11.19.06
Posted in Action, Deals, Novell, Samba at 7:22 pm by Shane Coyle
It seems that Eben Moglen is done with his review of the MS-Novell deal, and apparently he has some concerns:
They have showed us what we need to see, they have answered our questions, we had complete and unfettered access to senior executives at Novell…. We are now working by peaceable negotiations to protect our client’s legal interest, and we see no likelihood that we’re going to adopt steps that involve the use of legal compulsion. If we are unable to work the situation out peacefully, that may change.
WooHoo! Here comes the cavalry. Also from the article, Novell is working on a full response, but have preliminarily denied the Samba team’s request to repudiate the MS-Novell pact.
Also, PJ at Groklaw has even more on the subject, and she’s my hero too.
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Posted in Intellectual Monopoly, Law, Patents at 12:34 pm by Shane Coyle
Even Microsoft would never claim that their is any misappropriated code in Linux or in any of the major OSS projects, what they are claiming is that they have Patents that cover the concepts used in modern computing.
Of course, MS have never stated with specificity what Patents they feel are being violated; they would rather ‘license than litigate’ but refuse to tell you what you’re buying. Maybe it’s because they are a little worried about how those Patents would hold up to scrutiny.
Imagine if someone had patented “A method for the termination of undesired rodents without manual intervention” years ago, what would the state of the Mouse Trap industry be? Even today, 40 Patents per year are granted for Mouse Trap innovations, with over 4,000 Mouse Trap patents on file in total.
I was taught you patent an implementation of an idea, and you get a limited monopoly over the method in exchange for making its workings public. Yes, someone may be inspired by your invention and improve it or do it better – that’s the point!
He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.
- Thomas Jefferson
The USPTO is broken. The number of Patent applications has increased exponentially during the last decade or two, and Patent examiners rarely have a comprehensive knowledge of the technologies covered in the Patent applications they review.
Patent applicants purposely game the system to keep their patents pending for years, then finally allow these “Submarine Patents” to surface much to the dismay of an entire industry that also made that same Obvious innovation all those years ago.
Until we see real reform in terms of US Patent law and its stifing of innovation in the software industry, the dark cloud of IP litigation will continue to hover over all of us. In the meantime, we can only wait for MS to finally disclose their “evidence” of infringement, and if the SCO case is any indicator, that could be decades.
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Posted in GNU/Linux, Novell, Oracle at 1:55 am by Shane Coyle
Here is an interesting quote, from an interview by Jack Messman who was Novell Chief at the time (March 2006):
What about the market for operating systems? How will that change?
Because of the costs of software and hardware development you’ll find two major open source operating systems left in a few years: Red Hat and Novell.
There’ll still be hobbyist systems, but for business two is perfect. Any less and you’ll have one company dominating to the detriment of the industry, any more and development costs go way up.
Our approach is different to Red Hat’s. Red Hat is totally open source, whereas we offer a mixed stack. We do open enterprise software but also have proprietary code that’s built to open standards. Our customers don’t have heterogeneous software environments either, for that matter.
Perhaps for business two is perfect, and perhaps Novell was worried that those two would be Oracle and RedHat, not SuSE. Of course, GNU/Linux is about more than business, its about liberty and freedom, but MS and Novell won’t ever get that.
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Posted in Boycott Novell, Humour at 12:00 am by Shane Coyle
Announcing the availability of the official Boycott Novell banner, with a catchy new slogan.
Feel free to download the image and post it in your own pages to show support and/or link to the site. I will work on a smaller button shortly. Enjoy.
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11.18.06
Posted in Ron Hovsepian, SCO at 1:18 pm by Shane Coyle
First, there have been comments and hate mail regarding censorship on this site. Nope. All comments are posted, immediately, I will do some mild moderating if it is spam – all opinions are welcome, if Mr Hovsepian (sp?) would like a login for his own response page, that is cool.
The ‘all opinions are welcome’ policy also applies to advertisers, some folks complained about SuSE ads showing up on the site, so what? Don’t click on it if you don’t want to, remember there are pro-ms and pro-novell folks who visit the site too.
The other thing was an absolutely mint posting on the RedHat Executives blog:
SCO, the VERB:
Main Entry: sco
Pronunciation: sko
Function: verb
Etymology: Middle English, from Old English screw, that is, to stick it to some one
transitive verb
1 : to threaten your customers with IP infringement
2 : to drive your customers to other vendors
3 : to treat your customers with contempt
Novell is SCO-ing the community, do not support them. Boycott Novell.
-shane
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11.17.06
Posted in Action, FUD, GNU/Linux, GPL, Intellectual Monopoly, Patents, Steve Ballmer at 1:32 pm by Shane Coyle
Dear Mr Ballmer,
As I am sure you are aware, much has been made of the recent Microsoft – Novell agreement, including numerous public statements by you in which you claim that “Linux is violating your patented intellectual property”. I am the leader of a Free Software Project that produces and sells a Live CD Environment based on Slax GNU/Linux, and am concerned regarding these statements you have made and their impact on my ability to conduct business.
I am requesting that you state, with specificity, the patent numbers, which countries are they valid in, and when do they expire? I would like to review my options, including whether the patents you claim are indeed valid and apropos. Also, what are the license terms that Microsoft is requesting for usage of these patented innovations for an end user? How much for a distributor?
Regards,
Shane Coyle
Founder, EDU-Nix.org
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Posted in Deals, FUD, GPL, Intellectual Monopoly, Law, Microsoft, Novell, Patent Covenant, Patents, Steve Ballmer at 12:24 am by Shane Coyle
Or so it was stated in their FAQ on the MS Deal. Of course, as always with any story, there is Mr Ballmer’s take on the deal:
“Novell pays us some money for the right to tell customers that anybody who uses SUSE Linux is appropriately covered,” Ballmer said. This “is important to us, because [otherwise] we believe every Linux customer basically has an undisclosed balance-sheet liability.”
“Only customers that use SUSE have paid properly for intellectual property from Microsoft,” he said. “We are willing to do a deal with Red Hat and other Linux distributors.” The deal with SUSE Linux “is not exclusive,” Ballmer added.
Of course, as usual, no one cuts to the core of the subject better than PJ at Groklaw:
“Let him sue if he thinks he has a valid claim, and we’ll see how well his customers like it.”
Jones also challenged Ballmer to “put his money where his mouth is” and detail exactly what part of the Linux kernel source code allegedly infringes upon Microsoft patents, so that “folks will strip out the code and work around it or prove his patent invalid.”
And so it begins, the gauntlet is down – who draws the first MS lawsuit? Red Hat? Oracle? EDU-Nix? Let us all remember who it is that is complicit in this FUD campaign, Novell’s self-serving deal legitimizes Microsoft’s assault on Linux.
If successful, Microsoft will create a landscape in the Operating System market that consists of themselves and MS-approved ‘competitors’ which pay royalties to MS in perpetuity, all others are sued into oblivion.
Regardless of the technical wording of the deal, and whether it can be established that Novell is violating the letter of the GPL 2, they are certainly violating its spirit, Novell must not be supported.
Update: More in depth on Ballmer’s exact words , including an MP3.
What we were able to craft, with a lot of hard work with Novell, was an agreement essentially where we would do the technical work in a variety of different areas to improve interoperability between the two environments. And we agreed on a, we call it an IP bridge, essentially an arrangement under which they pay us some money for the right to tell the customer that anybody who uses Suse Linux is appropriately covered. There will be no patent issues. They’ve appropriately compensated Microsoft for our intellectual property, which is important to us. In a sense you could say anybody who has got Linux in their data center today sort of has an undisclosed balance sheet liability, because it’s not just Microsoft patents. Because of the way open-source works, there’s nobody who’s been able to do patent coverage or patent indemnification behind that.
So, its an IP Bridge, not a patent cross license agreement, nothing to do with patents all you GPLers, really. Novell paid MS to be able to say that SuSE is not infringing, and MS paid Novell to say that Linux is. The relative sizes of the payments should tell you who had to be convinced.
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11.16.06
Posted in FUD, SCO at 2:58 pm by Shane Coyle
Here is an article that is just perfect.
It’s worth remembering that there is a court case about these very issues, involving a set of anti-Linux lawsuits brought by SCO Corp…Three years and endless depositions later, there still isn’t a single credible example of an IP problem with Linux.
Why is Novell complicit in this FUDmongering? Oh, yeah. $orry. Microsoft’s patent attorney would not specify if Linux was infringing in any way, stating they would rather “license than litigate”.
Sneaking stolen code into Linux without anyone noticing would be as easy as driving the space shuttle down Fifth Avenue at noon without turning heads.
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