed, the SUSE scrutineers see no problem, and
the feature is passed. Then, six months or a year down the line,
MS announce that Feature X uses protocols or schemata or whatever that
are quite clearly patented under US law, and starts suing the non-commercial
distros. That, by the way, is why I take little comfort from the fact that
EC law prohibits software patents; I think MS could do tremendous damage
to the community purely by suing Stateside distros and developers.
In any event, I think it's unrealistic to expect the FOSS community ever to
act with a single mind. Some people, some groups may well ostracise Novell
based on this episode; others are likely to maintain good relations with them
in the face of anything short of a direct attack. Most are going to
be somewhere in between. The question is to what extent Novell has damaged
the trust they worked so hard to build between themselves and the community,
and whether they have left any avenues open whereby they might undo the
damage. I think it's going to take more than a web page full of spin
to do the job.
compare this to some of the other distros that have proprietary graphics drivers included within their "vanilla".
Thanks for a challenging and thought provoking reply. As you say, I think we have a lot of
common ground here. All the same, I'd like to explore a few issues a bit further.
The problem for the the (F)OSS community is that they are used to openness as a matter of course
I'll grant you the lack of openness in this agreement is a major cause
of friction; I'm just not sure it's fair to characterise it as the FOSS
community's problem.
Novell have a lot to lose if they lose the support of the community.
... the (F)OSS community will have to live with that.
And I'm not sure we do.
Certainly we'd be the poorer without Novell's contribution,
but as you say, it's hard to kill off a social movement. I think
Novell needs us more than we need Novell, and from that perspective
I think Novell have handled this deal spectacularly badly. They've
done a deal with a notorious untrustworthy software corporation,
and then left themselves no way to demonstrate good faith except
to say "trust me".
I think that probably qualifies as an error of judgement on their
part. FOSS is used to being lied to by corporations, especially
when MS is concerned, and "trust me" just isn't going to do
so far as a lot of people are concerned.
I think the problem is that Ron Hovsepian and the top level
management at Novell still don't understand the community. So
now people want to know how wide the gulf is, and anything
Novell say in their defence is going to look like MS style
spin.
To say beforehand that "the code will be tainted", "there'll be MS
proprietary code injection" etc., etc., is rather jumping the gun don't
you think?
mmm... but this isn't about proprietary code, it's about patents.
Look at it this way: fundamentally, the whole thing is smoke and mirrors.
Microsoft has a whole arsenal of loosely worded patents it could probably
bring to bear any time it wanted. It would cause a dreadful nuisance, and
take a lot of beating back, as you say, a likely end results would be the
invalidation of a most or all of those bogus patents.
On the other hand, say there's something clear and narrowly scoped, that,
under current law would give them a clear and indisputable win. If they
could get those patents included in mainstream Linux, they could cause
the same amount of trouble for comparatively little risk. Thus for example
the concern over the open office plugin; MS have been talking about having
the XML schemas patented for a long time. But if Ron Hovsepian says "Open XML
Compatibility" then there's a fair chance that MS patent violations will
end up in SUSE, and from there in a lot of Linux distros.
It gets worse with Mono. If the word comes down on top to assure compatibility
or interoperability with some feature that is actually covered by Submarine Patent X,
then the whole of Gnome could be knocked back two to three years or more.
Wouldn't a better approach be to say, "Ok, we don't trust this covenant, however that's a business decision that you (Novell and Microsoft) have agreed to, but should you release code to the (F)OSS areas then it must be released under GPL and co-signed as such by both of
you."?
If MS will also agree to open all relevant patents, unambiguously and without
being limited to SUSE customers, I don't think anyone wil have a problem.
I can't see that happening though. It's patents, not code, that is at issue here.
I think that anything that aids interoperability between (F)OSS and proprietary softwares... is a good thing for Linux
Not at any price. I'm all for interop, but we don't know what the hidden costs of
this agreement are, and as you point out we'll likely never know. That makes it
kind of a pig in a poke, and I find myself oddly loathe to invest.
Hi Jez and thanks for the civil response. By all means let's
discuss this like gentlemen.
About assumptions: I don't think we can reason without making assumptions;
in fact, if you look at math or formal logic, making assumptions is
fundamental part of the process of inference. The trick is to keep an
open mind, so as to be willing to re-examine those assumptions in the
light of new evidence.
So, for example, I will admit to making the assumption that if Microsoft
are involved, they are probably up to something and that they do not have
our benefit in mind. Similarly, you seem to making the assumption that
since SUSE are an established and respected distro, we should therefore
give Novell the benefit of the doubt.
And that's were we part company, I think. I'd like to draw a clear
distinction between SUSE and Novell, and try to avoid assuming that
the ethical culture of SUSE as a distro has somehow percolated upwards
into Novell as a side effect of Novell's purchase of SUSE.
For that matter we should be wary of anthropomorphising Novel too much.
Most corporations would, were they human, have a touch of Multiple Personality
Disorder about them, with different factions pushing different corporate
agenda. And while I'm sure there are plenty of Novell execs who "get"
the whole open source thing, and who genuinely want to play nice with the
community, I'd be very surprised if there weren't some hoary old bean counters
there who couldn't give a hoot for anything beyond the bottom line, and who
learned their trade the hard way, trying to compete with Microsoft.
I'd be very surprised if some of the latter camp haven't look at the
Linux marketplace and thought "We might not be big enough to compete with
Microsoft, but we're big enough to steamroller the competition here".
And some of them might even have added "especially with Microsoft
backing our play".
I would like to think so and am prepared to
wait a while before condemning or exonerating their actions and would
hope that a few others may do so too.
Innocent until proven guilty is fair enough. But if you had a suspected
ax murderer, you would surely try and keep sharp objects out of their
reach, even before the case came to trial. And while Novell haven't killed
anyone, it still seems wise to be cautious in our dealings with them
whilst their motives are in question.
Actually, PJ did not use quotation marks around the word "Fork", she
either doesn't know what the term means or, if she does, she used it
cynically. The contributor to/. who submitted the story used the "fork"
notation to try and indicate that it wasn't.
Meh. They're there
now.
Maybe she was persuaded to the view that she got it wrong in the
first draft and amended the article. That's one of the things I
like about PJ. She tries to tell the truth.
I'm willing to cut her a lot of slack for that. Enough I don't
assume FUD (as Miguel de Icaza evidently does) when PJ voices an
opinion.
They have got a pretty cheap but highly visible and potentially very
damaging FUD/Flame/Firefest going without actually having to do a thing
themselves.
Agreed. But as I've said elsewhere in this thread, I don't think
Redmond strategists do single objective plans; you only have to look
at the possible payoffs for them in the SCO business to see how
deeply they thought about that one. I'd be very surprised if all
they're only objective here was a FUD opportunity. I don't think
even MS pays a third of a billion dollars just for FUD.
I've had similar conversations elsewhere on/. and my principal feeling
remains unchanged, that the (F)OSS community has enough problems trying
to keep adhesion (think Debian) without contributing to a messy civil
war that benefits only Microsoft.
Hard to say, since no outside the two companies has actually seen the full text. But we do have this from Novell's press release.
The two companies also announced an agreement to provide each other's customers with patent coverage for their respective products.
So, if Novel are granting MS the rights to use their patents, that's going to make it difficult for them to counter sue MS for patent infringement. I suppose it's outside possible that they didn't licence MS, just Microsoft customers and that they reserve the right to sue MS should they so choose. Which rather makes you wonder why they took down the page where they made this particular promise:
Novell will use its patent portfolio to protect open source products against potential third-party patent challenges, meaning that Novell is prepared to asserts its patents against such third parties.
If you want references, PJ's got wayback machine links over on Groklaw
I can't think of any reason to go to the trouble of removing that page, unless it should turn out that they no longer intend to keep the promise. In combination with the patent coverage deal, I find I have great difficulty imagining Novell emerging as the Defender of Open Source.
So, yeah. "Really".
A plug-in isn't a fork! This is a plug-in development that can be found on SourceForge
Fair enough, even PJ used "fork" in quotes, so I'll own up to being a little sloppy here. The underlying point is that any attempt to introduce Microsoft technology (as opposed to reverse engineering the protocols) is always going to warrant careful scrutiny. In the case of MS' Office XML formats, there have been worries about submarine patents since the start of the ODF debate. For Novell take this particular action so quickly after making a patent agreement with MS - people are bound to wonder. The action and the timing are both worrying.
MS & Novell Pact:
Good Guys/Bad Guys: Uncertain.
Caught in between: SuSE developers.
Suspicious: Just about anyone caught in the latest paranoid/conspiracy spotlights.
Losers: Novell.
Outright FUD winners: MS and and roving conspiracy theorist(s).
I think there's a little room in the spectrum between... "Novell Enthusiast" let's say, and "Conspiracy Theorist". Room for a little healthy scepticism, perhaps? After all, there are one or two indications that Microsoft may have hatched the odd conspiracy here and there in the past. Given that history, it's hardly irrational to consider that this may be the start of a new one.
To be honest, I don't know. And since many details of the agreement are secret we may never have any reliable information in that regard. It would be a nice way to sidestep the issue, as would signing them over to the Open Invention Network, which would allow the OIN to keep Novell's promises for them at least.
I honestly believe MS does not have the intentions of suing anyone
I tend to agree. If they thought they could win, I rather think they'd be doing it, rather than just FUDding about it.
holding some sort of litigation cloud over Linux's head, whether real or imaginary, keeps businesses from making the switch.
And that's almost certainly a big part of the plan. The trouble is, I don't think Redmond strategists do single objective plans. Consider SCO. That had as a prime objective getting all the rights to Linux in the hands of a single commercial entity who could then be crushed and buried at Microsoft's leisure. But as side bets the scheme held some good opportunities for breaking the GPL, discrediting free software movement, and a poke in the eye for IBM whose Linux ads have to have been seen as a direct attack at Microsoft. And the worst case (which is pretty much what they got) is they get three to five years of FUD to slow Linux adoption.
The danger here lies in assuming that just because that's all that worked in the SCO gambit, that that's all Microsoft are trying to achieve in this one. Their strategists are better than that.
if you sign the damn license you can never litigate the patent's validity.
I can see that. I just don't see how it weakens RedHat's position. Or Ubuntu's. Or mine, come to think of it. I haven't signed the damn licence, so if they want to sue anyone who isn't a SUSE user, the task is going to be neither more nor less difficult than it was before, surely?
For that matter, Microsoft suing SUSE users isn't entirely cut and dried, since most of them haven't agreed to any deal with MS, no matter how Redmond spins them as being the "beneficiaries". Novell can amend it's licensing terms with new customers, of course, but it still doesn't have the right to put proscriptions on the GPL. If they do, we can sue them; if they don't then it's still just FUD.
Or am I missing something fundamental? (Neither a lawyer nor a US citizen, so I may be way off, but I do want to understand this)
Slashdot Mirror
No there isn't, and I don't believe I've said there was. That particular piece of hand-waving was ooshiny doing some creative misinterpretation of my earlier posts, but frankly it seemed too juvenile a ploy to be worth correcting.
But the responsibility for clear communication lies with the communicator, so let me restate my position. Richard Stallman has declared his intention to include language in the next GPLv3 draft that will make the new Licence incompatible with cross patent deals such as that which currently exists between Novell and Microsoft. It is highly unlikely (IMHO) that the licence text will mention Novell or Microsoft by name. However, since Stallman refers to the Novell-Microsoft deal as an exemplar of class of deals he intends to block, it seems unlikely that Novell will be able to comply with the terms of GPLv3 while continuing their deal with Microsoft.
To put it another way: Novell is not being targeted, but the same cannot be said for their deal with Microsoft. The only functional difference is that Novell have the option of being able to comply, but only by discontinuing their patent agreement. If they choose not to do so, and they've given no indication that they will, then they will not be able to distribute GPLv3 software under the terms of the licence.
mmm... did you read Jeremy Allison's comments in TFA? I know they've been quoted many times in this discussion, but just to make sure we're all on the same page:
So, this strongly suggests that a dominant faction in Novell management is quite aware that the agreement contravenes the intent of the GPL, and seem to think that's ok because they have only violated the spirit of the licence but not the letter.
Their behaviour may be legal, but it is hardly ethical.
They could mend a lot of fences by discontinuing the deal before the new GPL forces their hand. Then they could claim to have reconsidered. Otherwise, it reinforces the impression of a company with nothing but contempt for the free software community; one which is cynically willing to abuse the trust of others in pursuit of a private agenda.
I'll stick with "unprincipled", thank you.
No. It will mean that unless they do "break" , "cancel", "abrogate" or somehow otherwise "cease to participate in" their patent deal with MS, they will be distributing the software without a licence to do so, since the patent deal will put them in violation of the terms of GPLv3.
It's really not that complicated:
Of course that rather assumes that Novell's legal exposure would negligible. I find that a little hard to swallow, if only because Microsoft's lawyers, at least have a reputation for competence, and I would expect some sort of provision to stop Novell backing out so trivially. Of course, since the details of the deal are NDA'd we'll never know, but it's far from a safe assumption.
Still, you seem to accept that planned changes to the GPLv3 will make it illegal for Novell to distribute GPLv3 software while they partake in patent agreements such as the one they recently made with Microsoft. And you seem to think that Novell will break such agreements, albeit only when forced to do so by the imminent collapse of their business. Fair enough, I agree. So why do you keep yelling "FUD" every time someone else says it?
Maybe you'd like to join with us in urging Novell to repudiate the deal without further delay? Then Novell get to emerge with some shred of integrity, and we'd have nothing to argue about. A win-win scenario, except perhaps for Microsoft.
You're right. There are lots of things that I don't know, and my thinking could always be clearer. Nevertheless, I'm the one linking to references to support his arguments, while you are apparently so hard up for facts that you're reduced to quoting out of context to set up cheap shots. I think that speaks for itself, really.And if it's not ready, then wait a year or two, or look to see if there's a project that's a little more mature. Look at the server market; FOSS didn't come to dominate that through having a shiny mission statement. We did it because the Apache devs did a bloody good job.
I'll take working software over glossy vapourware any day of the week
MS chase single visions, not because it's a good idea, but because they have to. They have to put out an integrated system and wealthy as MS are, their resources are finite, and increasingly consumed in the co-ordination of development rather than development itself.
The Free Software world doesn't have this problem. We can pursue lots of ideas in parallel, and let Darwinian selection dictate which ones survive. And we do. That's one reason Linux is evolving faster than Windows.
What the Global Vision thing does give Redmond is fodder for marketing. They can talk up this incredibly glossy vaporware development (Longhorn) and by the time they get to the feeble cut-down reality, everyone seems to have forgotten that all the sound breaking stuff has been dropped along the way.
But again we, we don't need that. People use FOSS not because of the quality of our advertising, but the quality of the software.
A global vision would be nothing but a handicap.
I thought it was XP with a new coat of paint, and new and shiny DRM thrown in. And without so much stuff that actually works.
According to the ECMA Code of Conduct in Patent Matters there is no requirement that any relevant that patents pertaining be opened, merely that they are made available for licence under Reasonable And Non Discriminatory (RAND) terms.
The problem here is that RAND is not further defined, meaning that a company like MS can charge a peppercorn licence fee, and still place the licences out of the reach of FOSS projects who can't pass on the overheads to their customers.
Additionally, ECMA don't seem require the patents to be actually licenced, they just require a statement of policy from the patent holder. If the patent holder later declines to issue the patent, they may be excluded from further participation in that committee, but by that stage you could still have a whole hell of a lot of deeply entrenched patent violations, so I don't take much comfort from that provision.
Oh, and if they ask the patent holder if they have any undisclosed patents, and the holder doesn't respond, the technical committee is free to vote on adoption, and therefore presumably adopt, the standard anyway.
So, as it turns out, there's absolutely nothing in the ECMA procedures prohibiting patent bombs, at least in so far as Free Software is concerned.
IANAL, Groklaw has a bunch of them who examined this in detail at the time of the Massachusetts ODF flap. Check it out!
Never mind, let's recap the important point: Stallman has promised to make the incorporate wording into GPLv3 that will explicitly forbid deals such that between Novell and Microsoft.
This doesn't seem to have sunk in from last time, so just to be clear: Novell will not be able to ship any GPLv3 versions of anything under the terms of their deal with MS, because Richard Stallman has promised that the GPLv3 will forbid them from doing so.
If he does this, and I can't for the life of me see why he would not, then that would prevent SuSE from shipping any subsequent versions. The standard GPL boilerplate would still give Novell the option of distributing the last GPLv2 version, but as the GP points out, that would leave them with a fork.
Rational enough? Or do I have to go through it again using smaller words?
"You keep saying that word; I don' think it means what you think it means"I don't know whether you're trolling, stupid, wilfully ignorant or just plain in denial, but please stop spreading falsehoods.
It all depends on how processor intensive the firmware rootkits are, really.
Well, if you think there is a post elsewhere in which you express yourself particularly well, feel free to link to it. I do sometimes look up a correspondent's posts on a subject if they seem have something interesting to say, but somehow, I doubt many people will leap to that conclusion based on what I've read so far. By way of example, here is the start of what I thought was quite a productive discussion on this topic.
I do find it a bit odd that you apparently expect me to look up your other posts, but can't be bothered to do do the same thing yourself. Never mind; in the interests of moving the debate forward, let's examine these pearls of wisdom.
There was this one where you said
No sentiment there you haven't expressed in this one, Spending hundreds of millions of dollars as a face saving exercise does not sound at all like the Microsoft I've come to know and loathe. Can you offer any support for the notion? Oh, wait, maybe it's expressed on one of your other posts.
We'll see.
Your next offering at least had a little substance to it:
So we're all supposed to rely on Microsoft's lack-of-imagination being equal to your own? How reassuring.
mmmm... just because we can fix buffer overrun exploits inside 24 hours, that doesn't imply we can get the same turnaround for patent issues. The exploits are often fixable in a handful of lines. A patent violation would require changing how something was done, which would mean a redesign, followed by coding and testing until we again had stable software.
The other thing is that patent litigation is expensive; just ask RIM. It's a game that favours those with deep pockets, and who has deeper pockets than Microsoft?
As Kevin Renner might have put it, "that turns out not to be the case". This is from Novell's press release (I'll use bold face to distinguish third party quotations from your own contributions).
So, people who have bought a copy of SUSE from Novell are quite explicitly exempt from any litigation Microsoft might bring. The point is expanded upon in their Joint letter to the Open Source Community
So it seems that Novell could continue to sell contested software, even while the case was bein
Which doesn't imply that those details are not of interest to the community. Nor does it imply that we should not take an interest. For example, the deal between MS and SCO was a private agreement between the two of them. As we learn more about that case, it seems more and more likely (I suspect few would now dispute it) that the agreement was that Microsoft would pay SCO to try misappropriate certain rights to Linux and/or destroy the GPL.
At the time we were interested, despite it being a private agreement. As it turns out, our interest seems more than warranted. There are enough similarities here that "shut up and mind your own business" just isn't going to cut it.
That analogy doesn't work here because...? Do you have anything more than bluster to support that assertion? I can always discuss the deal on Slashdot. If we were to go by some of the responses, then some people would appear to think this tremendously damaging to Novell. Personally, I just think open debate is always a good thing. Couple of examples, perhaps? Microsoft's position of wealth and power doesn't seem to support your case here. And once again the missing word is "because". Why is it that you think Microsoft's motives do not matter? Not, I assume, because they're so poor and weak and helpless.Really? To whom, and on what grounds do they choose not to so concern themselves?
If two thieves make a pact to rob my home and steal my goods, the details of their discussion still matter to me, irrespective of whether or not they both choose to sign a non disclosure agreement.
Even if, as in this case, only one party is openly and implacably hostile, while the other , a relative newcomer to our community has been seen in whispered discussions before accepting a large amount of money.
So if it's all the same to you, I think I'll be the judge of what matters to me, thank you.
A third of a billion for a promise not sue random windows users, and some PR? Do behave.
If you pull the other on, you may well find it has bells attached.
So we have to ask ourselves what Novell did agree to that was worth so much money. What are MS getting in return? I doubt many people will buy into TFA's theory that MS are buying some sort of estoppel agreement and dressing it up as a cross licence. However there was a recent case where MS paid way over the odds for a licence they obviously neither wanted nor needed; on that occasion were bankrolling SCO for the big lawsuit. People are bound to be suspicious.
Novell staked its future on Linux. They may yet find that alienating the community is far more expensive in the long term.
That's one reason why not.
The Microsoft Survey:
That fact that documents get saved, and can be access via the journal is almost secondary.
It's a shift in emphasis, and a restructuring of the storage metaphor in order to make the system more accessible to young minds.
Of course, it may turn out to be cosmetic - almost certainly will unless they're using something really exotic for the file system - but if the result is a better way to think about computer tasks it could still be valuable
I wouldn't have said "heretic". Aside from a slightly belligerent initial exchange, I've always found your position to be rational and sensible. We differ a little on how active the community should be when it comes to supplying Novell with feedback regarding their dealings with MS, that's all. In any case, I don't really consider myself a follower of St iGNUtious; I'm more a "linus" than I am a "richard" or an "eric"
Also, I must apologise if I mischaracterised your position. The intention wasn't so much to put words in your mouth as it was to clarify your position - but then I got carried away bashing one of my least favourite memes.
Certainly, any improvement in communications is always welcome, and I suppose realistically, if we sit around waiting for business to build a universal translator, we may be waiting for some time.
Not sure about the FSF in that role. They strike me as just a bit too political and a bit too anti-corporate to gain much credibility in business circles. I'd have though it was a better fit for the OSI. But then again, opensource.org doesn't have any news since July 2005 when they announced Michael Tiemann as interim president. So maybe not.
Of course, Bruce Perens has been doing this sort of thing off his own bat for a while now. Have you seen his petition, by the way? It's rational, polite, and fulfils most of your criteria for a community statement. It isn't as clear as some of Mr. Perens' writings, perhaps, but it gets the point across. And it has going on three thousand names to back the point, many of whom have some interesting points of their own to add.
Then there's the Samba team's open letter, which I think does a much better job of laying out the FOSS position and why we find Novell's actions so objectionable. Sadly, Novell have already read and dismissed this one. In fact, Novell's response across the board so far has been "you might think that, but this is why you're wrong". It makes a fellow wonder just how we can demonstrate how seriously we take this issue, except by voting with our feet.
I suppose... I think part of the problem is that Novell suffers from that disease which leads organisations to believe they can solve problems by altering the perceptions of others rather than by amending behaviour in themselves. Once a company starts to think like that, it becomes almost impossible to hold any meaningful dialogue with them, because any unwelcome opinions get routinely passed to PR as problems to solve, without any requirement that they pass through the brains of the people making the decisions.
It also tends not to work very well with the FOSS community. One of the first things you learn as a developer is to watch out for who can walk the walk, and who's just talking the talk.
Incidentally, speaking of the Samba Team, if you haven't seen it, check out Jeremy Allison's column in the latest Linux User and Developer. He goes to some pains to point out that as a Novell employee, he can't really criticise them in public, then points out that the Samba team is under no such prohibition, and provides a link to the Letter To Novell. He also finds some interesting parallels with the RedHat/Oracle dustup as well.
Agreed. And thank you - I've enjoyed the discussion too.You seem to be suggesting that because business is getting increasingly involved with FOSS, it's the responsibility of the community to adapt to commercial procedures. That seems to be something of a meme in the community: The idea that somehow we are all desperately in need of corporate involvement, and that unless we bend over backwards to keep industry happy, our efforts as amateurs and enthusiasts are sure doomed to failure.
I'm not ready to accept that. It seems to me that FOSS made a useful operating system from scratch with little or no corporate backing, and frequently in the face of corporate scorn and opposition. and that only once we had something useful did business begin to take an interest.
We have something that many business want. But if they want it, they will have to deal with the community on our terms, not theirs.
I can accept that Novell is following standard business practice, and that's all very well if the deals pertain to NetWare, or something else for which they own all the rights. On the other hand, they are making agreements concerning software which they do not own, and which concerns lawsuits aimed at the other distributors, developers and users of this software. Furthermore this deal involves getting a considerable sum of money ostensibly in exchange for something Microsoft neither wants nor needs. Somehow it doesn't seem at all reasonable to say that this is none of the community's business.
Free Software is a relatively new thing. Some established business methods aren't going to work where Free Software is involved, and I think we need to evolve new ways of doing business in this sphere. Like you said, it's a case of "Adapt Or Die", and that goes for Novell-The-Communications-Software-Company just as much as it does for Microsoft.
I value corporate involvement, but again, not "at any price". And if Novell-The-Communications-Software-Company can't get its corporate head around that idea, well then I'd sooner leave the dessicated remains of the company hanging from a gibbet than I would have us all sit around the campfire singing kum-by-ya while Ron Hovsepian and Bill Gates sell us all down the river.
mmm... but this is where the patent distinction becomes important. If the attack involves patents, then its entirely possible that there could be nothing to detect. Suppose for a second the upper echelons of Novell are up to no good. All it takes then is for Mr. Hovsepian to say "make SUSE compatible with Feature X". SUSE devs on the Novell payroll do as instructed, the SUSE scrutineers see no problem, and the feature is passed. Then, six months or a year down the line, MS announce that Feature X uses protocols or schemata or whatever that are quite clearly patented under US law, and starts suing the non-commercial distros. That, by the way, is why I take little comfort from the fact that EC law prohibits software patents; I think MS could do tremendous damage to the community purely by suing Stateside distros and developers.
In any event, I think it's unrealistic to expect the FOSS community ever to act with a single mind. Some people, some groups may well ostracise Novell based on this episode; others are likely to maintain good relations with them in the face of anything short of a direct attack. Most are going to be somewhere in between. The question is to what extent Novell has damaged the trust they worked so hard to build between themselves and the community, and whether they have left any avenues open whereby they might undo the damage. I think it's going to take more than a web page full of spin to do the job.
Thanks for a challenging and thought provoking reply. As you say, I think we have a lot of common ground here. All the same, I'd like to explore a few issues a bit further.
I'll grant you the lack of openness in this agreement is a major cause of friction; I'm just not sure it's fair to characterise it as the FOSS community's problem. Novell have a lot to lose if they lose the support of the community.
And I'm not sure we do. Certainly we'd be the poorer without Novell's contribution, but as you say, it's hard to kill off a social movement. I think Novell needs us more than we need Novell, and from that perspective I think Novell have handled this deal spectacularly badly. They've done a deal with a notorious untrustworthy software corporation, and then left themselves no way to demonstrate good faith except to say "trust me".
I think that probably qualifies as an error of judgement on their part. FOSS is used to being lied to by corporations, especially when MS is concerned, and "trust me" just isn't going to do so far as a lot of people are concerned.
I think the problem is that Ron Hovsepian and the top level management at Novell still don't understand the community. So now people want to know how wide the gulf is, and anything Novell say in their defence is going to look like MS style spin.
mmm... but this isn't about proprietary code, it's about patents. Look at it this way: fundamentally, the whole thing is smoke and mirrors. Microsoft has a whole arsenal of loosely worded patents it could probably bring to bear any time it wanted. It would cause a dreadful nuisance, and take a lot of beating back, as you say, a likely end results would be the invalidation of a most or all of those bogus patents.
On the other hand, say there's something clear and narrowly scoped, that, under current law would give them a clear and indisputable win. If they could get those patents included in mainstream Linux, they could cause the same amount of trouble for comparatively little risk. Thus for example the concern over the open office plugin; MS have been talking about having the XML schemas patented for a long time. But if Ron Hovsepian says "Open XML Compatibility" then there's a fair chance that MS patent violations will end up in SUSE, and from there in a lot of Linux distros.
It gets worse with Mono. If the word comes down on top to assure compatibility or interoperability with some feature that is actually covered by Submarine Patent X, then the whole of Gnome could be knocked back two to three years or more. Wouldn't a better approach be to say, "Ok, we don't trust this covenant, however that's a business decision that you (Novell and Microsoft) have agreed to, but should you release code to the (F)OSS areas then it must be released under GPL and co-signed as such by both of you."? If MS will also agree to open all relevant patents, unambiguously and without being limited to SUSE customers, I don't think anyone wil have a problem. I can't see that happening though. It's patents, not code, that is at issue here.
Not at any price. I'm all for interop, but we don't know what the hidden costs of this agreement are, and as you point out we'll likely never know. That makes it kind of a pig in a poke, and I find myself oddly loathe to invest.
Not yet
About assumptions: I don't think we can reason without making assumptions; in fact, if you look at math or formal logic, making assumptions is fundamental part of the process of inference. The trick is to keep an open mind, so as to be willing to re-examine those assumptions in the light of new evidence.
So, for example, I will admit to making the assumption that if Microsoft are involved, they are probably up to something and that they do not have our benefit in mind. Similarly, you seem to making the assumption that since SUSE are an established and respected distro, we should therefore give Novell the benefit of the doubt.
And that's were we part company, I think. I'd like to draw a clear distinction between SUSE and Novell, and try to avoid assuming that the ethical culture of SUSE as a distro has somehow percolated upwards into Novell as a side effect of Novell's purchase of SUSE.
For that matter we should be wary of anthropomorphising Novel too much. Most corporations would, were they human, have a touch of Multiple Personality Disorder about them, with different factions pushing different corporate agenda. And while I'm sure there are plenty of Novell execs who "get" the whole open source thing, and who genuinely want to play nice with the community, I'd be very surprised if there weren't some hoary old bean counters there who couldn't give a hoot for anything beyond the bottom line, and who learned their trade the hard way, trying to compete with Microsoft.
I'd be very surprised if some of the latter camp haven't look at the Linux marketplace and thought "We might not be big enough to compete with Microsoft, but we're big enough to steamroller the competition here". And some of them might even have added "especially with Microsoft backing our play".
Innocent until proven guilty is fair enough. But if you had a suspected ax murderer, you would surely try and keep sharp objects out of their reach, even before the case came to trial. And while Novell haven't killed anyone, it still seems wise to be cautious in our dealings with them whilst their motives are in question.
Meh. They're there now. Maybe she was persuaded to the view that she got it wrong in the first draft and amended the article. That's one of the things I like about PJ. She tries to tell the truth. I'm willing to cut her a lot of slack for that. Enough I don't assume FUD (as Miguel de Icaza evidently does) when PJ voices an opinion.
Agreed. But as I've said elsewhere in this thread, I don't think Redmond strategists do single objective plans; you only have to look at the possible payoffs for them in the SCO business to see how deeply they thought about that one. I'd be very surprised if all they're only objective here was a FUD opportunity. I don't think even MS pays a third of a billion dollars just for FUD.
I can't think of any reason to go to the trouble of removing that page, unless it should turn out that they no longer intend to keep the promise. In combination with the patent coverage deal, I find I have great difficulty imagining Novell emerging as the Defender of Open Source.
Fair enough, even PJ used "fork" in quotes, so I'll own up to being a little sloppy here. The underlying point is that any attempt to introduce Microsoft technology (as opposed to reverse engineering the protocols) is always going to warrant careful scrutiny. In the case of MS' Office XML formats, there have been worries about submarine patents since the start of the ODF debate. For Novell take this particular action so quickly after making a patent agreement with MS - people are bound to wonder. The action and the timing are both worrying.So, yeah. "Really".
I think there's a little room in the spectrum between... "Novell Enthusiast" let's say, and "Conspiracy Theorist". Room for a little healthy scepticism, perhaps? After all, there are one or two indications that Microsoft may have hatched the odd conspiracy here and there in the past. Given that history, it's hardly irrational to consider that this may be the start of a new one.
I'm not holding my breath though
I tend to agree. If they thought they could win, I rather think they'd be doing it, rather than just FUDding about it.
And that's almost certainly a big part of the plan. The trouble is, I don't think Redmond strategists do single objective plans. Consider SCO. That had as a prime objective getting all the rights to Linux in the hands of a single commercial entity who could then be crushed and buried at Microsoft's leisure. But as side bets the scheme held some good opportunities for breaking the GPL, discrediting free software movement, and a poke in the eye for IBM whose Linux ads have to have been seen as a direct attack at Microsoft. And the worst case (which is pretty much what they got) is they get three to five years of FUD to slow Linux adoption.
The danger here lies in assuming that just because that's all that worked in the SCO gambit, that that's all Microsoft are trying to achieve in this one. Their strategists are better than that.
I see a dusty little tombstone with a penguin logo, tucked away in an inaccessible corner of Microsoft's new Graveyard.NET
They don't call it "embrace and exterminate" for nothing.
I can see that. I just don't see how it weakens RedHat's position. Or Ubuntu's. Or mine, come to think of it. I haven't signed the damn licence, so if they want to sue anyone who isn't a SUSE user, the task is going to be neither more nor less difficult than it was before, surely?
For that matter, Microsoft suing SUSE users isn't entirely cut and dried, since most of them haven't agreed to any deal with MS, no matter how Redmond spins them as being the "beneficiaries". Novell can amend it's licensing terms with new customers, of course, but it still doesn't have the right to put proscriptions on the GPL. If they do, we can sue them; if they don't then it's still just FUD.
Or am I missing something fundamental? (Neither a lawyer nor a US citizen, so I may be way off, but I do want to understand this)
s/PLL/GPL/