What I'm wating for now is for a defense lawyer for anyone accused of file sharing by the RIAA or MPAA to produce this document in court. From the report: The major file sharing programs have hidden features that allow all files on a host hard drive to be indexed and shared, unknowingly and unwittingly, by the owner of the machine.
Defense attorney: "This is an authoritative document [ok, suspicions aside, think of this in the context of a court presentation for the defense] prepared by the USCPO, contributions from "experts" (etc., etc.,) discussing various P2P programs, such as the one that my client had installed on his/her machine to download (file$foo), and their shortcomings in respect of security and "hidden" features. They were completely unaware that the program search indexed their hard drive and offered the entire contents for outwards sharing. My client had (songs$foo) on the hard drive as he/she is partial to listening to music whilst using the pc and had made a compilation of songs from original cd's that he/she had legally purchased. As the report shows, there is a mechanism for sharing files through this P2P program that operates without either notification to nor the explicit approval of my client. I submit that my client had no intent of infringing copyright and indeed he/she had no idea that the files were being shared at all. I believe that the burden of proof that my client, deliberately and with intent, shared these files to the P2P network falls to the prosecution and that would require disproval of this report which, in part, relies quite heavily upon information and quotes supplied directly and indirectly from their own clients. The defense rests."
I think that there's a hidden "danger" here that seems to have been overlooked. The downloaded.exe file would indeed look very familiar to a Windows user and should a Windows (computer) naif user click on the link, download and double-click the.exe ("Hey, it's an.exe file, that's Microsoft stuff". Click, click) to install the Debian or Ubuntu distro, see it work, even like it... and then praise Microsoft for supplying the goodies!
There has to be far more detail given so that the naif in question understands that they are installing and running a completely different o/s within the Windows environment and that it can be uninstalled. That it is a GNU/Linux product and nothing to do with Microsoft. That it can be downloaded in its unadulterated form and loaded as the single o/s on their system or onto its own partition (or second HDD) as a proper duel boot option.
Having said that, if explained fully, I think it's a great way for non GNU/Linux users to get to try it out without much hassle and especially with the "do I, don't I dilemma?" facing many Windows users, with Vista being almost force fed to them, over the next couple of months.
It's faintly ironic that in the UK, where for nearly 40 years we've had access to Open University programmes on TV (BBC2), the last ever edition was televised just over a week ago.
The courses were part of a true degree path and, as they were shown after normal terrestial television had finished for the night (usually between about 03.30 and 06.00), a godsend to insomniacs - some of whom, like me, learned about all sorts of fascinating subjects. Happy hours immersed in lectures on everything from Engineering, through History to Quantum Mechanics, given by professors dressed in true 1960's/70's style (flared trousers, neckerchiefs, massive sideburns etc.).
The reason given for the TV programming demise? Death by internet and DVD's, which is where the courses can now be obtained. I'm gonna miss those near hippy lecturers though, as they were often more entertaining than their subject matter.
What seems to be missing from the EC site is any reasoning for why they find it illegal to support Linux? Surely the platform is irrelevant, it's offering a choice of more than one codec that's important. What legal restraints are there to offering more than one streaming media format?
McCreery, as one of the staunchest supporters of "IP" patents, must have made sure that all their licences are up to date.
Hi Nick, I'm glad that my "heretic" level has been reduced a touch:) but I must take issue with your comment: 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 is not what I was (or intended) saying, in fact the reverse is my viewpoint. FOSS (Ok, I'll omit the brackets) is becoming more and more involved with the corporate sector and there is a need for the community to be able to engage that sector in a language that they understand. The GPL was a "corporate" move by itself, it may have been a protective move but it is a move that businesses (particularly in the US) understands. There is no disputing that the product is, literally, quite incredible having come originally from amateurs and enthusiasts, the fact that it is still maintained by like minded people is it's greatest strength. That does not diminish the need for the FOSS and commercial world to be able to communicate in a way and at a level that both understand. I would suggest that the FSF could provide that service, the legal side is there but, to date, the PR side is not. There is a need for a unified voice of FOSS, the message agreed upon by the community - no doubt with some compromises - and then issued as a statement on behalf of the FOSS community. The worst message that can be given is, "We're gonna get screwed and sued!", which seems to be the current stance, the message should be, "We think that someone is going to try and screw and sue us." and then give the reasons and suggested remedy. Putting the pressure on Novell and Microsoft and highlighting the potential problems to the world at large. I don't see this as pandering to the corporate world. How many more people would be using a Linux system at home if at least one family member was using it at work? If their employers are using it then it just adds to the relative "validity" of the Linux o/s and FOSS offerings so, to that extent, FOSS does need the corporate world.
I think that we will continue to digress over the injected code scenario and the relative merits of, a) anyone knowingly doing so and b) the real effects that it would have upon FOSS. Whilst I can quite understand your point about the damage done by US only patents litigation (or threat thereof), I would still suggest that the alianation that such action would engender, the regulatory interest and negative PR generated outside of the US plus the ability, by its nature, of FOSS development to relocate has the potential of being corporate suicide by the litigant.
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.
Hi Nick, I appreciate your dialogue and will try to answer your points, though more as a collective item than one by one.
Novell does indeed have a lot to lose from withdrawal of support from the (F)OSS community, equally the community have a lot to lose by ostracizing Novell or, more importantly, the Novell SuSE maintainers. Again, I'm trying to deliniate the two entities as I see them, Novell (the communications software company) and Novell/Open Suse. The agreement with Microsoft is between the former and, by employment, some of the latter. The corporate entity can and will make commercial decisions that do not necessarily take into account the wishes or expectations of the employed maintainers let alone non employed contributors. The board of directors have a duty to shareholders before any other interests, the (F)OSS community do not have that constraint but have happily worked with the Novell and open SuSE maintainers for some years. That relationship should have built some trust for the SuSE guys, employees of Novell or otherwise, and that should be the bellweather test for the MS/Novell agreement. 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.
Look at it this way: the code within Novell SuSE is examined by both the in-house and volunteer groups. The volunteer group don't allow any proprietary code to be directly incorporated into the OpenSuSE branch - the repositories are there for people to use if they want but the core offering is vanilla. To be fair, the Novell-SuSE distro uses the external repositories too - compare this to some of the other distros that have proprietary graphics drivers included within their "vanilla". For the sake of argument, I use proprietary to mean patented or copyrighted code - the difference is not too relevant as both can result in a law suit for breach or infringement - the supposed "methods" that have been patented are, as I think most sane and savvy people would agree, mainly bogus. As I said before, this argument is largly a domestic US one, software patents may stand up in a US court but almost certainly would not do so in the EC (Microsoft's largest market) and an attack upon (F)OSS would be seen as an attempt to manipulate the market by destroying competition. I'm not sure that Microsoft would want that case to be brought against them having promised to reduce their lock-out ethos within the EC area (and having been fined for not complying fully or on a timely basis). Regardless of what the McCreerys et al may wish, software patents in the EC are not allowable at this time - the reason no-one has dared to try and go to court and prosecute an "infringement" is precisely for that reason, the patents would be ruled invalid under current EC law whether granted by the EPO or any national PO or not, they are excluded from patenting.
Novell, as distinct from SuSE, has made a business agreement with Microsoft. The minutiae of that deal will probably never be opened to the public domain unless there is an escape clause in it somewhere, which I doubt. However, it's almost certain that, if it was Oracle, IBM or anyone else who had made a deal the same would pertain. Just because Novell is the nominal owner of SuSE Linux does not mean that corporate Novell is going to be an open book to all and sundry, it is a for profit company and will continue to operate as such and for the (F)OSS or anybody else to expect any different is unrealistic. Novell, however, are not the guardians of SuSE Linux, the employed and volunteer maintainers have that distinguishment. Those are the people with whom my trust rests and a lot of the community seem to have forgotten that fact.
My "cry wolf" comment is very much intended to reflect the way the community is percieved outside, by people who are not developers (or/.ers), the potential customers, allies, press and plain uninformed. For those people
A couple of corrections McCartney was outbid by Michael Jackson for the Beatles catalogue - MJ had asked PM what the best investment was and PM said "The Beatles catalogue". When PM lost the auction he also fell out with MJ. Suprise, suprise!
The beneficiaries of the extended copyright will be the record companies (see the original article) not the artists, that's why the list of "signatories" included dead artists.
This is a profiteering expedition in the good ship "BPI" (Britain's RIAA) and they've been holed below the waterline by the Gower's Report so they've produced a highly biased "Poll" and are trying to stuff it in the hole. Meanwhile, "BPI-2" is being prepared and sets sail for Brussels to launch a charm-offence boarding party upon the EC Commission.
I'm praying for a Gower's mark 1 U-Boat being ready to greet them:)
Hi Nick, I agree with pretty much all you've said and am glad that you have made the distinction, that maybe I've been unable to express properly, between SuSE and Novell. This is basically what I'm trying to get at; the arrangement between MS and Novell is a corporate contract and, from personal experience of over 35 years in business (I've been a London based director of a unit of a US multinational, retired and then formed my own business), it is definitely the norm to have NDA's within non-compete/joint-dev projects. The problem for the the (F)OSS community is that they are used to openness as a matter of course and suspect anything that appears to be hidden, the fact that MS are involved magnifies that suspicion into stratospheric realms.
Whatever parts of the arrangement between Novell and MS are thus covered will not be released to the community or the industry unless one or other of them decides to break the contract - the (F)OSS community will have to live with that. By the nature of GPL, anything that is released to the SuSE (not Novell SuSE Enterprise clients) community has to be under a GPL license and, personally, I cannot imagine SuSE maintainers accepting anything that even smells faintly tainted unless it is headed up with a GPL license co-signed by Novell and MS. As I've said elsewhere, the spotlight is on this deal, the players and their actions and it's not going to be turned off in a hurry. Any code being released from the joint develpment will be scrutinized to the nth degree - by just about the whole (F)OSS community. 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? 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."? Have FSF check or write the license if that's what makes people comfortable but don't just reject everything out of hand.
I think that anything that aids interoperability between (F)OSS and proprietary softwares (particularly MS software) is a good thing for Linux - neither are going to go away in a hurry - and is also a good thing for MS.
Your analysis of how MS looks at the future is, I would say, correct but with an additional element, MS has seen the direction that the world is going and it threatens their longevity if they do not actually adapt to some of those changes. The belated entry of MS into the web-sphere (admittedly, they tried before with the limited Passport and Spaces/Groups concept - they din't grasp the idea of it being an uncontrolled area that does not fall into a corporate model) has shown both MS and the rest of the interested tech' world that they, a) are not currently very good at it (but they are learning fast) and, b) they have some serious catching up to do (for which they are going to need strategic partners). MS are learning about "Adapt or Die", they as sure as hell don't like it (and there's a possibility that the likes of Steve Ballmer may never get it) but it's a fact of their life. The other thing that must have really stung MS is that this area, like FOSS (FSF), cannot be bought. The one area where ideas are not for sale just happens to be the future of their industry. MS will have to work with (F)OSS, previous competitors and new competitors to survive and their "embrace, extend and extinguish" methodology can no longer work - it isn't possible to "EE&E" a social idea or movement.
There are other points that I would bring up but they've been written elsewhere on/. so I'll pass on all but one: If SCO taught the market anything at all, it is that suing your own customer base is not a viable business model. For MS to try and sue anybody other than corporate competitors would be an act of suicide, would o
Nick, thanks for your reply. My response is, I hope, rational and non-inflammatory. I'm not an MS apologist but am, amongst other things, a SuSE user and a believer in facts before assumptions. Whilst I can accept that Novell may be percieved as being niaive for entering any covanent with MS they do have, as quite a few people have pointed out, past experience so may be a little better prepared than they are being given credit for. 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.
... no outside the company has actually seen the full text. So there has to be an element of conjecture about the contents of that agreement? This allows the formulation of any number of scenarios that can arise from the agreement - none of which are provable either way. The press release is just that - a public relations announcement. Nowhere in it does it say that Novell are granting MS rights to use their patents (or vice versa), it does say that Novell will not litigate against MS customers for infringement of Novell patents and MS makes the same covenant towards Novell Enterprise customers. Both retain the right to sue each other for patent infringement.
Whilst I found PJ's original mission (coverage and collation of details of the SCO vs IBM case) admirable, informative and enlightening, I do not take as fact her musings on what may be in a document that she has not seen or upon the thoughts of Eben Moglen. Bear in mind that Moglen said that the covanent doesn't breach GPLv2 but v3 will be written so that it would breach that. The removal of the page may have something to do with the fact that this one http://www.novell.com/linux/microsoft/faq_opensour ce.html replaced it.
So back to, Really?
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. The plug-in has been on the OOo list of things to do, is an active project on SourceForge and has now been submitted for acceptance. You may like to read this to get the official repudiation of PJ's Groklaw FUD http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2006/Dec-04.html at least this is written by someone in a position to actually know about the plug-in. The main comment of note, from the documents on Groklaw, are about.Net and Mono where MS say that they are not going to open the source of.Net to the OSS community but the community is free to use Mono if they wish. The mixed message being that there is some.Net infringing code in Mono and Novell SuSE customers would, alone, be exempted from any litigation that MS may institute - I would, again, take that as a FUD item as Mono was built without any MS involvement and can only benefit Microsoft as it enables.Net usage by the *nix community and thus extends their premier delivery medium.
On your final points, we can agree. Microsoft's past dealings should leave nobody in any doubt of what they can do and deeply wary of their current motives but, to a large extent, this reinforces my point. Microsoft are past masters at generating FUD and they are fully aware that any dealings that they have with the (F)OSS community will generate a high level of conversation (to say the least) and, you will accept, that there is always a readiness within certain groups (on/. - never:)) to fire off verbal canonnades with accompanying fireworks display at anyone and anything that is suspected of consorting with the "devil". They have got a pretty cheap but highly visible a
Novell also agreed not to use their patent arsenal to defend Linux against MS Really? Just where in the agreement is that? They have agreed not to sue MS users for any supposed infringement of their (Novell's) patents. Novell also recommitted themselves to the support of the Linux and open source community following Ballmer's outburst about MS's IP.
... the new OpenOffice fork A plug-in isn't a fork! This is a plug-in development that can be found on SourceForge, it was discussed quite extensively here on/. when the "fork" item was reported from Groklaw earlier this week - and largely dismissed as erroneous interpretation by PJ in her report.
So the possible summing up would be:
SCO vs IBM case Good Guys: IBM, Novell. Bad Guys: SCO, MS.
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'm intrigued by an idea of a SuSE/MS OOo fork idea - it would surely isolate the user base of a forked version so I think I'll stick with the standard OOo version:) - as I think they may have a problem with that in the EU area.
As you say, there may be a point at which Novell says "Enough" and withdraws from the deal. However, I see that point coming more from its volunteer programmers base, rather than from within the Novell corporate body, as they are the objective overseers of the SuSE offering. If they get twitchy about anything and the in-house programmers were to follow suit then I think Novell would have to review their situation. That's not meant as a denegration of the in-house guys but more a case of the outside people not having the same constraints upon them in terms of areas of involvememnt (wood for trees analogy).
I hope that it plays out well and that the co-venture does produce something of benefit to the whole Linux community not just Novell SuSE, in the cross communication between MS and *nix products. (GPLv3 may blow that completely though, from the MS point of view, as I cannot see them opening up their comms stack to the world!).
Another point: Why on earth would any corporation want to use the top end versions of vista anyway? Aero graphics may make pretty eye candy but what does it add to produtivity? The side bar has a clock! Whoopie, I've got a watch.
Unless you're a pc manufacturer and wish to demonstrate the processing power of your product, what benefit do you gain? The basic version, without Aero, does everything that is generally required in an office environment (unless you want the MS security stuff too, which most companies won't) and will run Office 2007, Ooo, StarOffice etc. But, hey, so will XP and Win2k:)
Well said. This point has been discussed before and just that conclusion reached. The primary reason that the case has not been thrown out is to obviate any chance of SCO calling for a retrial or of an appeal.
Just following the case in the press, on Groklaw and here have shown that Kimball and Wells have been scrupulously fair (over-fair in some peoples eyes) in allowing SCO as much leeway as possible to avoid those eventualities. The fact that SCO seem to have managed to dig themselves an ever deeper hole is the apparent result. The judges are just trying to make sure that there's no hidden rope or stepladder that SCO can use to pull their heads over the parapet again.
I think that quite a few people missed a bit from the original and referred articles.
The copyright in question is for the artist who recorded the material. The lobbying was to increase their copyright to 95 years.
The author of the work, the real creator of the work already has 70 years from the date of publishing/recording to collect royalties for the work.
This seems to be the point of confusion, the creative body (the author) gets to collect for a pretty decent period of time (too long in my view) whilst the person(s) who record and release a copy of that work and, more importantly, the record companies receive royalties for a lesser period.
That, to me seems a perfectly equitable arrangement as the creator derives greater benefit than those that had nothing to do with the creative process. The lobbying for the extension seems to be of greatest benefit to the makers of those dire "Best Of......" releases and the aged 50's/60's "pop" stars who require a new tennis racquet (or Caribbean Island!) in their dotage.
Hi, and thanks for your reply.
The above response was what I was rather hoping for, reasoned and clear, as I was trying to make the point that your original was somewhat over-emotive and a touch hyperbolic. I did not distrust your motives for making the post just the manner in which you made it.
Maybe my reply was incendiary in its manner but my major points were, I think, justified and any public debate should have a alternate view of the subject matter. I am not a Microsoft apologist, I run RedHat, Centos and (of course) Suse as well as Microsoft products - I do a fair bit of testing of various softwares - and I've tried Vista and in all honesty, apart from some pretty eye-candy, I don't like it and will not be deploying it:). Equally, I am not a ABM'er as I will use whatever does the job best
Having loosely established my credentials, I would like to continue in the same vein as your reply:
Whilst I can see why you would make some assumptions about the SuSE/MS deal and the large chunks of cash flying around I fail to understand why you cannot grasp the central point of my, admitted, supposition. That the deal revolves around the Novell NetGear & MS Active Server products and not GPL'd software. The money represents the cross licencing fees for use of those products (any developed software that may come from it would become, by its nature, a cost neutral item) and would reflect the respective user base - MS probably has an order of magnitude more users than SuSE so the payments by both parties should and does reflect this.
My reasons for being less worried by the "injection" of proprietary code into the Linux code base is that, having publicly announced a formal deal with a Linux distributor, any code given to the community would have to be placed under the GPL (v2 or 3) and aknowledged as such. The software guys at Novell aren't going to let non-GPL code into the tree as it would destroy their ability to market the code in total. The volunteer community within Suse would, most certainly, reject any code that even hinted of being non-GPL (see, much earlier in the thread, a reply from one of the SuSE software guys). In fact, as I said in my reply, the entire Linux community will be watching with deep suspicion for anything like this to happen. I would think, and IANAL either, that should MS try and claim, at a later date, that some of their proprietary code is in the SuSE offering they would have a somewhat difficult task proving that they didn't donate it. They have publicly entered into a joint development deal, they must be sharing code somewhere along the line! The question then becomes: Is the shared code/software product only offered to SuSE Enterprise customers or to all Suse and then, by extension, Linux users? My suggestion is that it is the former, your worry is that it sneaks into the latter. I would suggest that this point becomes a bit mute, as the use of proprietary code from anyone is barred from the Linux source and none of the maintainers are going to accept any offered code unless it is sitting under GPL bearing the names Novell & Microsoft as joint doners.
I have read the Halloween memo, the details of the SCO case and the Santacruz/Caldera history. I'm also reasonably conversant with Microsoft's history since its formation (I was working with IBM mainframes at the time) and am fully aware of their dubious business tactics over that time. I'm also aware that whilst Stevie B is CEO of the company he is, by all accounts, not much more that a blustering used-car salesman. However, his job is to make money for MS and their shareholders - his methods may be offensive to a large part of the industry (myself included) but that's how he does his job. In his "Adapt or Die" treatise, RMS hammers the following point home: As an industry evolves and adapts, so must the players evolve and adapt to survive within that industry. Microsoft's way of coping has been by their embrace and extinguish methodolog
I gave the man the benefit of the doubt, even though I am extremely angry at Novell, and read his letter. It is very well written and makes the reader think, "Oh, that's all right then". But it isn't. He is not acting in a vaccuum and this is not a textbook case study (yet). Why?
1. Novell obviously needed cash quite badly, enough to risk a PR backlash.
A somewhat base supposition unsupported by any facts but, pray continue...
2. Microsoft was a key driver behind SCO and this is their next highly visible move against Linux.
Once again a tenuous supposition and an extremely odd example of of a move against anybody...
3. Microsoft has linux people in-house. If they wanted linux they could make their own distro for free, plus hiring a team to add interoperability which presumably should be easy since they would be the only team on the planet with the inside knowledge of how to do that.
Mute point. MS making an in-house distro would still require a GPL'd release of the end product plus, why redesign the wheel?
Imagine that the interoperability is with Novell products only, this requires the use of Novell owned IP so that MS don't infringe upon Novell Patents. MS doesn't want to get sued either.
4. Of course, this expert knowledge would be copied by other distros if it was GPL, so they wouldn't want to do that.
Why should they? This is a purely Novell/MS collaboration not a community effort. Or are you saying that, if a joint Novell/MS product was to be released under GPL you wouldn't use it?
5. And, they wouldn't be able to easily infect other distros a la SCO, which is another reason.
Eh? This isn't even English, slow down on the recreationals.
6. Finally, if they distribute GNU/Linux under GPL then they are finally saying everything is already under the GPL. (possibly including nonencumbrance by patents but IANAL).
How else can it be distributed? They are saying nothing of the kind, the logic train had departed the station about an hour before you arrived! (Obviously).
7. Novell cannot leash the dragon once it begins to rampage. In fact, this patent agreement clearly removes potential weapons of OSS-friendly vendors like IBM against possible future SCO-like lititgation from Microsoft. It means that Novell may likely enter the role of indeminifying vendors and users against Microsoft litigation (if the patent agreement allows that).
I thought that point 6 was the final one but emotive bile knows no bounds. This agreement does nothing of the sort, there is no logical way that your assumption flows from any availible facts. As Novell have denied that there are any patent infringements by Linux upon MS patents then the patents in question are, presumably, those held by Novell on their communication products.
8. Novell's CEO claims their actions prove they are honorably. I am sure he would like to think so. However if actions are louder than words, then surely this deal with Microsoft proves Novell is only in business for Novell, especially if it means all other OSS vendors get poisoned by their actions.
Gee, not a lawyer and not too hot as a market analyst either. This is nothing more than a biased opinion baked in a conspiracy theory. Of course Novell are in it for Novell - they don't have power of attorney for anyone else and they are a commercial operation.
I'm stunned and shocked that a commercial business made a commercial decision with the intent of making a competitive and commercial gain - not.
9. It also proves that Novell's CEO is intellectually and/or ethically unfit for his position due to his blithe ignorance of SCO and Microsoft's role in SCO, smoking gun and all.
Stop throwing vitriolic toys about it makes a mess of the nursery. It shows that a CEO of a commercial operation is capable of making a commercial deal with another c
If both community statements are read (Novell and Microsoft) there would appear to be the information that makes rather more sense of this than the selection of FUD-balls that are being hurled about.
The agreement protects Novell clients from any patent suit from MS and MS clients are protected from patent suits from Novell. The patents that Novell are talking about are their propriatery (or formally propriatery) patents and it's within this context that the agreement should be viewed. Stevie B throwing an MS patents FUD-ball at the press and awaiting the fallout seems to be highly effective policy, most noticeably amongst the ABMers and (F)OSS-or-die camps.
Lest we forget, Novell is a commercial enterprise (as are RH, Canonical et al) and makes money from service contracts for Novell SuSE Linux packages but, before its acquisition of SuSE, it made its money from the Netgear range of products. There are patents on all or most of the pre SuSE products and these are the patents in question.
Worth noting too are the comments from MS that, a) they looked at their patent portfolio and decided that they needed the pact (and were prepared to pay for it) - not the other way around - and that it was MS that instituted the Patents protection part of the agreement and, b) that Novell did not admit to or aknowledge any infringement by SuSE Linux on MS patents.
Surely the main FUD is that Microsoft would actually sue any customers in the first place. If SCO taught anybody anything it's that suing your existing or potential customer base is not a good business move.
I use both SuSE and Microsoft software, Microsoft know that as the damned stuff is registered with them, would Microsoft care that I used Red Hat or any other distro as long as I've got their product too? If I was not using Microsoft products and was a purely open source shop how would they know? The only way that Microsoft could effectively start a patents suit against non-Microsoft users is to issue a form of wholesale trawl through everybody's company infrastructure to prove it, they would then have to find something to sue for. How, exactly, would they ever gain that level of intrusive permission from any court anywhere?
"If it pleases the court, we have reason to believe that some people are using software, of which we have no details, that may or may not infringe upon our patents."
"Hmmmm! Dismissed. Next!"
Or they could target a company and go after them and then what? They then risk taking on IBM, Sun, the entire Linux and Nix community and their patent banks? That sounds like madness to me and it's the reason no such attempts have been made (SB spouted FUD about infringements was just that, FUD!). The collective war chests of patents assure one thing and one thing only, any attempt at a patents war from either side would result in a mutually assured destruction of both sides. Legal costs and time, customer alienation and the potential for the loss of those patents would prohibit any such attempt.
Oh, by the way, do I intend migrating from Suse to another distro? Absolutely not.
Propulsion problem is sorted.
20 London building site labourers have volunteered to go out on Friday night pub crawl, drinking a minimum 20 pints each of Guiness or lager and then indulging in a Curry-fest. The next morning they will all sit in a bunker sized khazi, attached to the base of the rocket, and at the point of "...3, 2, 1" light up, cough and the resulting, combined, fart power is estimated to produce enough downward thrust to achieve terminal velocity. Unfortunately, there have been fewer volunteers for the ground and clean-up crews. Proposed methods of re-entry from space are under review.
Try viewing in MSN Messenger if you want bad! No auto-scroll (on a laptop touchpad), postings overlap, posting appears above "Re:..." point, rating views (view postings rated above "x") is pretty well non-existent etc., etc. Ok, so why am I not suprised:)
To the original post however;
Were I to be an, ahem, non-registered occupant of the US and wished to return home to my native country (possibly somewhere south of the border) and return at a later date, I would have to think very, very carefully about that decision - Who needs an electrified fence?
Run out of decent cigars or untipped cigarettes and were planning a quick visit north.... maybe not today.
I wish the sods would dump some of mine, maybe then I'd stop getting the vast number of unsolicited invitations to take out loans, credit cards and various insurance/assurance deals that I do now. One look at my balances and they'd run for the hills!
Ahem! I think that you're confusing copyright with patent. Copyright prevents you distributing the, in this case, software as your own work (the "copy" bit of copyright). Patenting prevents you taking the, again in this case, software and modifying it, decompiling it or otherwise adulterating it - whether you distribute it or not.
To return to the original topic. I've had to run software audits and, I can assure you, head bean-counters do not like any conflicts in licencing terms within a supposedly unified IT deployment. That is the danger that RMS & GPLv3 can produce - the people handling the cheque book will not care for the semantics, they will see incompatibility and that could be a driving force away from Open Source deployment and into the arms of the proprietary market. Linus is pragmatic, he can see that there are times when adopting a propretary solution (graphics drivers etc.) is better than having no or greatly inferior solutions. The ultimate aim for the Linux and other OSS systems is to make them as useable as possible to all potential markets whilst RMS's vision will make that almost unobtainable with GPLv3. Give me pragmatism any day of the week.
Slashdot Mirror
What I'm wating for now is for a defense lawyer for anyone accused of file sharing by the RIAA or MPAA to produce this document in court.
From the report: The major file sharing programs have hidden features that allow all files on a host hard drive to be indexed and shared, unknowingly and unwittingly, by the owner of the machine.
Defense attorney: "This is an authoritative document [ok, suspicions aside, think of this in the context of a court presentation for the defense] prepared by the USCPO, contributions from "experts" (etc., etc.,) discussing various P2P programs, such as the one that my client had installed on his/her machine to download (file$foo), and their shortcomings in respect of security and "hidden" features. They were completely unaware that the program search indexed their hard drive and offered the entire contents for outwards sharing. My client had (songs$foo) on the hard drive as he/she is partial to listening to music whilst using the pc and had made a compilation of songs from original cd's that he/she had legally purchased. As the report shows, there is a mechanism for sharing files through this P2P program that operates without either notification to nor the explicit approval of my client. I submit that my client had no intent of infringing copyright and indeed he/she had no idea that the files were being shared at all. I believe that the burden of proof that my client, deliberately and with intent, shared these files to the P2P network falls to the prosecution and that would require disproval of this report which, in part, relies quite heavily upon information and quotes supplied directly and indirectly from their own clients. The defense rests."
Not on your holiday itinery then? Gee, and you sound such a learned and erudite person too.
I think that there's a hidden "danger" here that seems to have been overlooked. .exe file would indeed look very familiar to a Windows user and should a Windows (computer) naif user click on the link, download and double-click the .exe ("Hey, it's an .exe file, that's Microsoft stuff". Click, click) to install the Debian or Ubuntu distro, see it work, even like it ... and then praise Microsoft for supplying the goodies!
The downloaded
There has to be far more detail given so that the naif in question understands that they are installing and running a completely different o/s within the Windows environment and that it can be uninstalled. That it is a GNU/Linux product and nothing to do with Microsoft. That it can be downloaded in its unadulterated form and loaded as the single o/s on their system or onto its own partition (or second HDD) as a proper duel boot option.
Having said that, if explained fully, I think it's a great way for non GNU/Linux users to get to try it out without much hassle and especially with the "do I, don't I dilemma?" facing many Windows users, with Vista being almost force fed to them, over the next couple of months.
It's faintly ironic that in the UK, where for nearly 40 years we've had access to Open University programmes on TV (BBC2), the last ever edition was televised just over a week ago.
The courses were part of a true degree path and, as they were shown after normal terrestial television had finished for the night (usually between about 03.30 and 06.00), a godsend to insomniacs - some of whom, like me, learned about all sorts of fascinating subjects. Happy hours immersed in lectures on everything from Engineering, through History to Quantum Mechanics, given by professors dressed in true 1960's/70's style (flared trousers, neckerchiefs, massive sideburns etc.).
The reason given for the TV programming demise? Death by internet and DVD's, which is where the courses can now be obtained.
I'm gonna miss those near hippy lecturers though, as they were often more entertaining than their subject matter.
What seems to be missing from the EC site is any reasoning for why they find it illegal to support Linux? Surely the platform is irrelevant, it's offering a choice of more than one codec that's important.
What legal restraints are there to offering more than one streaming media format?
McCreery, as one of the staunchest supporters of "IP" patents, must have made sure that all their licences are up to date.
Hi Nick, :) but I must take issue with your comment: 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 is not what I was (or intended) saying, in fact the reverse is my viewpoint. FOSS (Ok, I'll omit the brackets) is becoming more and more involved with the corporate sector and there is a need for the community to be able to engage that sector in a language that they understand. The GPL was a "corporate" move by itself, it may have been a protective move but it is a move that businesses (particularly in the US) understands.
I'm glad that my "heretic" level has been reduced a touch
There is no disputing that the product is, literally, quite incredible having come originally from amateurs and enthusiasts, the fact that it is still maintained by like minded people is it's greatest strength. That does not diminish the need for the FOSS and commercial world to be able to communicate in a way and at a level that both understand.
I would suggest that the FSF could provide that service, the legal side is there but, to date, the PR side is not.
There is a need for a unified voice of FOSS, the message agreed upon by the community - no doubt with some compromises - and then issued as a statement on behalf of the FOSS community. The worst message that can be given is, "We're gonna get screwed and sued!", which seems to be the current stance, the message should be, "We think that someone is going to try and screw and sue us." and then give the reasons and suggested remedy. Putting the pressure on Novell and Microsoft and highlighting the potential problems to the world at large.
I don't see this as pandering to the corporate world. How many more people would be using a Linux system at home if at least one family member was using it at work?
If their employers are using it then it just adds to the relative "validity" of the Linux o/s and FOSS offerings so, to that extent, FOSS does need the corporate world.
I think that we will continue to digress over the injected code scenario and the relative merits of, a) anyone knowingly doing so and b) the real effects that it would have upon FOSS. Whilst I can quite understand your point about the damage done by US only patents litigation (or threat thereof), I would still suggest that the alianation that such action would engender, the regulatory interest and negative PR generated outside of the US plus the ability, by its nature, of FOSS development to relocate has the potential of being corporate suicide by the litigant.
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.
Jez
Hi Nick,
I appreciate your dialogue and will try to answer your points, though more as a collective item than one by one.
Novell does indeed have a lot to lose from withdrawal of support from the (F)OSS community, equally the community have a lot to lose by ostracizing Novell or, more importantly, the Novell SuSE maintainers. Again, I'm trying to deliniate the two entities as I see them, Novell (the communications software company) and Novell/Open Suse.
The agreement with Microsoft is between the former and, by employment, some of the latter. The corporate entity can and will make commercial decisions that do not necessarily take into account the wishes or expectations of the employed maintainers let alone non employed contributors. The board of directors have a duty to shareholders before any other interests, the (F)OSS community do not have that constraint but have happily worked with the Novell and open SuSE maintainers for some years. That relationship should have built some trust for the SuSE guys, employees of Novell or otherwise, and that should be the bellweather test for the MS/Novell agreement.
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.
Look at it this way: the code within Novell SuSE is examined by both the in-house and volunteer groups. The volunteer group don't allow any proprietary code to be directly incorporated into the OpenSuSE branch - the repositories are there for people to use if they want but the core offering is vanilla. To be fair, the Novell-SuSE distro uses the external repositories too - compare this to some of the other distros that have proprietary graphics drivers included within their "vanilla".
For the sake of argument, I use proprietary to mean patented or copyrighted code - the difference is not too relevant as both can result in a law suit for breach or infringement - the supposed "methods" that have been patented are, as I think most sane and savvy people would agree, mainly bogus.
As I said before, this argument is largly a domestic US one, software patents may stand up in a US court but almost certainly would not do so in the EC (Microsoft's largest market) and an attack upon (F)OSS would be seen as an attempt to manipulate the market by destroying competition. I'm not sure that Microsoft would want that case to be brought against them having promised to reduce their lock-out ethos within the EC area (and having been fined for not complying fully or on a timely basis).
Regardless of what the McCreerys et al may wish, software patents in the EC are not allowable at this time - the reason no-one has dared to try and go to court and prosecute an "infringement" is precisely for that reason, the patents would be ruled invalid under current EC law whether granted by the EPO or any national PO or not, they are excluded from patenting.
Novell, as distinct from SuSE, has made a business agreement with Microsoft. The minutiae of that deal will probably never be opened to the public domain unless there is an escape clause in it somewhere, which I doubt. However, it's almost certain that, if it was Oracle, IBM or anyone else who had made a deal the same would pertain. Just because Novell is the nominal owner of SuSE Linux does not mean that corporate Novell is going to be an open book to all and sundry, it is a for profit company and will continue to operate as such and for the (F)OSS or anybody else to expect any different is unrealistic.
Novell, however, are not the guardians of SuSE Linux, the employed and volunteer maintainers have that distinguishment. Those are the people with whom my trust rests and a lot of the community seem to have forgotten that fact.
My "cry wolf" comment is very much intended to reflect the way the community is percieved outside, by people who are not developers (or /.ers), the potential customers, allies, press and plain uninformed. For those people
A couple of corrections
McCartney was outbid by Michael Jackson for the Beatles catalogue - MJ had asked PM what the best investment was and PM said "The Beatles catalogue". When PM lost the auction he also fell out with MJ. Suprise, suprise!
The beneficiaries of the extended copyright will be the record companies (see the original article) not the artists, that's why the list of "signatories" included dead artists.
This is a profiteering expedition in the good ship "BPI" (Britain's RIAA) and they've been holed below the waterline by the Gower's Report so they've produced a highly biased "Poll" and are trying to stuff it in the hole. Meanwhile, "BPI-2" is being prepared and sets sail for Brussels to launch a charm-offence boarding party upon the EC Commission.
I'm praying for a Gower's mark 1 U-Boat being ready to greet them :)
Hi Nick,
I agree with pretty much all you've said and am glad that you have made the distinction, that maybe I've been unable to express properly, between SuSE and Novell.
This is basically what I'm trying to get at; the arrangement between MS and Novell is a corporate contract and, from personal experience of over 35 years in business (I've been a London based director of a unit of a US multinational, retired and then formed my own business), it is definitely the norm to have NDA's within non-compete/joint-dev projects.
The problem for the the (F)OSS community is that they are used to openness as a matter of course and suspect anything that appears to be hidden, the fact that MS are involved magnifies that suspicion into stratospheric realms.
Whatever parts of the arrangement between Novell and MS are thus covered will not be released to the community or the industry unless one or other of them decides to break the contract - the (F)OSS community will have to live with that.
By the nature of GPL, anything that is released to the SuSE (not Novell SuSE Enterprise clients) community has to be under a GPL license and, personally, I cannot imagine SuSE maintainers accepting anything that even smells faintly tainted unless it is headed up with a GPL license co-signed by Novell and MS.
As I've said elsewhere, the spotlight is on this deal, the players and their actions and it's not going to be turned off in a hurry. Any code being released from the joint develpment will be scrutinized to the nth degree - by just about the whole (F)OSS community. 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?
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."?
Have FSF check or write the license if that's what makes people comfortable but don't just reject everything out of hand.
I think that anything that aids interoperability between (F)OSS and proprietary softwares (particularly MS software) is a good thing for Linux - neither are going to go away in a hurry - and is also a good thing for MS.
Your analysis of how MS looks at the future is, I would say, correct but with an additional element, MS has seen the direction that the world is going and it threatens their longevity if they do not actually adapt to some of those changes.
The belated entry of MS into the web-sphere (admittedly, they tried before with the limited Passport and Spaces/Groups concept - they din't grasp the idea of it being an uncontrolled area that does not fall into a corporate model) has shown both MS and the rest of the interested tech' world that they, a) are not currently very good at it (but they are learning fast) and, b) they have some serious catching up to do (for which they are going to need strategic partners).
MS are learning about "Adapt or Die", they as sure as hell don't like it (and there's a possibility that the likes of Steve Ballmer may never get it) but it's a fact of their life. The other thing that must have really stung MS is that this area, like FOSS (FSF), cannot be bought. The one area where ideas are not for sale just happens to be the future of their industry.
MS will have to work with (F)OSS, previous competitors and new competitors to survive and their "embrace, extend and extinguish" methodology can no longer work - it isn't possible to "EE&E" a social idea or movement.
There are other points that I would bring up but they've been written elsewhere on /. so I'll pass on all but one:
If SCO taught the market anything at all, it is that suing your own customer base is not a viable business model. For MS to try and sue anybody other than corporate competitors would be an act of suicide, would o
Nick,
thanks for your reply. My response is, I hope, rational and non-inflammatory. I'm not an MS apologist but am, amongst other things, a SuSE user and a believer in facts before assumptions.
Whilst I can accept that Novell may be percieved as being niaive for entering any covanent with MS they do have, as quite a few people have pointed out, past experience so may be a little better prepared than they are being given credit for. 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.
So there has to be an element of conjecture about the contents of that agreement? This allows the formulation of any number of scenarios that can arise from the agreement - none of which are provable either way.
The press release is just that - a public relations announcement. Nowhere in it does it say that Novell are granting MS rights to use their patents (or vice versa), it does say that Novell will not litigate against MS customers for infringement of Novell patents and MS makes the same covenant towards Novell Enterprise customers. Both retain the right to sue each other for patent infringement.
Whilst I found PJ's original mission (coverage and collation of details of the SCO vs IBM case) admirable, informative and enlightening, I do not take as fact her musings on what may be in a document that she has not seen or upon the thoughts of Eben Moglen. Bear in mind that Moglen said that the covanent doesn't breach GPLv2 but v3 will be written so that it would breach that.
The removal of the page may have something to do with the fact that this one http://www.novell.com/linux/microsoft/faq_opensour ce.html replaced it.
So back to, Really?
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. .Net and Mono where MS say that they are not going to open the source of .Net to the OSS community but the community is free to use Mono if they wish. The mixed message being that there is some .Net infringing code in Mono and Novell SuSE customers would, alone, be exempted from any litigation that MS may institute - I would, again, take that as a FUD item as Mono was built without any MS involvement and can only benefit Microsoft as it enables .Net usage by the *nix community and thus extends their premier delivery medium.
The plug-in has been on the OOo list of things to do, is an active project on SourceForge and has now been submitted for acceptance.
You may like to read this to get the official repudiation of PJ's Groklaw FUD http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2006/Dec-04.html at least this is written by someone in a position to actually know about the plug-in.
The main comment of note, from the documents on Groklaw, are about
On your final points, we can agree. Microsoft's past dealings should leave nobody in any doubt of what they can do and deeply wary of their current motives but, to a large extent, this reinforces my point. Microsoft are past masters at generating FUD and they are fully aware that any dealings that they have with the (F)OSS community will generate a high level of conversation (to say the least) and, you will accept, that there is always a readiness within certain groups (on /. - never :)) to fire off verbal canonnades with accompanying fireworks display at anyone and anything that is suspected of consorting with the "devil". They have got a pretty cheap but highly visible a
Novell also agreed not to use their patent arsenal to defend Linux against MS
Really? Just where in the agreement is that? They have agreed not to sue MS users for any supposed infringement of their (Novell's) patents. Novell also recommitted themselves to the support of the Linux and open source community following Ballmer's outburst about MS's IP.
A plug-in isn't a fork! This is a plug-in development that can be found on SourceForge, it was discussed quite extensively here on
So the possible summing up would be:
SCO vs IBM case
Good Guys: IBM, Novell.
Bad Guys: SCO, MS.
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).
Thanks Matt,
I'm intrigued by an idea of a SuSE/MS OOo fork idea - it would surely isolate the user base of a forked version so I think I'll stick with the standard OOo version :) - as I think they may have a problem with that in the EU area.
As you say, there may be a point at which Novell says "Enough" and withdraws from the deal. However, I see that point coming more from its volunteer programmers base, rather than from within the Novell corporate body, as they are the objective overseers of the SuSE offering. If they get twitchy about anything and the in-house programmers were to follow suit then I think Novell would have to review their situation. That's not meant as a denegration of the in-house guys but more a case of the outside people not having the same constraints upon them in terms of areas of involvememnt (wood for trees analogy).
I hope that it plays out well and that the co-venture does produce something of benefit to the whole Linux community not just Novell SuSE, in the cross communication between MS and *nix products. (GPLv3 may blow that completely though, from the MS point of view, as I cannot see them opening up their comms stack to the world!).
Regards,
Jez
Another point: Why on earth would any corporation want to use the top end versions of vista anyway?
Aero graphics may make pretty eye candy but what does it add to produtivity? The side bar has a clock! Whoopie, I've got a watch.
Unless you're a pc manufacturer and wish to demonstrate the processing power of your product, what benefit do you gain? The basic version, without Aero, does everything that is generally required in an office environment (unless you want the MS security stuff too, which most companies won't) and will run Office 2007, Ooo, StarOffice etc. :)
But, hey, so will XP and Win2k
Well said. This point has been discussed before and just that conclusion reached.
The primary reason that the case has not been thrown out is to obviate any chance of SCO calling for a retrial or of an appeal.
Just following the case in the press, on Groklaw and here have shown that Kimball and Wells have been scrupulously fair (over-fair in some peoples eyes) in allowing SCO as much leeway as possible to avoid those eventualities.
The fact that SCO seem to have managed to dig themselves an ever deeper hole is the apparent result. The judges are just trying to make sure that there's no hidden rope or stepladder that SCO can use to pull their heads over the parapet again.
I think that quite a few people missed a bit from the original and referred articles.
The copyright in question is for the artist who recorded the material. The lobbying was to increase their copyright to 95 years.
The author of the work, the real creator of the work already has 70 years from the date of publishing/recording to collect royalties for the work.
This seems to be the point of confusion, the creative body (the author) gets to collect for a pretty decent period of time (too long in my view) whilst the person(s) who record and release a copy of that work and, more importantly, the record companies receive royalties for a lesser period.
That, to me seems a perfectly equitable arrangement as the creator derives greater benefit than those that had nothing to do with the creative process. ......" releases and the aged 50's/60's "pop" stars who require a new tennis racquet (or Caribbean Island!) in their dotage.
The lobbying for the extension seems to be of greatest benefit to the makers of those dire "Best Of
Hi, and thanks for your reply.
The above response was what I was rather hoping for, reasoned and clear, as I was trying to make the point that your original was somewhat over-emotive and a touch hyperbolic.
I did not distrust your motives for making the post just the manner in which you made it.
Maybe my reply was incendiary in its manner but my major points were, I think, justified and any public debate should have a alternate view of the subject matter. :). Equally, I am not a ABM'er as I will use whatever does the job best
I am not a Microsoft apologist, I run RedHat, Centos and (of course) Suse as well as Microsoft products - I do a fair bit of testing of various softwares - and I've tried Vista and in all honesty, apart from some pretty eye-candy, I don't like it and will not be deploying it
Having loosely established my credentials, I would like to continue in the same vein as your reply:
Whilst I can see why you would make some assumptions about the SuSE/MS deal and the large chunks of cash flying around I fail to understand why you cannot grasp the central point of my, admitted, supposition. That the deal revolves around the Novell NetGear & MS Active Server products and not GPL'd software. The money represents the cross licencing fees for use of those products (any developed software that may come from it would become, by its nature, a cost neutral item) and would reflect the respective user base - MS probably has an order of magnitude more users than SuSE so the payments by both parties should and does reflect this.
My reasons for being less worried by the "injection" of proprietary code into the Linux code base is that, having publicly announced a formal deal with a Linux distributor, any code given to the community would have to be placed under the GPL (v2 or 3) and aknowledged as such. The software guys at Novell aren't going to let non-GPL code into the tree as it would destroy their ability to market the code in total. The volunteer community within Suse would, most certainly, reject any code that even hinted of being non-GPL (see, much earlier in the thread, a reply from one of the SuSE software guys). In fact, as I said in my reply, the entire Linux community will be watching with deep suspicion for anything like this to happen.
I would think, and IANAL either, that should MS try and claim, at a later date, that some of their proprietary code is in the SuSE offering they would have a somewhat difficult task proving that they didn't donate it. They have publicly entered into a joint development deal, they must be sharing code somewhere along the line!
The question then becomes: Is the shared code/software product only offered to SuSE Enterprise customers or to all Suse and then, by extension, Linux users?
My suggestion is that it is the former, your worry is that it sneaks into the latter. I would suggest that this point becomes a bit mute, as the use of proprietary code from anyone is barred from the Linux source and none of the maintainers are going to accept any offered code unless it is sitting under GPL bearing the names Novell & Microsoft as joint doners.
I have read the Halloween memo, the details of the SCO case and the Santacruz/Caldera history. I'm also reasonably conversant with Microsoft's history since its formation (I was working with IBM mainframes at the time) and am fully aware of their dubious business tactics over that time. I'm also aware that whilst Stevie B is CEO of the company he is, by all accounts, not much more that a blustering used-car salesman. However, his job is to make money for MS and their shareholders - his methods may be offensive to a large part of the industry (myself included) but that's how he does his job.
In his "Adapt or Die" treatise, RMS hammers the following point home: As an industry evolves and adapts, so must the players evolve and adapt to survive within that industry.
Microsoft's way of coping has been by their embrace and extinguish methodolog
A FUD-ball attempting to reach critical mass:
I gave the man the benefit of the doubt, even though I am extremely angry at Novell, and read his letter. It is very well written and makes the reader think, "Oh, that's all right then". But it isn't. He is not acting in a vaccuum and this is not a textbook case study (yet). Why? ...
1. Novell obviously needed cash quite badly, enough to risk a PR backlash.
A somewhat base supposition unsupported by any facts but, pray continue
2. Microsoft was a key driver behind SCO and this is their next highly visible move against Linux. ...
Once again a tenuous supposition and an extremely odd example of of a move against anybody
3. Microsoft has linux people in-house. If they wanted linux they could make their own distro for free, plus hiring a team to add interoperability which presumably should be easy since they would be the only team on the planet with the inside knowledge of how to do that.
Mute point. MS making an in-house distro would still require a GPL'd release of the end product plus, why redesign the wheel?
Imagine that the interoperability is with Novell products only, this requires the use of Novell owned IP so that MS don't infringe upon Novell Patents. MS doesn't want to get sued either.
4. Of course, this expert knowledge would be copied by other distros if it was GPL, so they wouldn't want to do that.
Why should they? This is a purely Novell/MS collaboration not a community effort. Or are you saying that, if a joint Novell/MS product was to be released under GPL you wouldn't use it?
5. And, they wouldn't be able to easily infect other distros a la SCO, which is another reason.
Eh? This isn't even English, slow down on the recreationals.
6. Finally, if they distribute GNU/Linux under GPL then they are finally saying everything is already under the GPL. (possibly including nonencumbrance by patents but IANAL).
How else can it be distributed? They are saying nothing of the kind, the logic train had departed the station about an hour before you arrived! (Obviously).
7. Novell cannot leash the dragon once it begins to rampage. In fact, this patent agreement clearly removes potential weapons of OSS-friendly vendors like IBM against possible future SCO-like lititgation from Microsoft. It means that Novell may likely enter the role of indeminifying vendors and users against Microsoft litigation (if the patent agreement allows that).
I thought that point 6 was the final one but emotive bile knows no bounds.
This agreement does nothing of the sort, there is no logical way that your assumption flows from any availible facts. As Novell have denied that there are any patent infringements by Linux upon MS patents then the patents in question are, presumably, those held by Novell on their communication products.
8. Novell's CEO claims their actions prove they are honorably. I am sure he would like to think so. However if actions are louder than words, then surely this deal with Microsoft proves Novell is only in business for Novell, especially if it means all other OSS vendors get poisoned by their actions.
Gee, not a lawyer and not too hot as a market analyst either. This is nothing more than a biased opinion baked in a conspiracy theory. Of course Novell are in it for Novell - they don't have power of attorney for anyone else and they are a commercial operation.
I'm stunned and shocked that a commercial business made a commercial decision with the intent of making a competitive and commercial gain - not.
9. It also proves that Novell's CEO is intellectually and/or ethically unfit for his position due to his blithe ignorance of SCO and Microsoft's role in SCO, smoking gun and all.
Stop throwing vitriolic toys about it makes a mess of the nursery. It shows that a CEO of a commercial operation is capable of making a commercial deal with another c
If both community statements are read (Novell and Microsoft) there would appear to be the information that makes rather more sense of this than the selection of FUD-balls that are being hurled about.
The agreement protects Novell clients from any patent suit from MS and MS clients are protected from patent suits from Novell. The patents that Novell are talking about are their propriatery (or formally propriatery) patents and it's within this context that the agreement should be viewed.
Stevie B throwing an MS patents FUD-ball at the press and awaiting the fallout seems to be highly effective policy, most noticeably amongst the ABMers and (F)OSS-or-die camps.
Lest we forget, Novell is a commercial enterprise (as are RH, Canonical et al) and makes money from service contracts for Novell SuSE Linux packages but, before its acquisition of SuSE, it made its money from the Netgear range of products. There are patents on all or most of the pre SuSE products and these are the patents in question.
Worth noting too are the comments from MS that, a) they looked at their patent portfolio and decided that they needed the pact (and were prepared to pay for it) - not the other way around - and that it was MS that instituted the Patents protection part of the agreement and, b) that Novell did not admit to or aknowledge any infringement by SuSE Linux on MS patents.
Ok, I know, moderated to 1 point!
Surely the main FUD is that Microsoft would actually sue any customers in the first place. If SCO taught anybody anything it's that suing your existing or potential customer base is not a good business move.
I use both SuSE and Microsoft software, Microsoft know that as the damned stuff is registered with them, would Microsoft care that I used Red Hat or any other distro as long as I've got their product too? If I was not using Microsoft products and was a purely open source shop how would they know?
The only way that Microsoft could effectively start a patents suit against non-Microsoft users is to issue a form of wholesale trawl through everybody's company infrastructure to prove it, they would then have to find something to sue for.
How, exactly, would they ever gain that level of intrusive permission from any court anywhere?
"If it pleases the court, we have reason to believe that some people are using software, of which we have no details, that may or may not infringe upon our patents." "Hmmmm! Dismissed. Next!"
Or they could target a company and go after them and then what? They then risk taking on IBM, Sun, the entire Linux and Nix community and their patent banks? That sounds like madness to me and it's the reason no such attempts have been made (SB spouted FUD about infringements was just that, FUD!). The collective war chests of patents assure one thing and one thing only, any attempt at a patents war from either side would result in a mutually assured destruction of both sides. Legal costs and time, customer alienation and the potential for the loss of those patents would prohibit any such attempt.
Oh, by the way, do I intend migrating from Suse to another distro? Absolutely not.
Propulsion problem is sorted.
20 London building site labourers have volunteered to go out on Friday night pub crawl, drinking a minimum 20 pints each of Guiness or lager and then indulging in a Curry-fest. The next morning they will all sit in a bunker sized khazi, attached to the base of the rocket, and at the point of "...3, 2, 1" light up, cough and the resulting, combined, fart power is estimated to produce enough downward thrust to achieve terminal velocity.
Unfortunately, there have been fewer volunteers for the ground and clean-up crews. Proposed methods of re-entry from space are under review.
Novell = newSCO? I think not as does the author of the original article.
Read his follow up addressing just that question:
http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS4287912423.html Novell is not new SCO.
The reasoning is sound as are the conclusions.
Try viewing in MSN Messenger if you want bad! No auto-scroll (on a laptop touchpad), postings overlap, posting appears above "Re:..." point, rating views (view postings rated above "x") is pretty well non-existent etc., etc. Ok, so why am I not suprised :)
To the original post however;
Were I to be an, ahem, non-registered occupant of the US and wished to return home to my native country (possibly somewhere south of the border) and return at a later date, I would have to think very, very carefully about that decision - Who needs an electrified fence?
Run out of decent cigars or untipped cigarettes and were planning a quick visit north .... maybe not today.
I wish the sods would dump some of mine, maybe then I'd stop getting the vast number of unsolicited invitations to take out loans, credit cards and various insurance/assurance deals that I do now. One look at my balances and they'd run for the hills!
Ahem! I think that you're confusing copyright with patent.
Copyright prevents you distributing the, in this case, software as your own work (the "copy" bit of copyright).
Patenting prevents you taking the, again in this case, software and modifying it, decompiling it or otherwise adulterating it - whether you distribute it or not.
To return to the original topic. I've had to run software audits and, I can assure you, head bean-counters do not like any conflicts in licencing terms within a supposedly unified IT deployment. That is the danger that RMS & GPLv3 can produce - the people handling the cheque book will not care for the semantics, they will see incompatibility and that could be a driving force away from Open Source deployment and into the arms of the proprietary market.
Linus is pragmatic, he can see that there are times when adopting a propretary solution (graphics drivers etc.) is better than having no or greatly inferior solutions. The ultimate aim for the Linux and other OSS systems is to make them as useable as possible to all potential markets whilst RMS's vision will make that almost unobtainable with GPLv3.
Give me pragmatism any day of the week.
Disclaimer: IANAL etc., etc.
I think he was just misusing the Spok-en word, mark you, the written word allows greater ambiguity. :)
This is trekking off topic methinks