OpenOffice.Org Now Under LGPLv3

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Sun has moved OpenOffice.org to the LGPLv3 license. In his blog Sun's Simon Phipps cites worry over software patents as being one of their main reasons for this move: 'Upgrading to the LGPLv3 brings important new protections to the OpenOffice.org community, most notably through the new language concerning software patents. You may know that I am personally an opponent of software patents, and that Sun has already taken steps in this area with a patent non-assert covenant for ODF. But the most important protection for developers comes from creating mutual patent grants between developers. LGPLv3 does this.'"

Software

[sm62704 (957197)]

You may know that I am personally an opponent of software patents

Software is the only thing you can have both a patent AND a copyright on.

Re:

[aerthling (796790)]

Don't patents apply to the method and copyright to the implementation?

Re:

[sm62704 (957197)]

Yes.

Re:

[Doc Ruby (173196)]

No. The "method" is the implementation. It's a term that's used to describe the invention. The paperclip, for example, described in the patent, is "a method to fasten pages of paper together".

And the idea that copyright can protect the little metal clip from copying is one of the worst perversions of the patent [wikipedia.org] system I've heard.

Moreover, you can't copyright the patent claims, diagrams and descriptions. The basic point of the patent registration is that the contents of the patent are available to the public

Re:

[Chrisq (894406)]

Is that true? If so it defeats the argument that patents are good because they put information into the public domain after a certain time. I rather thought that patenting something removed your right to have copyright protection.

Re:

[by Anonymous Coward]

The idea is patented. The very specific implementation (the code) is copyrighted.
The patent on the idea will eventually expire. The exact specific code used in their specific implementation will remain copyrighted longer.

Imagine someone long ago patented the idea of the book when they wrote the first one and copyrighted it. The patent on the idea of books would long ago have expired, but each individual book can still be copyrighted for a certain period of time.

Re:

[mhall119 (1035984)]

The MP3 format is patented, the LAME encoder is copyrighted. Even after the MP3 patent expires, LAME will still be copyrighted.

Re:Software

[sayfawa (1099071)]

Unfortunately, plots of books and movies are also being patented by people like this. [plotpatents.com]

Re:Software

[sm62704 (957197)]

Those people belong in prison.

Bah, all the plots are already prior art

[NotQuiteReal (608241)]

Everyone knows there are only so many plots [google.com].

Almost any story can be glibly described in a few sentences. What makes a story good, or even great is in the telling, that's why a talented author would copyright his particular expression.

The only possible use of a "plot patent" is strictly to troll and whine "wah, he stole my idea, but made it better than I could!"

Re:

[skoch (238567)]

> Software is the only thing you can have both a patent AND a copyright on.

This is not true, Mechanical components have patents on the idea, and copyrights on the drawings of the machine that implement the idea. Software is the same way, patents on the idea, but copyrights on the source code and executables.

That does not make software patents a good idea however.

Re:

[sm62704 (957197)]

With software, as you said, you can have copyright on the source ("blueprints") AND executables. With a new type gear you can only copyright the blueprint, not the gear itself.

Re:

[samkass (174571)]

With software, as you said, you can have copyright on the source ("blueprints") AND executables.

It's a subtle point, but you can't have a patent on either the source or executables, only the ideas/mechanism they express.

Software *is* a fundamentally different construct than anything that came before it, and it's going to break a lot of these "software is the only thing that..." comparisons. It doesn't make any sense to be to allow someone to patent physical mechanisms but not software that has just as much

Design patents and copyright

[sjbe (173966)]

Software is the only thing you can have both a patent AND a copyright on.

I agree that software patents are by and large a bad idea but your claim of exclusivity between patents and copyright is demonstrably
not true [wikipedia.org]. It's been possible for a long time to have both a design patent and a copyright on the same item. It's uncommon I'll grant you, but definitely possible.

Re:

[tepples (727027)]

Software is the only thing you can have both a patent AND a copyright on.

But what's so special about that? Cartoon characters are among the things that you can have both a trademark AND a copyright on. Integrated circuits are something that you can have both a patent AND a mask work right on.

Ah, the LGPL, the "sane" GPL

[BadAnalogyGuy (945258)]

The LGPL is in no way "lesser" than its hideously deformed cousin the GPL. Where the second one takes and takes, the first one gives and gives. It promotes community through sharing rather than through vigorously tilting at windmills.

If the LGPL were a presidential candidate, it would be Barack Obama -- "Yes we can." The GPL would be Ron Paul -- "We need the gold standard and protectionist trade."

Re:

[by Anonymous Coward]

I guess there is a reason you are "BadAnalogyGuy"

Re:Ah, the LGPL, the "sane" GPL

[by Anonymous Coward]

Never before in Slashdot history have you so completely earned your screenname. I salute you, sir.

Re:

[mmcuh (1088773)]

How can someone "take and take" by publishing free software?

Re:

[BadAnalogyGuy (945258)]

Because it takes as payment the entire work of someone who relies on the supposedly "free" software.

The LGPL only requires such payment if changes are made directly to the LGPL'd work itself.

Re:Ah, the LGPL, the "sane" GPL

[webmaster404 (1148909)]

So wait... How does that work? Chances are if someone relies on free software outside of free software projects (such as Debian, Mozilla, Ubuntu, Open Office, etc.) they work as a business and use free software to get the job done. Most of the time that software never leaves the company so the company could say that it will provide the source to anyone who requests it (being nobody) the company is in no way obligated to publish the modifications they made. They just can't prevent someone who has the source from uploading it to a server and having people download it.

Re:

[Knuckles (8964)]

Because it takes as payment the entire work of someone who relies on the supposedly "free" software.

How so?

Entire work: you mean that, e.g., the entire product portfolio of IBM becomes copylefted as soon as they use GPl'ed software in one of their products?
supposedly "free": you mean that the GPL changes its clauses after you incorporated GPL'ed code into your product?

SUN+LGPL is strange..

[emj (15659)]

Sun Refuses LGPL for OpenOffice; Novell forks [slashdot.org]... One is starting to wonder what is happening...

Re:

[kdemetter (965669)]

It depends on how you look at it :

In GPL , anything that is derived from that code , must also be published under GPL .
So all code use must be GPL .

Lesser GPL changes this , in that it allows the LGPL'ed software to be linked with non GPL'ed software ( ie it can use non gpl libraries)

This means that , if OpenOffice remains pure PGL , then there's a problem if someone wants to extends OpenOffice with properietary libraries . This problem doesn't present itself with LPGL.

Off course , there's a danger that the

Re:

[kdemetter (965669)]

with PGL i mean GPL offcourse ( dyslectic by lack of coffee)

Re:

[dpilot (134227)]

> If the LGPL were a presidential candidate, it would be Barack Obama -- "Yes we can."
> The GPL would be Ron Paul -- "We need the gold standard and protectionist trade."

I think I get it...
So the GPL is like a car with clear windows - pretty much anyone can drive one, and anyone can see inside.
The LGPL adds the "tinted windows" option so it still can be driven by pretty much anyone, but people outside can't see in.

I know it's a bad analogy, but I had to respond to BadAnalogyGuy with a car analogy, espe

Sun's lawyers "get it"

[davecb (6526)]

I've always claimed that whenever Sun wrote a strange license, it was because their lawyers told them to.

You may recollect a small war between Sun and MS over the MS effort to "embrace and extend" Java.

I suspect we'll see more GPL3 and LGPS3 as it is shown in practice to provide the same patent potection as CDDL.

--dave

Market Fragmentation

[PC and Sony Fanboy (1248258)]

... Now, I don't know MUCH about GPL, etc. But the fragmentation of licensing agreements (LGPL, GPL, CC, CC2.5, ETC) is just going to confuse people

It is the SAME problem that most people have with linux - Linux is GREAT ... but most people don't care. It is too confusing choosing a distro, and a lot of people will just stick with the first or second distro they find, because they don't care about all the variations.

On the other hand, most people don't care about these things (GPL et al. doesn't mean m

Re:

[AvitarX (172628)]

It would be nice if people stuck to LGPL 2+, GPL 2+, Old X11/New BSD or multi-licenses that included them. This would allow for compatibility for the most part. Other licenses that are compatible but not multi-license are OK too, but really should just be one of those IMO (based solely on momentum, not quality).

CC is not a Free or Open license (as it is used for the most part anyway). So I think your post is just further muddying the waters.

Re:

[tepples (727027)]

It would be nice if people stuck to LGPL 2+, GPL 2+, Old X11/New BSD or multi-licenses that included them.

What license would you recommend for (say) a Free video game, both the code and the assets-other-than-code such as sampled sound, music, models, textures, scripts, and the like?

Re:

[mrchaotica (681592)]

What license would you recommend for (say) a Free video game, both the code and the assets-other-than-code such as sampled sound, music, models, textures, scripts, and the like?

I don't think you can assume a single license is appropriate for both code and non-code to begin with.

Re:Market Fragmentation

[mdwh2 (535323)]

But the fragmentation of licensing agreements (LGPL, GPL, CC, CC2.5, ETC) is just going to confuse people

Different licences for different purposes. And remember that before these licences came along, individuals would often release software under their own (often poorly worded) licences, or sometimes not at all. Sometimes the licences are ambiguous, or the authors feel compelled to add in all sorts of arbitrary restrictions (I guess that's their right, but it's annoying when there's no logical reason). Indeed some people still do that. When I see something that's licenced under "GPL" or "CC", I know exactly what I'm getting, and don't have to worry if I can or can't do something, or if even though it's advertised supposedly "free" I'm going to download it and find it's crippleware, trialware, or has all sorts of licence restrictions.

Recently I was looking for free graphics to use for writing games, and I came across one from years ago that had some licence saying it was free, but only for Windows because he wanted to be the one to "port" it to another platform. Huh? I thought, why should the graphics need to be changed for a different platform? Thankfully I then found a later version of the graphics which he'd sensibly released under CC.

I'm not sure that comparing to Linux distributions makes sense. You might as well complain that having thousands of pieces of software available is "confusing", and this is comparable to Linux distributions. If people just choose the first licence they come across because the rest are too confusing, that's fine.

Re:Market Fragmentation

[JustinOpinion (1246824)]

remember that before these licences came along, individuals would often release software under their own (often poorly worded) licences ... When I see something that's licenced under "GPL" or "CC", I know exactly what I'm getting, and don't have to worry if I can or can't do something

Furthermore, it's worth noting that when it comes to proprietary software, the licensing landscape is very confused and inhomogeneous. Each software package has its own custom EULA. Though they often share similar features (e.g. "no liability"), there are often all kinds of ridiculous clauses buried among the boilerplate legalese. Volume license agreements are no better: you have to be very careful when selecting them (are we talking per-user? per-installation? per-processor? per-active-instance?).

As you point out, at least with open-source licenses, there are only a handful of major ones that cover the vast majority of software. Once you know about them, you can very quickly know how much control you'll have over the code, and can confidently download/install/use/modify as required.

There is no proprietary equivalent to this kind of well-organized and relatively homogeneous licensing landscape. (Of course not! Having "named" proprietary licenses would make it too easy for a customer to compare different product licenses and select the less onerous ones.)

Re:

[webmaster404 (1148909)]

It is too confusing choosing a distro, and a lot of people will just stick with the first or second distro they find, because they don't care about all the variations.

Thats not necessarily a bad thing though.... If someone who has never used the command line on Ubuntu before tried Gentoo.... I think there would be lots of headaches for the developers....

Re:

[pembo13 (770295)]

Which people? GPL generally doesn't affect end users as far as I understand.

Right, because MS has a single EULA

[SmallFurryCreature (593017)]

Oh wait, no MS has several, off the top of my head, the OS, directX, media player. Office offcourse as well, but that is a seperate product. Does IE still come with one? Silverlight?

In fact most windows software comes with a EULA all written differently.

So you claim that people have no problem understanding all these different EULA's but would be confused by the far simpler opensources licences of which only about a dozen are in actuall use?

Bad troll, no cookie for you! This is 2008, we expect more nowadays. Go on, mention soundcard drivers, why don't you.

Re:

[PC and Sony Fanboy (1248258)]

The point wasn't that people need to read them. The point was that software developers, when searching for an applicable license, have TOO many to choose from, because everyone seems to think we need new, updated ones.

Too many choices is ALMOST as bad as not enough choices.

Re:

[fermion (181285)]

There is no confusion to the average user. Open Source means I can download and use it without anyone hassleing me, but I won't because it is free and therefore not as good as stuff I pay for. Closed source means that I can download and use it, and someone might hassle me, but probably not, so i won't bother to pay for it, but since I should have paid for it, it is better.

There are only two casses where I hear people claiming to be confused. The first is trying to close previously opened project. This

NoeOffice

[charlie763 (529636)]

With these changes in licensing and governance, can we expect to see a merger of the NeoOffice guys back into OpenOffice?

About that patent non-assert covenant

[harlows_monkeys (106428)]

That patent non-assert covenant is almost identical (and the differences are in the parts that aren't important) to Microsoft's patent no- assert covenant for its XML formats. Many have said that the latter is unacceptable for use with free software. It's also interesting to compare those two non-assert covenants against the one IBM provides for their patents that cover OpenOffice, and for Microsoft's OSP. I've made a little page that lists all four of these non-assertion covenants [nyud.net], side-by-side, with corresponding sections highlighted in matching colors.

Re:

[HiThere (15173)]

I rarely read MS EULAs, because I never use MS products. But I've read one of the patent non-assert agreements on a proposed OOXML standard. ("A", because they've continued to shift the proposal, and because they reserve the right to continue to change it after it gets approved, presuming that it does.)

The non-assert agreement only guaranteed that the patents would not be asserted against fully conforming implementations. But the specifications of the standard (at that time) were such that nobody, includ

Re:About that patent non-assert covenant

[WebMink (258041)]

That patent non-assert covenant is almost identical ... to Microsoft's patent no- assert covenant

That's because Microsoft based their document on Sun's. I know that because the author of the Sun covenant is a colleague, because it was released at least a year before Microsoft copied it and because, after I pointed this out, Microsoft credited Sun for the original document.

(and the differences are in the parts that aren't important)

I disagree, and I have explained why before on my blog [sun.com]. Sun's covenant is intended to empower open source developers, and Microsoft has altered the parts that make that happen. Most notably, Sun's covenant grants all patents, Microsoft's is limited to "necessary claims". That is a very major difference since it means open source developers cannot be sure they have actually been given cover by Microsoft's covenant whereas they can be certain they have by Sun's. It is deeply regerttable that Microsoft added essential claims language in this way. For those who don't follow links, I also find the conformance requirements and the patent peace asymmetry poor in Microsoft's document.

Many have said that the latter is unacceptable for use with free software.

Indeed, and I am among them. However, your implication that the same applies to Sun's covenant is incorrect.

Re:Great ... now what about ZFS?

[zdzichu (100333)]

Let it go... Sun released ZFS on open source license. It already got integrated in few systems. Open source != GPL. Free software != GPL.
We, linux guys, want ZFS features. But we are not center of the universe. Let's just wait for btrfs to mature and Daniel Phillip's ddlink to take off.

Re:

[nguy (1207026)]

It already got integrated in few systems. Open source != GPL. Free software != GPL.

No, but Linux==GPL. Sun could release ZFS under a Linux-compatible license without affecting anything else (they could triple-license it).

The only reason Sun isn't releasing ZFS under the GPL or a GPL-compatible license is to prevent Linux from using it. And that tells you that Sun is lying when they are saying that they are supporting Linux; they are trying to hurt Linux and replace it with their shit.

Linus needs to reconsider GPL V3

[FreeUser (11483)]

No, but Linux==GPL. Sun could release ZFS under a Linux-compatible license without affecting anything else (they could triple-license it).

The only reason Sun isn't releasing ZFS under the GPL or a GPL-compatible license is to prevent Linux from using it. And that tells you that Sun is lying when they are saying that they are supporting Linux; they are trying to hurt Linux and replace it with their shit.

While I think you have a point, and I share (to a degree) your suspicion with regards to Sun's motivations

Re:

[Just Some Guy (3352)]

If they truly want to show that they are committed to open source, they would release ZFS under the GPL so that it can be integrated into Linux.

You mean the GPLv2, of course. It's my understanding that GPLv3 code isn't eligible for inclusion, either.

Re:

[nguy (1207026)]

The only thing Sun is "getting" about open source is that it is killing their business.

And Sun's support of open source is pretty similar to Microsoft's "embrace and extend": they are trying to use open source as leverage for creating proprietary software businesses again. Fortunately, they are as inept at doing that as they were at selling proprietary software.

Re:

[pak9rabid (1011935)]

I hope that it continues to send waves down the IT marketplace and continues to encourage organizations to provide free (libre) software.

It will...FOSS is the way of the future for software. All the big software companies know it and are either 1.) embracing it and integrating it into their business model (RedHat, IBM, Sun), or 2.) casting it out and hope they can bury it with FUD and litigation (Microsoft, SCO). More and more proprietary companies are turning to the light side as they realize this. Some faster than others.

Re:I'm happy but...

[htd2 (854946)]

Yawn, Solaris is probably the most capable server OS on the planet and it contains a number of technologies that even the most passionate Linux advocate would give their eye teeth to have in Linux. dtrace, ZFS, SMF etc etc.

Sun also developed Java still the most widely used application development and deployment platform for enterprise applications. It is also the largest single platform for Mobile Phones, way ahead of Symbian, Windows Mobile etc.

They have also developed the only credible alternative to MS's cash cow Office.

Not bad for a company apparently rubbish at Software development.

Re:

[frankie (91710)]

It's pretty easy to figure out who he is. I did it in 1 minute and two searches:

1. WHOIS search for endsoftpatents.org [centralops.net]
2. Google search for Ben Klemens [google.com]

OK, that's the guy.