Microsoft Excludes GPLv3 From Linspire Deal 342
rs232 writes to tell us that Microsoft is excluding any software licensed under the new GPLv3 from their recent patent protection deal with Linspire. "Microsoft has since been treating GPLv3 software as though it were radioactive. 'Microsoft isn't a party to the GPLv3 license and none of its actions are to be misinterpreted as accepting status as a contracting party of GPLv3 or assuming any legal obligations under such license,' the company said in a statement released shortly after GPLv3 was published on June 29. In addition to excluding GPLv3 software from the Linspire deal, Microsoft recently said that it wouldn't distribute any GPLv3 software under its SUSE Linux alliance with Novell, even as it maintains in public statements that the antilawsuit provisions in the license have no legal weight. "
The GPLv3 works (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:So what? (Score:5, Interesting)
Does Linspire have any market share? (Score:4, Interesting)
Microsoft's Covenant to Customers [microsoft.com] (Linspire's customers it would seem - not Microsoft's) hardly makes compelling business sense to consider Linspire for the business desktop. Few home users would consider themselves vulnerable to patent lawsuits by Microsoft, if they used Linux.
So this announcement merely indicates that GPL3 has won, and Microsoft has been compelled to publicly qualify their pre-negotiated deals with business partners, and customers gain more from GPL3 than covenants from Microsoft.
Re:So what? (Score:3, Interesting)
*Assuming others are contributing to it. If you're the sole copyright holder for your project, you can always do whatever the hell you want.
Re:So what? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:An other example of GPL3 suckyness (Score:5, Interesting)
The loopholes were just that: sneaky ways to evade the intentions of most of the most important contributors in the realm of FOSS. I have no problem with businesses making money using FOSS, and many of them do it in a way that is not only compatible with the intentions of the GPL, but actively promotes the cause of free software. However, those businesses who were exploiting loopholes in the GPL knew that they were not promoting our interests, and therefore should not be surprised when the community shifts to close those loopholes. Such a shift will only alienate businesses who were not helping "the cause" anyways.
The GPLv3 is not perfect, and is not a perfect license. I don't think that every project should switch to GPLv3... for some the GPLv2 may be a better match. However GPLv3 was crafted to address a very real problem, and judging from Microsoft's reaction, it is doing a great job in that regard.
Re:So what? (Score:2, Interesting)
IANAL however.
Re:An other example of GPL3 suckyness (Score:5, Interesting)
In short, GPLv3 really made "Open Source" more like "Closed Source" by clearly pointing out that what you may be allowed to do now you may not be allowed to do later (unless you fork and thus lose the community aspect that made it interesting in the first place).
After all, who's to say GPLv4 won't say "you must release any changes back to the community whether you distribute or not" ?
GPLv3 is the best possible thing that could have happened to Closed Source vendors because it just kicked the chair out from under most of the arguments in favor of Open Source.
pleading in the alternative (Score:5, Interesting)
In a lawsuit, it is possible to argue multiple theories of liability, or multiple theories of innocence. As long as each theory is internally consistent, they don't all have to be consistent with each other. It's the legal version of throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks... and when you're just getting started, you don't want to leave stuff out by mistake, becuase there might be a chance that if you don't bring it up at the beginning you won't be allowed to bring it up later.
The classic example is: Your buddy says, "You bastard, you slept with my wife!" If this was a lawsuit, you might respond
a. No I didn't!
b. You said that I could!
c. She wasn't your wife!
d. I thought she was someone else!
e. I was insane!
This would be OK, becuase even though (d) seems to contradict (a), that doesn't automatically mean that (a) is invalid, even though BOTH statements can't be true at the same time. These are all alternative theories of how you might avoid blame/liability for the act, and in filing or responding to lawsuits, this practice is known as alternative pleading. [wikipedia.org]
In that context, Microsoft's GPLv3 statement doesn't need to be consistent- although it is unusual to see this kind of logical construct outside of a court document. The press release reads like they're anticipating a lawsuit, and they're trying to get their story straight ahead of time... In this situation, their story is plausible deniability. and it doesn't matter which alternative theory ends up working, as long as one of them does the job.
So it's perfectly legit for MS to use alternate theories to justify their actions- it just reeks of bad faith when their public position is so openly contradictory. It does seem pretty odd that Microsoft is using legal tactics to write their press releases- almost like they've got something to hide.
Re:15 years ago: (Score:5, Interesting)
*Assuming others are contributing to it. If you're the sole copyright holder for your project, you can always do whatever the hell you want.
-Em
Re:The GPLv3 works (Score:5, Interesting)
The real story is how Microsoft changed its patent covenant, after the deal with Linspire was already finalized. Is Microsoft free under that deal to alter the patent covenant however they want - making it useless?
Not that the deal was useful for anything previously either. It doesn't cover 'clone products' - which perhaps includes OpenOffice and Wine, and it doesn't cover 'video game applications designed to run on a computer', nor 'unified communications', nor a long list of other things. Does it cover anything at all?
Microsoft does not have enough money for that. (Score:3, Interesting)
Microsoft may be very rich but they do not have enough income to hire enough developers to fork every open source project.
Customers and stockholders would be very angry if MSFT diverted a large part of their current staff to forking open source projects. They can't just pull the open source work into their existing teams because of the possibility of contamination of their precious source code assets with some Open Source or - horror! GPLv2 - licensed code.
MSFT forking the code would mean them hiring a whole lot more developers of the required skill level and as far as I know there is not currently a large pool of sufficiently skilled unemployed developers. Hiring enough to even make a start is going to be significant expenditure for no extra income and that means taking a substantial hit in profits. Financial analysts and stockholders are not going to be happy with that and if they start to sell the share price goes down and we see just how much of MSFT's money is real and how much is just a high P/E ratio that could collapse frighteningly fast if investors lose confidence.
MSFT's best bet is to try to cause divisions between different groups of open source developers but I think that the problem there is that whatever license they prefer, open source developers tend to have respect for technical contribution and contempt for the marketing bullshit and 'business' dirty tricks that are MSFT's stock in trade. Heated public arguments over the merits of different licenses are not a sign of the community fragmenting, they are a sign that the open source community does its thing in the open and collectively comes up with a set of variants that can satisfy everyone and an understanding of how to work together.
What we all need to do is to keep shining a light into the corners where MSFT is trying to play its dirty tricks - like the ballot stuffing in the standards committees - so that they are seen for what they are. The advantages of open source speak for themselves, even to businessmen, if we make sure that the real facts are available.
Re:Success! (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, given that the GPLv3 was written specifically to make those "patent protection deals" untenable,...
There's another way of seeing this if we can assume that the effect is proof of the motive: that GPLV3 was written specifically to encourage developers to build products that would not be indemnified by those "patent protection deals". Richard stuck a spear in the ground and assumed Microsoft would run into it. What's comical is the number of people surprised or upset that they went around it instead.
Writing code under GPLV3 is about to become a great deal like putting your head in the lion's mouth while guessing that he won't like the taste of your hair cream or that he doesn't have any teeth. After all, it could be that Microsoft doesn't really have any actionable software patents.
Re:So what? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not as simple as saying, "fine, we'll just ditch anything GPLv3". Who's gonna maintain the fork? 'Cause you gotta maintain it, you can't just fork it and let it rot. Will Microsoft pick up the fork? Will any of the Linux distro's that made a deal with Microsoft? Will they fork and maintain all projects that go GPLv3?
See, it's not just a matter of forking the code. The license still sticks. OK, it's not GPLv3, it's good old GPLv2, but I think they'll have a lot of trouble dealing with just GPLv2 too. Remember, v3 made patent protection explicit and took it globally. But the stuff was still there, albeit implicit and USA-centric.
All in all, I absolutely love seeing Microsoft publicly stating it won't touch GPLv3 with a ten foot pole. This is it, folks, this is THE shit. FSF got the holy Grail. It tells the corporate assholes "take it or leave it", and they gotta choose. And neither option comes easy.
I think it's a knee-jerk reaction of Microsoft's to simply dismiss everything GPLv3, but they're probably frantic to get out of the Novell deal with clean face. It turned worse that they could've ever dreamed.
Re:Success! (Score:3, Interesting)
There is a player you're forgetting about: IBM.
They aren't the good guys. In fact, they are the biggest patent abusing bastards in the world. But... they'd take a revenue hit if people were afraid of deploying their favorite commodity UNIX (i.e. GNU/Linux), so they're likely to step in and maul anyone who actually attacks it with software patents.
And yes, they can win a patent war against Microsoft.