"They have not turned over a new leaf, and still remain insincere about their involvement in open source," Perens said.
Making it plain, Perens said:
"I don't believe Microsoft was ever attempting to be sincere. A perceived involvement in open source by Microsoft, along with highly paid mouthpieces like Novell to chime in for them, is giving Microsoft the ability to speak for open source in government circles, short-circuiting the legislation we need to defend ourselves from software patents or to establish a level playing field on which open source and proprietary software can compete fairly. That's their true interest."
The answer is legislation, he said. Perens said legislation is needed to "clean out the software patent system. Developers need to be able to make and sell software without the threat of patent-related extortion. We must unite both proprietary and open-source developers - who are equally at risk - to work for this cause, if we're to have a hope of being heard by legislators."
"We will talk about patents and how they relate to our technologies, but it's on the basis of private conversations rather than openly broad negotiation," said [Microsoft's] Zink. "We are willing to license on reasonable terms, and we have covenants not to sue open source developers or for research and development."
[Microsoft's] Zink added that the covenants, which also extend to those companies such as Novell which agree to cross-license, "give understanding and certainty to people".
[...]
Allison also spoke out about the TomTom case in February, saying Microsoft's move would alienate the open source community.
But if any Microsoft employee went to a free software or open source conference today, I doubt he or she would attract anything other than hostile glares. By suing GPS device maker TomTom over alleged violation of patents connected with an implementation of the Linux kernel any goodwill that Microsoft has built up has gone down the drain.
[...]
Why did Microsoft decide to sue TomTom at this time? Is it the old arrogance asserting itself again as it has many times in the past? Is it a sense that suing at this time gives it more leeway than at others?
[...]
But there is one thing which a corporate entity like Microsoft can never comprehend. And that is the energy of the free software community, the anger and hatred that the lawsuit has generated.
When SCO started its campaign against Linux by suing IBM, it was quite confident that things would go its way. Six years later, the company is just a shell and few people would even bother pissing on it.
Somehow I have the feeling that this time Microsoft may have bitten off more than even it can chew.
“Novell spends a lot of time lauding and promoting its work on Mono, MonoDevelop, and Moonlight.”A reader and informant of ours has already embarked on the task involving lots of historical excavation, only to find out that popular distributions accepted Mono because everyone else had (i.e. cattle effect). This means that Mono had become contagious and dangerous at the same time. It's a lot like FAT because it relies on the 'network effect' to spread itself and at the same time it comes with a loose promise not to sue which is not even being honoured (in no case, neither FAT nor Mono). The recent decision regarding Rambus teaches us that this is seen as legitimate in the US.
Novell spends a lot of time lauding and promoting its work on Mono, MonoDevelop, and Moonlight. Novell also praises Microsoft on various occasions and helps it get a 'free pass' -- usually resulting in entry into Free software/Linux conferences [1, 2, 3]. Microsoft understands that this is a convenient way of 'crashing' competitors' events. This is all happening while Novell sacks 20% of SUSE's staff without a reasonable explanation (SUSE was one of the only growth products). Whose team is Novell playing ball for and is it being pressured to step away from the Free desktop, as some rumours suggest?
"I think the Mac has a part to play here. Mono for OS X *sucks*... no one uses it. Therefore, if programmers want to target Mac as well, they can't really use Mono," wrote Balrog a couple of hours ago. Another person, David Gerard, points out that "There was a rumour that, in the wake of the TomTom case, Canonical was seriously considering removing Mono from main and leaving it to multiverse as too dangerous to support (like mp3). I haven't been able to find any more info either way, asking around."
That would be quite a change at Ubuntu after overly-prolonged sleeping time at the wheel. ⬆
Comments
David Gerard
2009-03-11 18:18:09
BTW, it looks like it'd go in Universe (community-supported packages, not endorsed by Canonical) along with Moonlight. It's not hard to get a package into Universe.
Roy Schestowitz
2009-03-11 18:21:45
Novell employees are involved in this too.
aeshna23
2009-03-11 19:09:44
I disagree with you here. Mono and Moonlight aren't "just like FAT". Microsoft's legal case against Mono and Moonlight will be a far stronger case than what Microsoft can argue about FAT. I would like to suggest a reason why Microsoft is pursuing the Tom Tom case. Microsoft, of course, would like to win the TomTom case, but Microsoft figures it might as well start out with the weaker cases. Microsoft figures it can turn defeats on the weaker cases into a long run victory, by lulling the Linux community into complacency and then attack Mono in a couple of years.
Darren
2009-03-11 20:19:31
One can only hope.
Jose_X
2009-03-11 21:40:28
Microsoft and Novell did not violate the GPLv2 by agreeing to a "covenant not to sue customers" rather than a direct patent license as literally forbidden by the GPLv2. The GPLv3 blocks against this new agreement type but isn't an obstacle either to this initial deal because the GPLv3 set an effective cut-off date that was after the Novell-MS deal (that deal purposely got grandfathered in -- in particular, Novell let the FSF gain extra access to details of the deal, perhaps in exchange for an exception for that deal).
>> [Microsoft’s] Zink added that the covenants, which also extend to those companies such as Novell which agree to cross-license, “give understanding and certainty to people”.
Ah, but we know Microsoft is not a trustworthy business partner. What protection are they offering against others that might have patents on that technology, patents possibly sold by Microsoft or allowed by Microsoft to be developed by the proxies?
Microsoft has close relationship with various patent troll companies.
Roy Schestowitz
2009-03-11 21:46:00
Dan O'Brian
2009-03-11 22:52:18
I think you mean far weaker, since Microsoft is helping Novell develop them. It'll be kinda hard for Microsoft to claim damages (which they have to do) if they were involved in producing it.
They'll get laughed out of court.
Jose_X
2009-03-12 01:05:23
Was that your point? That if you deal with Microsoft, they won't sue you? Is that the message you wanted to bring?
Roy Schestowitz
2009-03-12 01:15:27
Jose_X
2009-03-12 02:21:43
Roy Schestowitz
2009-03-12 02:25:02
Both have private firms for harvesting patents. IV has already proceeded to "racketeering" phase.
Needs Sunlight
2009-03-12 09:18:46
Mono doesn't. Mono has a solid paper trail of payments for royalties going from Novel to Microsoft for years. Any distro allowing packages with dependencies on Mono, Moonlight or any other MS technology is really going out of their way to cause trouble for the distro's users.
A half measure is to not have mono in the default: http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/110/
However, that is only a half-measure. Removal from the repositories is necessary.
David Gerard
2009-03-12 09:23:11
Removal from Main is another matter.