MS-Sun Agreement Leaves Opening For OO.org Suits 407
newentiti writes "We all know Microsoft paid $900,000,000.00 to Sun and they also signed a LIMITED PATENT COVENANT AND STAND-STILL AGREEMENT. The agreement basically states that Microsoft will not sue Sun for any patents for the next 10 years and vice versa. What's really interesting is that according to this story the agreement had a special provision that lets Microsoft sue anybody, including Sun, over OpenOffice.org. I wonder what Microsoft had in mind?"
Eh... could they really? (Score:-1, Insightful)
Cripes -- we'd all have to use Abiword, and after years of development that thing isn't even remotely stable.
--SD
Hardly seems sinister (Score:5, Insightful)
Possible Simple Explanation (Score:5, Insightful)
That said, I this is Microsoft and their legal actions have rarely been that benign in the past.
Office is their cash cow obviously (Score:3, Insightful)
Holy #$#@$ (Score:3, Insightful)
Jesus Christ. How hard is it to use simpler terms if you don't know that the *complex* ones mean? Lets atleast try to keep it a little professional editors. Please.
It is simple - FUD (Score:3, Insightful)
They can go ahead and sue a non-profit organziation. I wonder what kind of goodwill that'll bring.
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Re:Lawsuits ala Lindows (Score:5, Insightful)
legal strategy? (Score:4, Insightful)
Its pretty obvious that Microsoft wants to preserve their right to sue, but I'm surprised that the deal with sun provides an exception. If the two agree that there is a real prospect of Microsoft winning a suit over OpenOffice.org, I would think that Sun would want to be protected and would have held out until Microsoft agreed. And I would think that Microsoft would have agreed, if they really wanted the deal with Sun, perhaps with the likely damages subtracted from Microsoft's payment to Sun. So what this suggests to me is that Microsoft's legal strategy involves a suit in which for some reason it would be difficult to avoid naming Sun as a defendant but in which Sun does not anticipate actually have to pay any significant damages or litigation expenses. I'm not sure how this situation would arise - maybe a situation in which MS has to name everybody initially but would then drop Sun as a defendant after discovery?
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
OpenOffice is nothing to do with Sun surely?... (Score:5, Insightful)
One could equally say the agreement left open the possibility of suing people over Linux, or indeed washing machines.
I doubt Sun wants to enmesh itself as responsible for washing machines anymore that they would OpenOffice... yes I understand where OpenOffice comes from, but ask yourself if you;d want blurry lines if you were Sun.
Perhaps the spin on the reportage is a little askew. I'm not sure one can infer any intent on Microsofts part.... unless of course MS are planning on suing makers of washing machines.
Re:Change the name (Score:3, Insightful)
And I doubt the legal agreements are so loose that simply changing the name of the product invalidates the contract. They pay the lawyers big money for a reason.
Open Office vs. OpenOffice.org (Score:4, Insightful)
war of attrition (Score:5, Insightful)
no quarter, no mercy, just cut em off completely, send msft to the recycle bin of history forever...
msft is not to be trusted under any circumstances...
this has already been done both in my office and at home...
That's a April's fool joke (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Lawsuits ala Lindows (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's obvious why they left Open Office out (Score:1, Insightful)
an Office to Open Office converter would be great! you do not need to convert the other direction as items saved as rtf and renamed to
simply give OO.o the option to save as rtf with
personally a Msoffice to sxw distiller would be a great item to have, think of it running as a daemon... finding all
Re:It is simple - FUD (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, no. Companies that go for market share often lose sight of the most important thing: profitability. Granted, getting the most market share can lead to economies of scale, but the costs to get that market share (from reduced prices, marketing expenses, etc.) can easily swallow any increase in profits. This is one of the reasons why slashing prices to gain market share almost always results in lower profits.
Smart, successful companies know when to walk away from market share in order to maintain profitability. Dumb ones blindly go for the "sell at a loss and make it up on volume" mantra.
Re:Could be... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Hardly seems sinister (Score:2, Insightful)
I can't think of any other reason for this exclusion to be made other than Microsoft planning legal action against someone related to OpenOffice. It seems very odd to me that an OpenOffice clause would be written into this agreement with Sun, since it doesn't seem like Sun could be held liable for anything that OpenOffice does anyways. This is where I could be wrong... I couldn't find on openoffice.org what kind of ties to Sun remain, so I'm assuming there are very few if any.
It may be reasonable after all (Score:5, Insightful)
This is not a troll. I don't like Micro$haft but I don't see this as the evil, bad thing everyone else says it is.
What it will eventually boil down to is, how do they utilize (if they do) this provision?
Re:Possible Simple Explanation (Score:3, Insightful)
As a general rule-of-thumb, this is already true of most FOSS developers. Let developers concentrate on technology, let the lawyers concentrate on patents.
Well, its true except for the "flagrant" part, as I'm pretty sure most FOSS developers don't know about patents in their relevant products.
Re:Lawsuits ala Lindows (Score:3, Insightful)
Microsoft has started drafting talent they think can teach them the mindset of OS. Unfortunately, Microsoft is so set in their ways WRT capitalism (to an extreme) they don't know how to deal with things which aren't done for the [sole] purpose of money. They seriously do not know. They've tried to employ the overused FUD by making the suits think ownership is an issue because someone can write code, sell the package and the source, the new owner can modify the source, sell the result and the source, etc. This bothers Microsoft - again, they don't understand this and it bothers them. It's like trying to sleep with sand in their bed and they can't sweep it out. And that just makes them more frantic. So now they're going to look at the same ownership cycle and throw the law at it. The question is: why should they care? They're selling things, OS folks are selling things.
Perhaps they feel they can compete on that one level but worry all subsequent "generations" of the OS making the repeated sales + builds somehow threaten their business model? If so, they're going to have to admit they've lost a competitive edge. That won't bother them because that then removes the label monopoly.
How can you have a monopoly if you don't always (or nearly always) have the competitive edge [on the grand scale]?
Just remember...
______________________________________
My Trunk Monkey can beat up your Trunk Monkey.
http://www.suburbanautogroup.com/ford/trunkmonkey
Re:That's a April's fool joke (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd like to see it happen (Score:3, Insightful)
This clause doesn't apply (Score:5, Insightful)
According to one of the posts in the article [linuxelectrons.com], there is no such product called "Open Office" (4th post down as of 9/15/2004 6:00 GMT). The product mentioned in the agreement (legally speaking) may or may not refer to OpenOffice.org, which is what the news story is referencing. Why can a news story get it wrong and not a legal contract? Because legalese is all about semantics. News stories don't have to be to have a Slashdot discussion.
The post in question states:
This is stated here [openoffice.org], in the Trademark section (which they claim was last updated 2003-07).Did Sun's legal department pull one over on MSFT's legal department? Was it a mistake? Was Oo.o defined earlier and then said "referred to herein as 'Open Office'"? Was the agreement between Sun and Microsoft dated before the official communication of Oo.o? I don't know, but it appears to be pretty clever, and raises some intriguing questions.
One way or the other, this won't stop me from deploying Oo.o. It's an excellent product, and saves $400 per PC (nearly 40% of the cost of a complete system).
OOo = "Open Office" ! (Score:5, Insightful)
The agreement refers to 'the product developed by Sun and commonly known as "Open Office"' and this most certainly refers to Openoffice.org.
The name "openoffice.org" was chosen because "open office" was trademarked by some other company, but not for software.
Here is the plan... (Score:4, Insightful)
When and if Microsoft unleashes its patent war against open source in general, against Linux and OpenOffice in particular, Sun and all customers of Sun will be immune.
Thus, Sun will be the only company allowed to sell Linux and OpenOffice, aka, StarOffice and will be Linux's sole distributor.
What does Microsoft get out of the deal? First, Microsoft does NOT want Linux destroyed. It needs to have at least the appearance of competition to keep government regulators off its back. That competition will come from Sun.
Second, Linux will be greatly hobbled because instead of the entire world working on Linux, there will be only one source with which to compete.
Basically, Microsoft will destroy Linux but keep the appearance of healthy competition in the marketplace.
Re:Lawsuits ala Lindows (Score:3, Insightful)
Finally, Microsoft would lose for many reasons (prior art, fundamental differences between the implementations etc...)
Re:Hardly seems sinister (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Lawsuits ala Lindows (Score:4, Insightful)
"I'd been operating under the assumption that the reason Bob spends so much time and energy shouting at the rain was that he simply didn't get it. Well, I was wrong, Bob's problem isn't that he doesn't get it; Bob's problem is that he can't sell it. We have serious problems to solve, and we need serious people to solve them. And whatever your particular problem is, I promise you, Bob Rumson is not the least bit interested in solving it. He is interested in two things, and two things only: making you afraid of it, and telling you who's to blame for it. That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you win elections."
Replace Bob Rumson with Microsoft, and you have a clear match.
File Format Troubles (Score:2, Insightful)
It would be so nice in a perfect world if users just used rtf or something a little more compatible, but that's not gonna happen any time soon. I think this is the single biggest threat to moving people off windows...they can't read their files.
Re:Hardly "funny"... (Score:5, Insightful)
MS Office for Linux is not going to happen. Microsoft's power comes through control of the desktop platform. If they ran office on Linux, a lot of people would lose their only reason for sticking with Windows. Besides, the vast majority of people using OOo are using it on Windows, not Linux.
Sure their desktop is under assault from Internet malware but has this eroded their market share in the slightest? No. As long as the applications people want to run only run on Windows then Microsoft will continute to dominate the market. I hate Windows but I run it at home because the games I play don't run on Linux. As for Malware, I'm behind a firewall, and I don't use IE or Outlook so what do I care.
Re: "domestic partner" (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Have a reality check (Score:3, Insightful)
Software patents go like this: the way of obtaining the number 3 by adding 2+1 is hereby patented. Therefore if you're in a school, you must do 3+0 or 4+(-1), unless you're willing to pay license for 2+1 additions, at $0.05/action. You're welcome to prove that it's prior art, if you got the lawyers, but beware, we got more lawyers and deeper pockets and we can drag it out for 10 years in court. We will patent the stupidest things, because the patent examiner is on our team, we regularly take him out to golf, plus we inundate him with so many stupid claims, that even if he tries to pick on the details and fight them one by one, something WILL get through, sooner or later, and what doesn't get through, we'll keep reapplying until it gets through, SOONER OR LATER.
Real inventions don't happen in patents, they happen at universities, in published science articles, and they come out no matter what, out of ego, whether patented or not. Talk about stupid things patented like the 1-click shopping patent for amazon? Can you say "DUH?"
Re:Possible Simple Explanation (Score:3, Insightful)
They don't have need to rely on trust, they can see the code. LGPL, remember?
Re:This clause doesn't apply (Score:4, Insightful)
No, and you should become very very worried if any judge lets you spend more than 30 seconds arguing it. If he does it's probably because he's already decided to rip your case apart limb by limb and is just looking for an excuse to stomp it into a bloody pulp and shove it down your throat one spoonfull at a time. Chuckle.
A contract is an agreement of good faith intent. You, me, the judge, everyone at Sun, everyone at Microsoft, and everyone here on Slashdot knows that the item "referred to herein as 'Open Office'" is clear and obvious refference to Sun's OpenOffice.org. Any attempt by Sun to argue that the use of "Open Office" was a trick refference designed to deceive Microsoft would place Sun in a position of bad faith. Every other term and clause in the contract would then likely be interpreted in the light least favorable to Sun.
For similar reasons, when there is a real and reasonable confusion in the meaning of a contract written by only one side (such as EULA's), those terms are generally interpreted in favor of the person who did not write the contract. You can't write confusing terms and then claim ownership of any car that uses your parking service.
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