Patent Infringement Lawsuit Filed Against Red Hat & Novell III

October 18, 2007 2 Comments

(coverage continues)

Via 451 CAOS Theory: It looks like the Acacia lawsuit may indeed have little to do with Open Source and be just another general patent troll case. From the article:

The nation’s first Linux patent suit currently facing Red Hat and Novell isn’t about open source at all. Or so the plaintiff says.

IP Innovation last week filed the patent lawsuit against Linux in Texas, alleging that both Red Hat and Novell infringe on U.S. Patent No. 5,072,412, “User Interface with Multiple Workspaces for Sharing Display System Objects.”

Neither IP Innovation nor its parent company Acacia Research responded to request for comment at the time the patent suit first came to light. But today, in a statement sent to InternetNews.com, Acacia Chairman and CEO Paul Ryan defended the firm’s actions and argued that there is no conspiracy against open source coming from his firm.

“IP Innovation is not attempting to inject itself in the ongoing philosophical debate of whether products or services which utilize open source are subject to the same intellectual property laws/behaviors as non-open source offerings,” Ryan said in the statement. “Acacia and its subsidiaries do not philosophically differentiate any company, but rather seek to consistently and fairly monetize patent rights from those companies which incorporate patented technology.”

The company also dismissed allegations that Microsoft somehow is using Acacia as a kind of proxy to fight a patent battle against Linux. A pair of key Acacia employees recently joined the patent-holding firm from Microsoft.

Additionally, Groklaw notes that the patent involved is scheduled to expire on December 10, 2008. That could explain why Microsoft, who could easily afford to ensure that the case lasts longer than that, has not been made a target. It’s strangely reassuring to see that this probably doesn’t have anything to do with Open Source. That’s a sad indication of the state of the current situation.

–jeremy

Filed under Microsoft, Novell, Open Source, Red Hat

Patent Infringement Lawsuit Filed Against Red Hat & Novell II

October 13, 2007 2 Comments

(A follow up to previous coverage)

As you may have guessed, this topic is being discussed heavily around the web. Mark Radcliffe points out that Open Source companies are likely becoming a more tempting target to patent trolls due to the stunning growth in the sector (keep in mind that Microsoft, Apple, et al. put up with this kind of thing all the time):

Although I and many attorneys in the open source industry have long been concerned about patent challenges to open source companies, this case appears to be the first by patent trolls against an open source licensor. The open source industry provides a tempting target because of its rapid growth. This morning, Eben Moglen at the Software Freedow Law Center Seminar on FOSS issues noted that Brad Bunnell of Microsoft joined Acacia on October 1 . According to news reports, Brad spent sixteen years at Microsoft at a number of positions which included General Manager, Intellectual Property Licensing. http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/071001/20071001005590.html?.v=1

Eben raises the intriguing question about whether these incidents are related. Given the time that it takes to prepare a patent lawsuit, Brad’s hiring probably did not effect the filing of this lawsuit. However the hiring may indicate the addition of a new business line for Acacia: suits against open source companies. Steve Ballmer’s recent comments about Red Hat’s obligation to pay Microsoft for alleged use of its patents makes this lawsuit and the timing of the move interesting.

Matt Asay points out a list of coincidences:

* One or more former Microsoft licensing execs join Acacia or one or its companies;
* Ballmer makes his most recent statement regarding Red Hat;
* Almost the same day, Red Hat (and presumbably Novell) receive notice of the alleged infringement from IP Innovation (Acacia);
* Before either company has a chance to consider the letter and respond, IP Innovation files its lawsuit in Texas;
* Novell changes all of its IP indemnification the same day (which it has named “Technology Assurance Program” as contrasted with Red Hat’s Open Source Assurance Program Novell apparently isn’t interested in assuring open source, just technology ;-);
* Novell’s new program notes a change in the Microsoft/Novell deal that covers GPLv3 code distributed by Novell for downstream recipients.

Hmm….I forget sometimes who is on which team, but it certainly seems like two sides have been conspiring on this, and I don’t mean IP Innovation and Microsoft (which is almost a given).

Stephen Walli (who was still at Microsoft when the SCO suit was launched) gives some advice that I couldn’t agree with more: Take a deep breath. Be calm. He continues:

The U.S. Supreme Court continues to involve itself in the broken patent system. The Linux Foundation and the Open Invention Network are both geared for this particular fight. I have confidence that the Groklaw community will step into the breach of reporting and investigation again. IBM, Intel, and HP have a vested interest in the outcome, and nobody plays IP games the way IBM does. Over the next few weeks, lawyers will come together behind the scenes from all the interested parties on the defending side. Hopefully egos won’t be too large, and a coherent plan of negotiation will emerge.

Some of the more interesting questions for me will be:

* Why Red Hat AND Novell?
* Why not Microsoft? (Acacia went after Apple who settled. Microsoft would seem to have deeper pockets than Red Hat or Novell. It would seem to be the more interesting business discussion.)
* If Microsoft is not involved, should they be? If Apple settled, and then this suit settles, Microsoft should know they’re next on the list. Or are they trusting IBM et al to win this one for them?

To quote one of my favourite lawyers in this space:

“If the F/OSS community wants to be in commercial space, community members will have to learn to deal calmly with IP litigation. The F/OSS production model will work where it makes sense, and it will not work where it doesn’t. It’s really just that simple. Particular claims in individual suits—even one against a flagship program such as the GNU/Linux OS—will not determine the fate of the community. Such cases present factual issues that will get resolved one way or another; they do not represent a crisis for F/OSS production as a whole. Norm entrepreneurial rhetoric that plays off such cases should be treated as entertainment. Enjoy it if you like it, take inspiration from it if you must, but don’t confuse it with the way things actually get done.”

I’m sure some former colleagues at Microsoft are excited. Mr. Smith and Mr. Ballmer most assuredly. But just as with the SCO Group litigation, there is no reason to celebrate. They shouldn’t confuse this with “the way things actually get done.” Pax.

I do find it interesting that Acacia went from Apple to Red Hat / Novell, when Microsoft surely would have been a much more compelling target from a business perspective. It becomes a simple case of follow the money from there. More information will come out of this in the coming weeks and months, so staying calm and focusing on what’s important is surely the correct course of action.

–jeremy

Filed under Apple, Linux, Microsoft, MSFT, Novell, Open Source, Red Hat

Patent Infringement Lawsuit Filed Against Red Hat & Novell

October 12, 2007 3 Comments

Earlier this month, Ballmer reiterated his stance on patents and Linux:

Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer has warned users of Red Hat Linux that they will have to pay Microsoft for its intellectual property.

“People who use Red Hat, at least with respect to our intellectual property, in a sense have an obligation to compensate us,” Ballmer said last week at a company event in London discussing online services in the UK.

Red Hat quickly fired back:

Red Hat is assuring its customers that they can continue to deploy its Linux operating system with confidence and without fear of legal retribution from Microsoft, despite the increasingly vocal threats emanating from the Redmond, Wash., company.

In a scathing response to Ballmer’s remarks, Red Hat’s IP team said the reality is that the community development approach of free and open-source code represents a healthy development paradigm, which, when viewed from the perspective of pending lawsuits related to intellectual property, is at least as safe as proprietary software.

“We are also aware of no patent lawsuit against Linux. Ever. Anywhere,” the team said in a blog posting.

The Linux vendor, which is based in Raleigh, N.C., also gives customers open-source intellectual property protections through its Open Source Assurance Program, which includes a promise to replace the software if there is an intellectual property issue.

“This provides customers with assurances of uninterrupted use of the technology solution. Protecting our customers is a top priority, and we take it very seriously. Our confidence in our technology and protections for customers remains strong and has not wavered,” the blog posting said.

While many people thought Ballmer was just continuing his FUD campaign, a scant couple days later an IP infringement lawsuit was actually filed:

Plaintiffs IP Innovation and Technology Licensing Corp. claim to have the rights to U.S. Patent No. 5,072,412 for a User Interface with Multiple Workspaces for Sharing Display System Objects issued Dec. 10, 1991 along with two other similar patents.

Defendants Red Hat Inc. and Novell have allegedly committed acts of infringement through products including the Red Hat Linux system, the Novell Suse Linex Enterprise Desktop and the Novell Suse Linex Enterprise Server.

“Red Hat’s and Novell’s infringement, contributory infringement and inducement to infringe has injured plaintiffs and plaintiffs are entitled to recover damages adequate to compensate them for such infringement but in no event less than a reasonable royalty,” the original complaint states.

The plaintiffs also allege that defendants received notice of the patents, therefore the infringing activities have been deliberate and willful.

Plaintiffs are seeking an injunction from the court, increased damages and other relief that the court or a jury may deem just and proper.

T. John Ward Jr. of Ward & Smith Law Firm in Longview is representing the plaintiff.

The case has been assigned to U.S. District Judge Leonard E. Davis.

You have to find it ironic that “IP Innovation” is suing based on something seemingly obvious that was patented in a 1991 by Xerox. Things get interesting from there though. It seems IP Innovation LLC is a subsidiary of Acacia. Looking at Acacia closer, you see:

In July 2007, Acacia Research Corporation announced that Jonathan Taub joined its Acacia Technologies group as Vice President. Mr. Taub joins Acacia from Microsoft, where he was Director, Strategic Alliances for the Mobile and Embedded Devices (MED) division since 2004.

and

Acacia Technologies Names Brad Brunell, Former Microsoft General Manager, Intellectual Property Licensing, to Management Team

Monday October 1, 6:01 am ET

NEWPORT BEACH, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Acacia Research Corporation (NASDAQ:ACTG – News) announced today that its Acacia Technologies group, a leader in technology licensing, has named Brad Brunell as Senior Vice President.

Mr. Brunell joins Acacia from Microsoft, where during his 16 year career he held a number of management positions, including General Manager, Intellectual Property Licensing.

So the SCOX trial isn’t even officially over and we already have a company with large Microsoft ties filing a clear patent troll case against Linux. You think they’d at least hide the connections better this time. It should be noted that IP Innovation appears to have previously gotten some money out of Apple for this, so it’s not simply aimed at FOSS. How much of this are we going to have to go though until the system is actually fixed? Too much. Let the SCO II games begin.

–jeremy

Filed under Apple, Linux, Microsoft, MSFT, Novell, Open Source, Red Hat

The .NET announcement from Microsoft

October 4, 2007 Leave a comment

Contrary to some of the headlines I am seeing, Microsoft did not Open Source .NET. To be fair, they didn’t claim to in the announcement, but many people seemed to misunderstand what they actually did. From the announcement:

One of the things my team has been working to enable has been the ability for .NET developers to download and browse the source code of the .NET Framework libraries, and to easily enable debugging support in them.

Today I’m excited to announce that we’ll be providing this with the .NET 3.5 and VS 2008 release later this year.

We’ll begin by offering the source code (with source file comments included) for the .NET Base Class Libraries (System, System.IO, System.Collections, System.Configuration, System.Threading, System.Net, System.Security, System.Runtime, System.Text, etc), ASP.NET (System.Web), Windows Forms (System.Windows.Forms), ADO.NET (System.Data), XML (System.Xml), and WPF (System.Windows). We’ll then be adding more libraries in the months ahead (including WCF, Workflow, and LINQ). The source code will be released under the Microsoft Reference License (MS-RL).

You’ll be able to download the .NET Framework source libraries via a standalone install (allowing you to use any text editor to browse it locally). We will also provide integrated debugging support of it within VS 2008.

Not only is the Microsoft Reference License not Open Source, it’s not even one of the three that Microsoft submitted to the OSI for potential approval. It’s a “look but don’t touch” type license. whurley puts it well:

The license indicates that developers can “see” the source code, but Microsoft’s not providing any means of copying it. If a developer finds a bug in the code, rather than fixing it themselves and submitting a patch to the community they’ll be encouraged to submit feedback via the product feedback center. They’re showing us the man behind the curtain, but we’re not allowed to speak to him in person just yet. We’re still stuck with the giant, disembodied green head. And since community involvement is essential to most open source efforts, well . . .

One has to assume that this is the first step in a broader plan. Could that plan include something similar to the JCP Java community process? We’ll see. I’d guess some people inside Microsoft had to work hard enough to get this far, so it may be a while before the next step in the plan in revealed. This brings us to the next question. If you’re an Open Source developer, should you be taking advantage of this opportunity to look under the .NET hood. Under the current license, I’d say absolutely not. I’m not a lawyer though, and this is one of those cases where you really should consult one. What, if anything, this means for Mono remains to be seen.

–jeremy

Filed under Microsoft, Open Source

EU Court Holds the Antitrust Line Against Microsoft, but May not have Stemmed its Dominance Tide

September 24, 2007 Leave a comment

Yes, I am a bit late on this one. I had a couple items on the blog TODO a bit longer than I anticipated. I’m working my way through those now, but will still post the items I think are especially important.

So, as you’ve surely heard by now, the EU dismissed the Microsoft anti-trust appeal. From Andy:

In what the New York Times is calling a “stinging rebuke,” the European Court of First Instance issued a much-awaited judgment at 9:30 AM today in Luxembourg affirming almost all of the March 23, 2004 holdings by the European Commission that Microsoft had abused its dominant position to further expand its market share. The Court also affirmed the remedies against Microsoft, including fines of approximately US $1 billion. Only those parts of the original decision that would appointed a trustee to monitor Microsoft’s compliance with the EU’s orders were rejected, as exceeding the powers of the Commission. But while the victory is a significant one for the European Commission, how great a defeat is this in fact for Microsoft? Perhaps less than first meets the eye, on which more below.

Today’s decision is but the latest event in an almost 10 year history of investigations, trials, appeals, and new allegations that initially focused only on Microsoft’s activities involving server software, but eventually grew to involve allegations of abuses in the office software marketplace as well. All of these accusations involved contentions that Microsoft was limiting the ability of its competitors to create products that would interoperate with its own, thus further entrenching itself. With time, open source advocates and trade associations filed lodged complaints as well, as Linux gained market share and greater vendor interest, and OpenDocument Format (ODF) compliant products, such as OpenOffice, gained greater credibility.

In the decision announced today, the Court found that Microsoft had abused its dominant market through two types of conduct, and ordered Microsoft to remedy the situation as follows:

The first type of conduct found to constitute an abuse consisted in Microsoft’s refusal to supply its competitors with ‘interoperability information’ and to authorise them to use that information to develop and distribute products competing with its own products on the work group server operating system market, between October 1998 and the date of adoption of the decision. By way of remedy, the Commission required Microsoft to disclose the ‘specifications’ of its client/server and server/server communication protocols to any undertaking wishing to develop and distribute work group server operating systems.

The second type of conduct to which the Commission took exception was the tying of Windows Media Player with the Windows PC operating system. The Commission considered that that practice affected competition on the media player market. By way of remedy, the Commission required Microsoft to offer for sale a version of Windows without Windows Media Player.

At first you probably thought, wow – $1B! Andy puts that in perspective though:

While today’s judgment is significant, it is worth noting that the penalties that Microsoft has incurred to date – roughly $1 billion, plus an obligation to reimburse a far smaller amount of legal fees – are minute in comparison to the magnitude of the profits it has garnered over the ten-year investigative period. During that time, its market share in both of the subject markets has grown dramatically. As a result, while Microsoft has nominally lost in court, it continues to win at the bottom line, given that the only impact on its products to date has been more symbolic than effectual – the requirement to offer a version of Windows that does not bundle a free copy of its media player.

Stated another way, a billion dollars spread over ten years is $100 million a year. During the same period, Microsoft revenues have grown enormously, to over $50 billion a year, fueled primarily by the continuing growth of its operating system and Office products. It has been a tiny cost of business to pay, and a shrewd and cynical business decision to incur, a liability to pay one fifth of one percent of annual gross revenues to retain the freedom to dominate so lucrative a market in spite of the 2004 judgment.

Suddenly it doesn’t sound like all that much money, does it. That aside, it’s good to see some follow though from the EU. The Microsoft PR machine is in full swing, warning other US companies of the dire impact of this ruling. Two items on that note:

“Obviously, law that is made for Microsoft is going to apply to other market leaders as well. IBM, Google, Apple and others would have to look very carefully at the implications for their business models,” — Brad Smith, Microsoft General Counsel

“What this ruling will do is send a message to companies that if they establish a good market position with a successful product, they will be forced in Europe to essentially give up that product to their competitors.” — Robert Kramer, a vice president of public policy for CompTIA, [a Microsoft ally]

Of course, they are confusing marketing leading with market dominant && anti-competitive. Stephe and Mark explain and expand on that point better than I’d be able to.

In the end, while it’s good to see this ruling it may not have much material impact. Windows without Media Player is not what we need. If history is any guide, Microsoft may be able to convince the courts that it’s complying and being more open, while still stifling competition and innovation with unfair practices. One place this ruling may make a difference is on the recent OOXML ISO/IEC JTC1 proceedings. If OOXML is adopted and with some of the Microsoft actions in Europe during the process that have come to light, this ruling could come into play.

–jeremy

Filed under Linux, Microsoft, MSFT, Open Source

IBM joins the OpenOffice.org

September 13, 2007 1 Comment

To the collective cheer of “It’s about time”, IBM is now officially supporting the OpenOffice.org project. From the press release:

The OpenOffice.org community today announced that IBM will be joining the community to collaborate on the development of OpenOffice.org software. IBM will be making initial code contributions that it has been developing as part of its Lotus Notes product, including accessibility enhancements, and will be making ongoing contributions to the feature richness and code quality of OpenOffice.org. Besides working with the community on the free productivity suite’s software, IBM will also leverage OpenOffice.org technology in its products.

“In the seven years since Sun founded the project, OpenOffice.org has fueled and filled the need for document data and productivity tools that are open and free. Open source software and ODF are having a profound impact around the world, with numerous communities and organizations coming together to support these initiatives and governments, and corporations and schools standardizing on the software. We look forward to working with IBM and the other members of OpenOffice.org to ensure that this momentum continues. We invite others to join us in the community and participate in building the future as OpenOffice.org and ODF continue to gain popularity across the planet,” said Rich Green, Executive Vice President, Software at Sun Microsystems, Inc.

The accessibility gains here are huge for OpenOffice.org, as it means a foot in the door to some Government procurements that were not previously possible or would have previously run into issues. Stephe also points out the significance of Redflag Chinese 2000 Software’s participation in the press release, along with the potential ODF and UOF harmonization that may occur.

IBM almost certainly would have done this much sooner if Sun wasn’t the primary OO.o backer, but it needed to happen. Andy points out that the recent OOXML setback did impact the IBM decision to do this now. The question is, is this too late. I don’t think so. While it would have been great for ODF adoption if this would have happened earlier, I think we are still at a crossroads right now. OOXML approval is an uncertainty and the market is more open than it has been in a long time. Microsoft has overshot from a functionality standpoint and the emphasis is moving toward other items like Open Standards anyway. An opportunity this large only comes around once in a generation, as John McCreesh, the OpenOffice Marketing Project Lead, sums up well in the press release:

“This is great news for the tens of millions of users of OpenOffice.org and the thousands of individual members of the project”, said John McCreesh, OpenOffice.org Marketing Project Lead. “We welcome IBM’s contributions to further enhancing the OpenOffice.org product. But equally important is IBM’s future commitment to package and distribute new works that leverage OpenOffice.org technology supporting the ISO ODF standard. ODF is a once in a generation opportunity for the IT industry to unify round a standard, and deliver lasting benefit to users of desktop technology.”

For the record, that opportunity is about $15B annually. It’s easy to see why IBM and SUN were able to put their differences aside on this one. Carpe diem!

–jeremy

Filed under IBM, Microsoft, Open Source, Open Standards, Sun

Microsoft kills its 'Get the Facts' anti-Linux site

September 13, 2007 Leave a comment

A little late on this one, but Microsoft has replaced its Get the Facts site with one that is ostensibly less biased.

“The goal of the site is to offer more in-depth information and customer-to-customer opinions about many of the issues IT administrators face,” a company spokeswoman said. “It turns out people wanted 3rd party validation in addition to people’s experiences making OS purchasing decisions so in addition to customer case studies, research reports that compare platforms the site will also offer guidance around best practices, web casts, etc.”

Who would have thought people wouldn’t fully trust what a company said about their own products without “3rd party validation”. I don’t find it too interesting that the site was pulled down. After all, the Get the Facts campaign had been debunked and derided to the point that is was certainly doing more harm than good. I do find it interesting, however, that the new Windows Server “Compare” site doesn’t really compare “Linux” with Windows. What is does is compare “Red Hat Enterprise Linux” with Windows. This could be taken two ways. 1) Red Hat Enterprise Linux is the only real competition in the eyes of Microsoft. 2) Microsoft is specifically targeting Red Hat as a result of it not signing a deal similar to the one Novell signed. I’ll let you be the judge.

While on the topic of the Novell deal, it looks like the Microsoft and Novell Open Interoperability Lab is now open. The Microsoft marketing team really does like to stick the word Open anywhere is can. At 2,500 square feet (or 50 x 50) there doesn’t seem to be much room for engineers, especially when you consider the room also has 80+ servers and a SAN.

–jeremy

Filed under Linux, Microsoft, Novell, Open Source, Red Hat

Microsoft Fails to Gain Approval for OOXML

September 4, 2007 1 Comment

There are so many posts flying around about this that it’s been difficult to keep up (and I’m still digesting a lot of it), but the bottom line is that the OOXML is not an ISO standard. Well, at least not yet. A bit oddly, Microsoft has spun this in a positive way with their “Strong Global Support for Open XML as It Enters Final Phase of ISO Standards Process” press release. The reality is that this is just the beginning. Things now move to the next step, which should get really interesting. Microsoft is pulling out all the stops on this one. Andy Updegrove, who is not only extremely knowledgeable on the subject buy also extremely balanced in his observations, went as fas as to say:

As someone who has spent a great part of my life working to support open standards over the past 20 years, I have to say that this is the most egregious, and far-reaching, example of playing the system to the advantage of a single company that I have ever seen. Breathtaking, in fact. That’s assuming, of course, that I am right in supposing that all of these newbie countries vote “yes.”

I guess we’ll just have to wait and see a few more days to learn whether that assumption is true. Want to place your bets?

Looking at other sources, allegations range from ballot stuffing to nearly straight up coercion and bribery. That should be an indication of just how important this is to Microsoft and just how important it should be to you. It’s fascinating to see one part of Microsoft make what appears to be a sincere effort to join the Open Source community and then see another part act like this. I’ll be doing some additional reading/research and will certainly have more to say on the topic. For now, here’s some good additional reading for you:

Once More unto the Breach
Once More unto the Breach
consortiuminfo.org
consortiuminfo.org
consortiuminfo.org
All about Microsoft

–jeremy

Filed under Microsoft, MSFT, ODF, Open Formats, Open Standards

Why Microsoft fears Open Source more than other proprietary vendors do

August 30, 2007 Leave a comment

It does seem as if Microsoft fears Open Source more than companies that are just as proprietary as Microsoft is. Matt has a potential explanation:

Now look at Oracle, SAP, IBM, etc. You won’t find a single other company making a concerted effort to fight open source. Not a one. Larry Ellison (Oracle) says open source is not something to be feared, but rather something “to be explained.” They clearly see open source as something to work with, and sometimes something to work through, but not something to destroy.

Sure, these and other proprietary-software companies occasionally dip into mudslinging against open source, but they don’t regularly buy analysts, set up anti-open source sites, rattle patent sabres, and generally insist on making a fetish out of open source’s demise.

Just Microsoft. Why?

I think it has a lot to do with how Microsoft chooses to make money. Microsoft, more than any other vendor listed (and many others that could be, like Autodesk, HP, Sybase, Salesforce.com, etc.), sells packaged software.

It relies, more than most companies, on a big, upfront license fee. At most vendors, such license fees barely pay for the cost of selling the product, causing them to rely on ongoing maintenance fees for their profits. So, whereas Oracle’s revenue stream looks not hugely dissimilar from an open-source revenue stream, Microsoft’s looks vastly different.

In short, Microsoft’s business and revenue model is threatened by open source much more than most proprietary software businesses.

When you look at current industry trends, both Open Source and closed source companies are relying more and more on maintenance and subscription revenues and less on pure licensing revenue. This means you have to provide continual value to your clients, or revenue starts to disappear. To me, that seems like how it should be. Matt continues:

Microsoft’s “house” is built on sand. The very factors that drove its success – easy-to-use, low-cost, integration between components – are the same things driving open source into the enterprise. Except that instead of lower cost, open source is free. Instead of integration of various components within the Microsoft-only ecosystem, open source’s open standards and open source code makes integration between disparate components – owned by different companies and communities – much easier than in the traditional proprietary world. And new open-source applications, operating systems, and middleware are heavily focused on customer value – including ease-of-use – which is challenging Microsoft on that front, as well.

Microsoft showed the way to beat the incumbent proprietary vendors, and its strategies are now being used against it by the open-source world. Except that this time, there’s one more huge value that Microsoft can never provide:

Freedom. Freedom from lock-in. Freedom to integrate and tweak and fiddle to make software work for the customer, because the vendors are no longer selling software. They’re selling service to make that software sing for the customer.

It’s very true, and somewhat ironic, that some of the strategies used by Microsoft are now being used against it. It shouldn’t be a surprise though – Microsoft does some things very well. The additional freedom from lock-in (and freedom in general) is the part that is going to turn the industry on its head though. For too long people in IT have been shackled. They’re getting a taste of freedom now and once you get that taste it’s painful to go back.

–jeremy

Filed under Microsoft, Open Source

OSI email group gets catty over Microsoft's Permissive License request

August 20, 2007 Leave a comment

In what should come as no surprise, it looks like the discussion surrounding the Microsoft OSI submissions are getting a little cantankerous. From the article:


Another community member, Donovan Hawkins, doesn’t like the MS-PL’s requirement to keep its code separate from any other code licensed differently. “I can think of cases where I made MAJOR changes to some open-source function to use in a project,” he writes. “What sort of Frankenlicense would apply to that function if I wished to release my changes under GPL but the original was MPL or MSPL? Every other line of code under a different license?”

Things got really interesting when Chris DiBona, longtime OSI member, open source advocate, and open source programs manager for Google, Inc. chimed in:

I would like to ask what might be perceived as a diversion and maybe even a mean spirited one. Does this submission to the OSI mean that Microsoft will:

a) Stop using the market confusing term Shared Source
b) Not place these licenses and the other, clearly non-free , non-osd
licenses in the same place thus muddying the market further.
c) Continue its path of spreading misinformation about the nature of
open source software, especially that licensed under the GPL?
d) Stop threatening with patents and oem pricing manipulation schemes
to deter the use of open source software?

If not, why should the OSI approve of your efforts? That of a company who has called those who use the licenses that OSI purports to defend a communist or a cancer? Why should we see this seeking of approval as anything but yet another attack in the guise of friendliness?

That query got the attention of heretofore silent Bill Hilf, Microsoft’s general manager of platform strategy. “I’m unclear how some of your questions are related to our license submissions, which is what I believe this list and the submission process are designed to facilitate,” Hilf wrote. “You’re questioning things such as Microsoft’s marketing terms, press quotes, where we put licenses on our web site, and how we work with OEMs – none of which I could find at http://opensource.org/docs/osd. If you’d like to discuss this, I’d be happy to – and I have a number of questions for you about Google’s use of and intentions with open source software as well. But this is unrelated to the OSD compliance of a license, so I will do this off-list and preferably face to face or over the phone.”

Mee-ow!

Hilf went on to say that one of the reasons Microsoft coined the term “Shared Source” was “to acknowledge that these licenses had not been approved by the OSI, and some of our Shared Source licenses will not be submitted to the OSI.” But, Hilf wrote, “I’m open to make this more distinguishable on where/how we post the [licenses] on the Web site, if it’s important to the community.”

I’d guess this is going to get even more heated from here. The OSI may end up stuck between a rock and a hard place on this one. On the one side, it’s easy to argue that the entity submitting an entry should not even come into play and that a license should be approved or disapproved solely on its merit. On the other hand, some people reason that approving a license from an entity whom it’s perceived is out to harm Open Source is enabling them to do so, and therefor should not be done. That may be a slippery slope to walk on though. We certainly don’t want Open Source to become “whatever the OSI wants”, but at the same time we do need to trust the OSI to steward the Open Source label in the way they see fit. That is going to get interesting…

You can view the entire discussion here.

–jeremy

Filed under Microsoft, Open Source, OSI

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