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Linux Business

Submission + - Microsoft's EU patent pledge incompatible with GPL (vnunet.com)

pete314 writes: "Linux vendors will be unable to license Microsoft's interoperability patents under the terms that were mandated by the European Commission. Because the license doesn't allow for downstream licensing (licensing beyond the vendor and first buyer), it would violate the GPL. As a result, no Linux distributions will be able to benefit.

Mark Webbink, former general counsel for Red Hat and currently a director with the Software Freedom Law Center however argued that there is some hope. "It will take some degree of effort, but one should not assume that they will simply have to take the patent license.""

Education

Submission + - Free software made mandatory in Indian State (newindpress.com)

Praveen Arimbrathodiyil writes: "The Free Software movement in Kerala got another boost when Free Software is made compulsory for practical exams in all Schools in the state. The Director of Public Instruction (DPI) has issued orders making free software compulsory. It says Linux Operating System should be used for IT education in eighth, ninth and tenth standards. Schools already have a choice to select Free Software (GNU/Linux) based platform or Microsoft based platform. Full Story"
GNU is Not Unix

Submission + - You can not reverse-engineer our GPL-violations... 6

phorm writes: "If appears that Monsoon Technology, the makers of the Hava media-transmission systems, don't quite understand the GPL. As some users pointed out in their forums, their systems appear to be based on Linux and various GPL'ed software, with the output of "strings" and other tests showing signs of running busybox and others. A monsoon spokesperson on the forum has indicated that they are aware it uses GPL'ed software, and are "working" on making source available, but at the same time are dropping various threats against supposed reverse-engineering of the software by those that determined the GPL violations.

A few snippets from the Monsoon rep include: I have a little secret to let you in on — HAVA runs Linux! Yes, much of the source is GPL and we should publish those sections which we have modified per the terms of GPL. A project is underway to pull this together. A couple of observations — some of you appear to be violating the terms of the End User License Agreement

You recognize and agree that the HAVA Software including its structure, source code and the design and structure of modules or programs, constitute valuable trade secrets owned by Snappymultimedia or its licensors. You will not copy or use the HAVA Software except as expressly permitted by this EULA and, specifically, you will not ...

(b) yourself or through any third party modify, reverse engineer, disassemble or decompile the HAVA Software in whole or part, except to the extent expressly permitted by applicable law, and then only after you have notified Snappymultimedia in writing of your intended activities; Seems to me that some of you have just come out blatantly admitting you are reverse engineering the firmware — or trying to. How should we handle this? As responses have indicated, the methods used to determine the violation do not seem to constitute reverse-engineering. Moreover, the initial friendliness of the rep is severely marred by the apparent hostility of the later message, as forum members have indicated. The overall message seems to be "we have not lived up to our obligations under the license of the software which we are using, but we'll get to it... sometime. Meanwhile, do not attempt to poke around our code yourself or things will get ugly."

The owners of BusyBox have been notified of this violation, however the response is still troubling. Is this the response we should come to expect as more and more commercial software uses and misuses GPL'ed components?"

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