Microsoft's Patent Pledge "Worse Than Useless" 140
munchola writes "The Software Freedom Law Center has declared that Microsoft's patent pledge to open source developers is 'worse than useless'. SFLC chief technology officer, Bradley Kuhn, has written to FOSS developers warning them that 'developers are no safer from Microsoft patents now than they were before'. According to Kuhn: 'The patent covenant only applies to software that you develop at home and keep for yourself; the promises don't extend to others when you distribute. You cannot pass the rights to your downstream recipients, even to the maintainers of larger projects on which your contribution is built.'"
Well.... (Score:1)
Re:No kidding (Score:5, Interesting)
The point is, open source people _aren't_ hippies. They've been running successful businesses for years now. But microsoft wants them to be hippies, wants the world to believe them to be - and now, is trying to make them be, using software patent monopolies to shut down open source businesses. The message is "if you're a hippie hobbyist coder, we won't sue you. But dare to build a business, and we will". Remember, patent and copyright monopolies DESTROY free market capitalism. Microsoft, like most large software corporations, are absolutely terrified of a true free market in software.
"hippy and communist" are just wrong when applied to free software folk: "Raging gun-nut libertarian" is far more accurate. Microsoft are playing with fire.
Re:No kidding (Score:4, Insightful)
Bingo. A point I have been trying to make for what seems like ages.
There are no free markets when it comes to goods protected by copyrights or patents. With copyleft you can perhaps get close to a free market in those goods.
all the best,
drew
http://www.ourmedia.org/node/262954 [ourmedia.org]
Sayings - Deterred Bahamian Novel
You got it backwards. (Score:2)
Pretty sneaky, huh? Maybe you (and the other lemmings in your group) should try to do some reading once in a while. Your knees have got to be getting tired from all of that jerking.
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Against non-commercial coders. Which is the point - they're using the market-distorting power of patents to eliminate the more efficient competition from the COMMERCIAL open-source coders that have been mopping the floor with closed source lame ducks lately.
On the other hand, VA Software (the owner of Slashdot) has said publically that they will aggressively prosecute people who violate their patents.
That's a "we're better than North Kor
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Where? All I see is a disclaimer against possible infringements of other people's patents, and this interesting snippet:
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What exactly do I have backwards? Are you claiming that copyrights and patents create or enhance Free Market Capitalism?
You will need to bring some serious arguments and lots of whatever to put that case across.
Oh, and those ad hominum references to lemmings don't work too well.
all the best,
drew
http://www.ourmedia.org/node/262954 [ourmedia.org]
Sayings - Deterred Bahamian Novel
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You're right...
...we need more hippy coders!
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Free market isn't defined as whatever the Republican's spout. Just like Communism isn't whatever the USSR spouted.
Surprised? (Score:2, Insightful)
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Who, how much, for which projects? Not saying you are wrong, just curious.
Re:Surprised? (Score:4, Informative)
But if Novell released said code under the GPL, then the genie is out of the bottle. Stick with the code that pre-dates the agreement between MS and Novell, and I think you're okay.
Oh, and stop contributing code to Novell.
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Microsoft will rape them and then they will be excluded by everyone else.
A very quick and messy death for Novell.
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I got back an email saying they wouldn't give me any support unless I proved that I'd paid for their product. I tried telling them that I was trying to support them, but to no avail: all my emails just got returned with the same message. I pretty soon gave up.
A distributor like Debian or Slack
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Or are you talkig about Novell's employees?
Re:Surprised? (Score:5, Insightful)
They created ME and Vista. I would consider the users that left Windows because of ME or the ones who might leave because of Vista, something truly good for OSS.
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Why should they? (Score:2)
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Because we all know... (Score:2)
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The long term consequences don't matter here... all that matters is that for the next couple of years, profits go up
Welcome to corporation-think
This has nothing to do with feel-good, Microsoft is teh EVIL, I hug bunnies world.
A corporation exists to make money for its owners
period
too bad about SuSE Linux... it will be seen as a victim of collateral damage
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Agreed. But there is a difference between short-term money and long-term money.
One doesn't guarantee the other, and it takes a good CEO to tell the difference.
It also takes intelligent shareholders to avoid lynching him in the meantime.
I think in a lot of cases, bad business decisions can be attributed to shareholders will very short-term vision.
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Not as far as most fund managers are concerned, and they have the most power in real investment world.
They want short term ROI, or they sell.
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duh. (Score:1)
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Do you think that's enough? I think this is at least a triple duh. I might even go so far as to skip right over quadruple duh and put it into the pentupal duh category.
I wouldn't call it a sextuple duh, though. That's just being silly.
Boycott Novell (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Boycott Novell (Score:4, Interesting)
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And with Novells long, proprietary, history it has quite some legacy to overcome.
Novell is aready spreading FUD (Score:2)
Novell is aready telling their customers that their product is 'safe from litigation'. That is enough to boycott them.
Now, it they start behaving nicely again, we can change our mind latter... There is just no reason to wait.
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There's only very few companies that can do that and get away with it, and Novell is not even close to being big enough to be one of them.
They didn't manage to survive as long as they have by pissing off their customers.
Ok... (Score:5, Funny)
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Besides, it's not like the "yes" tag could ever be used to categorize an article, so it's not really "wasting" any of the tagging system's potential, if you search for, say, "Halo" articles, the "no" tag applied to "Was Halo 2 Great?" isn't going to stop it from showing up in your
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DUH (Score:2)
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Re:DUH (CNN Edit) (Score:3, Funny)
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Not the Novell Deal (Score:5, Informative)
Note, this article is not talking about the deal with Novell as almost every post thus far has assumed. It mentions that deal, as something still being researched. This is about MS's recent promise/contract to not sue hobbyists for patent violations.
Re:Not the Novell Deal (Score:4, Interesting)
Meaning the stuff they would never know about to sue for in the first place. Gee they won't sue you for stuff they don't know you did, how generous
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Who cares, we are all way to busy bashing MS and Novell to stop and read properly. Geez, next thing you know you'll be asking us to think before we post...
Ya' know... (Score:1)
Enough (Score:1, Troll)
No one writing about this knows any more of the details than what was released to the press. At best all of this is blind supposition and wasted mental bandwidth.
If all of the effort that went into these various prognostications of impending doom had been spent on coding we'd all be a lot better off.
Re:Enough (Score:5, Insightful)
This is getting worse than Zune news. No one writing about this knows any more of the details than what was released to the press.
I know it is not normal to RTFA, but if you did you'd see it was a press release about the license MS released with regard to their promise not to sue open source hobbyists over patent violations. It is not about the Novell deal, despite the fact that every comment thus far (except my previous one) seems to be assuming otherwise. So people do know more than was published in the press release, just not about what you seem to have thought this article was about.
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Actually I did attempt to read the article but saw the word Novell in the first sentence and decided that I'd had my fill of reading about the sky falling.
But maybe I'll go read it now. Or maybe I'll just wait a few minutes for the next actual "Microsoft/Novell Deal" submission to pop up and recycle my original comment.
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No, you weren't.
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Who cares? This is normal as well.
CC.
Actually, it IS part of the Novell deal (Score:2, Informative)
There's already a (correct) way to open a patent. (Score:3, Informative)
It shows people people that your patent was only filed to prevent other people from patenting the idea and causing trouble. People tend to look very favorably on dedications.
Yeah, but what about plan B? (Score:2)
For isolated, uncompensated, unimportant developer (Score:5, Informative)
Groklaw also raised questions about Novell's deal [groklaw.net]:
Re:For isolated, uncompensated, unimportant develo (Score:2)
To be fair, these are all stupid questions. The answers are obviously no, irrelevant, and no. A contract is not binding on you if any of the following are true:
Re:For isolated, uncompensated, unimportant develo (Score:1)
Obviously. Especially if said developer is just writing stuff for use on his own machine. Utilities & apps that don't make it into the wild are no threat, and thus, unimportant from a cash flow point of view, and won't be sued. People only sue when there are monetary & tactical advantages to sue. If there's no money invo
Something of intrest and my $0.02 (Score:1)
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huge number of patents (Score:2)
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no they are not literally taking the piss,
they are however patenting methods and means of urine extraction.
ignore all comments above, i should be sleeping
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Yes, retrofitting. Dear poor relatives!
CC-
Itsatrap AGAIN?! (Score:1, Offtopic)
Patent Pledge for Hobbyist Contributors missing? (Score:4, Interesting)
The "Microsoft's Patent Pledge for Non-Compensated Developers" is indeed rather useless, because it only covers creation and local use, and specifically excludes distribution.
The "Microsoft's Patent Pledge for Individual Contributors to openSUSE.org" is also not interesting, since it covers the transfer of code from an author to SUSE, and only that and nothing else.
The "Microsoft's Patent Pledge for Hobbyist Contributors" is referenced from the above one. This should be the one that is covering the community distribution part. But is missing on the Microsoft website: Either it doesn't exist at all and the reference is a mistake, or there is a reason why it was left out from the web.
Has anyone managed to find it? Why Bradley Kuhn doesn't mention it?
Re:Patent Pledge for Hobbyist Contributors missing (Score:1, Troll)
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Re:Patent Pledge for Hobbyist Contributors missing (Score:2)
True. Even worse, they're pledging not to do something that they can't do anyway! The grant of the patent was done in exchange for teaching me how to implement and use the invention. They cannot prevent me from learning it, they can only prevent me from using the knowledge in a manner that infringes on their granted rights.
One question comes to mind, (Score:2)
People need to vote with their pocketbook and put Novell out of business, ASAFP.
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By what right... (Score:1)
What terrible arrogance.
So... (Score:2)
Basically, this agreement is saying that Microsoft won't wield patents against those contributing software to OpenSuSE until after the Microsoft-Novell deal runs out or you try to wield patents against MS themselves.
But, really, what was the situation before? Either you wrote software that DIDN'T violate MS patents, or you DID and just hoped like hell that they wouldn't use their patents to sue you. There is a false s
Trying to trap people into getting sued (Score:1)
I've said it befoe and I'll say it again (Score:1)
This is why software patents are stupid (Score:2)
You know, I can build anything damn thing I want to with my Craftsman tool set and sell it. Sears has never had to promise that they won't sue me. I can even build, sell, and distribute competing products as long as its done under a different brand name.
Microsoft seems to be forgetting all those nice shareware programs built for Windows th
Hmmm, why do this now? (Score:3, Interesting)
I reckon they are terrified about Vista... They're terrified it'll be a dead loss with millions jumping ship to Linux. They're trying to fence of Linux from their ex-customers in advance of it's release.
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MS is terrified for a long time now... Vista must be VERY BAD for MS being even more afraid now, that they are releasing it than when they where delaying the release.
Or maybe they know something we don't.
Has Microsoft Ever Sued Someone Over a Patent? (Score:1)
No Suit Promised where No Suit Possible (Score:2)
Even if it was legally possible, how is MS going to find out about me violating their retroactive patent on sudo (oops, loose lips!) in order to sue me, if I'm not allowed to distribute the result?
For somebody who claims that it is possible to sue someone for private use, can you point me to a case where such a case was successfully prosecuted?
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From Wikipedia: "In United States law, an infringement may occur where the defendant has made, used, sold, offered to sell, or imported an infringing invention or its equivalent." Making and/or using an infringing product is infringement. It may be unlikely that you will ever be sued for it (since it is so unli
I'm still not sure this Novell/M$ deal is bad (Score:1)
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Only if they use SuSE for a back end. Anybody else, call your l*wy*rs.
No, they'll be broke, bankrupt, and out of business, with a friendly MS sales rep more than happy to step in and have a MS Partner come in to 'fi
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People who've never used Microsoft software, referred to it, or looked at it are just as likely to be sued for patent infringement as those who do - that's part of what's wrong with software patents. Given that, is there any reason why Linux users in general shouldn't be scared? If they don't use SuSE, then Microsoft has started lifting the barriers (i.e. antitrust) to being able to sue
Do I have this right? (Score:2)
Is this the basic import of this story?
If so, it seems that Novell has just signed their own
Sorry, I'm excited about this M$ Novell deal (Score:2, Interesting)
Now, that being said, let me get to the point (and please don't mod this as flame bait because I'm just trying to give my honest opinion.
I'm excited about this Novell/M$ deal. I'm excited about it because it will allow IT departments to give their end users the
Evil on one side, evil on the other (Score:3, Insightful)
This from the man who believes [omnipotent.net] that the GPL is the only FOSS license with the right to exist.
Mr. Kuhn, you are every bit as much a part of the problem as Microsoft are themselves. In fact, you are moreso. At least Microsoft do not try and pretend to be anything other than what they are. You are not one micron less a fascist...merely from a different direction.
You can take your warped, cultic distortion of the word "freedom," and cram it where you feel most appropriate. You and Richard Stallman are open source's answer to David Miscavige and L. Ron. Hubbard, respectively. You are the proverbial scorpion on Linux's back.
Some who use Linux with the total inability to think for themselves may delude themselves that they need to use your brain and Stallman's in leiu of their own. I am not among such people, and I defy, reject, and repudiate both you, Stallman, and the entirely *false* freedom which the FSF stands for. You would have us reject Microsoft as our masters, only to install yourselves in their place.
You do not speak for everyone who uses open source. You most certainly do not speak for me.
microsoft micron fud .. (Score:2)
When did he ever threaten MS with litigation for having FOSS intellectual property in Windows.
was Re:Evil on one side, evil on the other
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Why assume he wouldn't if he could? That isn't the sole measure.
I think the "fascism" shoe fits pretty well. http://www.answers.com/fascism&r=67 [answers.com]
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"Instead, Microsoft has used this patent pledge to indicate that, in their view, the only good Free Software developer is an isolated, uncompensated, unimportant Free Software developer."
I would add that Microsoft has indicated nothing of the sort. The patent pledge is something Microsoft has offered out of their own business interests/strategies and says nothing of the value they place on any developer. Instead, the statement was offered merely to further
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Re:Patents don't protect that anyway - wrong (Score:3, Insightful)
But I think this commonly held misconception might be one reason why the general public sees nothing wrong with patents...they think it only applies if yo
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The USPTO is ridiculous and honestly I would not worry about Microsoft's patents in the slightest; they have the sword of antitrust dangling over their heads.