Microsoft Patent Deal Could Leave Novell Behind 246
robbyyy writes to mention a Computer Business Review Online article about commentary from Bruce Perens to Novell, about their recent deal with Microsoft. He argues that the company should quickly turn its back on the deal, because Novell risks being left behind by open source progress. From the article: "While Linux creator Linus Torvalds has previously stated that the Linux kernel will remain on the GPL v2 license, much of the code that makes up a complete Linux distribution is owned by the FSF, which intends to re-license all its code to GPL v3 as soon as it is completed in early 2007. 'In the face of these changes, Novell will probably be stuck with old versions of the software, under old licenses, with Novell sustaining the entire cost and burden of maintaining that software,' Perens wrote, adding that Novell faces a choice of sticking with Microsoft and being left behind, or turning its back on the patent deal."
The Google Connection (Score:2, Interesting)
NovWinLux (Score:4, Interesting)
Mircrosoft + Novell = ? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:NovWinLux (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:The Damage is Done (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah I think Samba might be a target here. If Novell contributes code to Samba, and Novell says that the code they conrtibuted was licensed from MS, then Samba can only be used by companies that are indemnified by MS. Remember that part of this deal is about interoperability, and Samba is a big part of that.
Another target id Mono. It's probably a good idea to avoid that platform altogether, since its likely only MS approved linux distros will be allowed to run apps developed for Mono. Of course its just as likely mono will remain free. But the worst case scenario is going to scare a lot of developers, making mono a dead platform.
I think Perens is right. As long as this deal is in effect, everything Novell does will be tainted. No Open Source project should accept any code from Novell until they cancel this deal. It's good to see that the Samba team gets it. Though I think it's likely this will kill Mono.
Perens' Assumption (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Scam. It's a scam. (Score:3, Interesting)
(IMHO) From what I've seen, it looks like Novell got sucked into this Microsoft deal without knowing the real purpose of this deal: to discredit Linux.
* Novell is saying 'WTF? Where did this come from? You scammed us!!1!!'
You may well be right, but, erm, isn't it Novell management's job to have worked out all the angles on this? It's not like this is some newbie company that knows nothing about Microsoft. Novell have tangled [eweek.com] directly with Microsoft [wikipedia.org] and indirectly with their proxies [wikipedia.org] before on many many occasions. They are veterans of the server computing industry. If they had no idea that Microsoft would scam them, it shows an extraordinary corporate structure in disarray.
Rich.
Linus' stupity is going to kill corporate Linux (Score:2, Interesting)
The next shot will be when Microsoft starts making contributions to the kernel, and creating their own FSF-free Linux distro, as the only distro which is blessed by Microsoft (and interoperates with it). This is the next logical step of embrace and extend. IMHO, it's a major screw-up by Microsoft not to be doing this already; it would truly hurt RedHat and other distros in the money-making space.
At that point, Linus's idiocy over GPL2 would mean that he'd either have to be Microsoft's bitch, or cut over to GPL3. If Microsoft played their cards right, by the time the latter thought dawned on Linus, it would be too late.
If only there were a real alternative.
microsoft has just done that already! (Score:5, Interesting)
open source is forging ahead in a lot of things. novell has 2 of the brigtest and hardworking team in them (suse and ximian), what better way to scuttle the open source army's healthy progress! imagine if kde 4 was already out in time for vista (no, they aren't in the same market). things would have looked good for a lot of enterprises to go for solid products like novell desktop with say all the gloss of kde 4. i don't know how this war is heading/ shaping, and also what microsoft's plans are - but one thing's for sure - they have won the battle number one. they've split the community. it upto us in the community to close the ranks, regroup and look for the best possible solution, i wouldnt want novell to go down and taking suse and ximian along with them!
Re:Only partial maintenance burden (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, and anyone who has ever had to maintain an incompatible fork with a Free Software project knows how difficult and time consuming that can be. In the end Novell will likely be forced to maintain their own fork of nearly all of the GNU tools, a considerable burden. Novell's competitors (ie Red Hat) won't be forced to accept this same burden. Novell already has the added burden of maintaining Netware and other pieces of commercial software. Maintaining versions of GNU software is going to add to its expenses.
More importantly, don't be surprised if Free Software projects start rejecting code from Novell engineers out of hand. After all, under its agreement Novell's customers are safe from infringing on Microsoft's patents, but everyone else's customers are potentially at risk. Anything that Novell engineers contribute has to be judged on that fact. Novell could easily inject software that is covered by Microsoft's patents into Free Software projects knowing that its customers are safe.
It boggles the mind that Novell's executives could take such a large step without talking to its partners in the Free Software community.
Re:Only partial maintenance burden (Score:1, Interesting)
That is like saying that jumping from a 15 stories building is less deadly that jumping from a 70 stories one.
They could last a bit longer, but when there will be violent merges of new functionality, they will be left maintening their code alone. Hundred of millions of line of code, with no spec, no design and no access to the original developers.
And when code will start requiring GPL v3 compilers, it will get even better. They'll have to adapt the code to the compiler they ship or rewrite such functionality in their GPL v2 branch.
And as glibc will be GPL v3, they will have, hard time supporting new hardware, short of writing chunk of glibc code in GPL v2. And if they copy/paste large chunks of glibc GPL v3 (easy to see, as they have to give the code), they'll get sued immediately!
Hope they have a great marketing department and a great legal department, because they will need them badly
Re:Suse is dying -- netcraft confirms it (Score:3, Interesting)
That's from the LiVES website. They ask for donations. Last I checked Suse was still a version of linux, so anyone that's donated to LiVES and uses Suse should still get support. It's fair. I have the choice to use whatever version of Linux I want and if I donated money, I should get support any way.
Re:Linus' stupity is going to kill corporate Linux (Score:3, Interesting)
He originally made 2 arguments; as I understand, the first was a simple error of fact which he no longer pursues:
1)GPL3 makes you give up all your private keys => "Developers would never have any privacy".
This isn't true - you only have to give up a private key which you used to sign code, if the hardware will only boot that signed code. This is essentially a ban on hardware which runs open code but cannot be modified.
2)GPL3 will impose conditions on hardware manufacturers, making it less free (in a BSD-sense), and therefore less useful to them. But kernel developers shouldn't try to impose usage restrictions.
This seems a fair point - but it underestimates the vital importance of "Free as in Freedom". Stallmann hasn't yet been wrong on this, although sometimes it takes a decade for him to be proved right.
I think GPL3 is inevitable, and even the "open source" people who don't fundamentally care about politics will come to need it. Fortunately, we do have 2 alternatives, should we need them: GNU/BSD (or GNU/Darwin) and GNU/HURD. I hope it doesn't come to that, though!
Re:Suse is dying -- netcraft confirms it (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Scam. It's a scam. (Score:4, Interesting)
From what I've gathered - and please, correct me if I'm wrong - Microsoft gave money to Novell, not the other way around.
While it can generate bad publicity - and it has already generated pretty bad publicity among Linux users in general - as long as it remains in the media alone, we'll be fine.
We've been immersed in FUD ever since Microsoft stopped ignoring Linux (first, they ignore you...); it has never stopped Linux before. Slowed down, yes; stopped, no.
Besides, with Vista and possible further incarnations of Windows restricting user rights more and more, Microsoft will have enough bad publicity on its own.
And Linux will find a way into many a user's home as a way to run all the Good Old Games(TM) - a friend of mine, who claims Linux Is Not Ready For Desktop And Won't Be For Ten More Years, has a Linux partition from which he runs old games. He says DOS emulation under Linux is so much better, and who am I to contradict him.
Re:It's FUD, but I can understand Novell signing (Score:4, Interesting)
He is saying that the GPL v3 will explicitly disallow the kind of contractual arrangement Novell used to end-run around the GPL v2. When v3 comes out, Novell will have to either abandon the contract, or they will not be able to use code licensed under v3.
Since all of the FSF foundations tools will move to v3, and most of the toolchain for linux is owned by the FSF, Novell will be left behind with old versions of a lot of the software in their distribution. They will have to fork the code base at the point the license changes and maintain v2 implementations of those tools themselves. That will be a lot of work and the Novell versions of the tools will probably end up divergent from the FSF versions of those tools.
This will make SuSE less interoperable with other open source software and less attractive as a platform on which to build your infrastructure.
Re:NovWinLux (Score:3, Interesting)
This looks to me like a short-term win for Microsoft, but a long-term lose. In the short term, it seems likely that Free Software's going to lose the contributions of Novell and SuSE engineers and programmers (modulo that a lot of the SuSE people will flee if it does indeed turn out the way it looks. SuSE have some very good, clueful people who I expect would rather walk away from stock options than work for the Beast against the FOSS community.) There will be some short-term damage to the market caps of some Linux businesses, and some paranoid PHBs will decide against some Linux deployments on the basis of the FUD stirred up. On the other hand, in the long term it's likely that GPL3 will be seen as a better bet than some early commentators have suggested...
Accidental inclusion is more of a problem (Score:2, Interesting)
It isn't necessarily deliberate addition that we would be worried about.
If Novell developers are going to be working with Microsoft developers as part of the move towards better interoperability - which is a good thing - then they are likely to pick up ideas and techniques from each other.
If Novell as a company know that their customers are protected, then they might not put as much effort into verifying that they aren't injecting ideas or techniques picked up from the Microsoft developers.
Roll forward a couple of years, and a Novell developer picks up a nifty new technique while she was part of the Novell-Microsoft interop team.
She changes her job within the company, and joins Novell's OpenOffice team.
Not only does she have to remember where she got the idea from (do not think about a rhinoceros), but she also has to remember not to use it when working on the OpenOffice code (remember - do not think about a rhinoceros).
If the idea is in your head and it solves the problem in front of you, then you will just use it (still not thinking about a rhinoceros ?).
Roll forward another year or two, and lots of other developers have picked up on the neat trick that they found in the OpenOffice code.
Presto, up pop Microsoft and declares that they own patents on a technique that is used in a good percentage of the Linux GUI applications. The technique in question is non-obvious and someone who hadn't seen the original code would be unlikely to have thought of it.
Ok, the individual projects could refactor their code, and try to solve the problem without using the patented technique (remember, don't think about a rhinoceros) . But in the interim, many of the large Linux distributions have to pull the applications from their releases, setting Linux on the desktop back a couple of years.
Re:The end of the world is not nigh (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:It's FUD, but I can understand Novell signing (Score:3, Interesting)
I dont think we're talking about the same point from Perens. I was referring to why he says they might have to maintain gpl v2 forks on their own and why that would become a problem.
The indemnification contract between Microsoft and Novell does not alter any GPLv2 software. It does not change the ownership of the software. It does not determine whether or not the distro software has any IP violations that would lead to it being yanked from GPL status.
Perens' point is that the agreement goes against the intention of the gpl. If the gpl v2 doesn't restrict it, that is a shortcoming in that version of the license. The GPL v3 will explicitly forbid it. He doesn't say anything about the status of any gpl software being affected. He talks about the status of Novell's distribution being affected by the future license requirements for some of that software.
Quite frankly, it does nothing useful that I can see for or against Linux. But it may affect some proprietary components of SuSE, or allow Novell to implement proprietary software for Linux that interoperates better with Vista than OSS will be able to (e.g. access to use proprietary protocols, or reimplement some software stacks.)
Well, it creates confusion and an opportunity for Ballmer to claim there are patent infringements in Linux. It also creates an environment of mistrust between the community and Novell. Any contributions from Novell employees now need to be examined for possible patent issues. (not necessarily because Novell is trying to undermine linux, but because there is no guarantee that they will vett the code they are releasing since it is no longer a significant legal concern for them)
It could also possibly create some uncertainty around samba. Since samba team members work for Novell, if they do not carefully document the reverse engineering they do, this agreement could be used by microsoft to make an "unclean hands" assertion against samba in an attempt to limit other distributions' ability to interoperate with windows.
To me, the whole deal seems to be an attempt by microsoft to use Novell to marginalize the rest of the linux distributions. The logical conclusion of that avenue (based on microsoft's prior actions) is that once that is achieved, they will turn on novell and attempt to crush them as well. I think this is just a long term strategy on their part to remove a competitor in the server market that they have found themselves unable to displace fairly.