Photo of Wim Simons and Neelie Kroes
not from the public domain but
under the GNU Free Documentation License
(captions added separately)
YESTERDAY we wrote about the European Commission failing to negotiate with Microsoft a deal that respects Free software users [1, 2]. Microsoft has been buying time and procrastinating until Neelie Kroes and others in the Commission needed to step down. Steve Ballmer's "schmoozing" trips to Neelie Kores did not help much, either.
Essentially, companies can sue if they think Microsoft is not following through with providing proper API documentation, according to a blog post by Groklaw, a frequent Microsoft critic and a site devoted to software legal issues. The Groklaw post noted that nothing has really changed for commercial software companies working with open source software under the GNU General Public License because Microsoft's interoperability agreement appears to restrict commercial distribution of software without royalty agreements first being in place.
The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) backed that view.
"The patent commitments are clearly insufficient, because they don't allow commercial exploitation," said Carlo Piana, FSFE's legal counsel, in a released statement. "This keeps out competition from Free Software, which in many areas is the biggest competitor to Microsoft's programs."
The European Committee for Interoperable Systems (ECIS) was also skeptical.
"Whether the public undertaking will create a more level competitive playing field where open source software is not subject to Microsoft patent FUD [fear, uncertainty, doubt], as has been the case in the past, is not yet clear," the ECIS declared in a released statement (PDF).
In the coming decade, Linux and other open source implementations will continue their migration from back office transaction processing and mission critical applications to the mobile and desktop computing spaces. This will transform the nature of communications and computing devices from static and utilitarian to dynamic and intelligent. This change has already begun to show itself in the Google mobile operating system – and the proliferation of devices that have been built on it by HTC and Motorola, among others.
Leveraging open source as a key building block for rapid innovation and reducing time-to-market is an irreversible trend.
Yet, as Linux and other open source initiatives usher in a new model for invention and value creation and further reinforces Linux as a permanent condition, longer term changes in the nature of the codification and management of the intellectual capital are prefigured by a set of observable trends in 2010.
Owners of Taiwanese Plurk microblog site have not decided yet whether and how to respond to cases of theft of code made by the company, which was commissioned by Microsoft to build another microblog service.
While Microsoft took upon himself the full responsibility, but apparently does not want to bear the legal consequences of this incident. According to the message given out Plurk site owners are wondering what legal action in this situation should take.
--Richard Stallman
Comments
dyfet
2009-12-20 22:52:06
Roy Schestowitz
2009-12-20 23:02:07
dyfet
2009-12-20 23:10:25
Roy Schestowitz
2009-12-20 23:14:51
your_friend
2009-12-20 23:46:48
I'd like to add that EU concessions to US patent law are a betrayal of all citizens, not just free software users. Software patents in particular are only useful to a few large companies. EU recognition legitimizes Microsoft's scheme and violates EU law which has repeatedly rejected software patents. This will be used against everyone as "Intellectual Property" maximallists proclaim the universal recognition of software and business method patents. Let's hope this shameful decision is thrown out by the proper authorities.
It is amazing that Microsoft has been able to turn a piddling browser squabble into an implicit acceptance of their OS monopoly and a positive referendum on software patents. A similar thing happend in the US Netscape anti-trust trial and it can be compared to tobacco industry tactics, where official channels are jammed with relatively harmless secondary issues and poor remedies. The Netscape and later Comes trails discovered clear evidence of OEM and retail manipulation that should have resulted in the punishment and break up of Microsoft. Not only was this opportunity missed by the EU, a tremendous step backward was taken. Most shamefully, this step backward comes as Microsoft's business methods fail, the US is realizing that "IP" is a poor empire builder and US law is rejecting software patents.