Microsoft Puts Roadblock in Front of Open-Sourcing Avalon and Indigo (eWeek) [LWN.net]

Microsoft Puts Roadblock in Front of Open-Sourcing Avalon and Indigo (eWeek)

Posted Jun 24, 2005 16:41 UTC (Fri) by landley (guest, #6789)
Parent article: Microsoft Puts Roadblock in Front of Open-Sourcing Avalon and Indigo (eWeek)

What exactly is it they're demanding a license _for_?

1) Reverse engineering isn't a copyright issue, it's a fresh implementation of the underlying ideas (which aren't copyrightable).

2) They're calling it by a different name, so it's not trademark.

3) I'm unaware of the mono developers ever being stupid enough to sign a contract with Microsoft.

4) This is all from public documentation and testing against publicly available binaries: not a trade secret issue.

5) That leaves patents. If Microsoft is going to make a patent attack, they should say so. "Hear ye hear ye, Microsoft is now invoking patents against open source development projects." (And if they're going to actually try to enforce anything rather than just make vague threats, they need to list the actual patent numbers.)

The big trick SCO always had was insisting upon a license for unspecified "intellectual property". Now Microsoft's doing something similar. "I own property in the US. You're currently standing on property in the US. Pay me rent."

There are five distinct types of IP that have historically been applied to software: Copyright, trademark, contract, trade secret, and patent. You can have more than one apply to the same piece of code, but the "nine women don't take one month to have a baby" effect definitely applies when you try to claim that even though none of them specifically apply to this instance, between the lot of them you must have something. You either have a claim or you don't have a claim. Not having five different claims doesn't help you in some nebulous cumulative way...

If this is a patent attack, spotlight it. Anything else is smoke and mirrors here...

Rob

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Microsoft Puts Roadblock in Front of Open-Sourcing Avalon and Indigo (eWeek)

Posted Jun 24, 2005 18:46 UTC (Fri) by mmarq (guest, #2332) [Link]

Tought C# has very appealling features, .NET was always like a big rocket moving in slow motion. Belive MS never wanted to completely bar the possibility of compliance or cloning, they just wanted restrictions.

So there probabily they dont have to have a traditional fight, they dont have to. It will be much better for them if any programm from Mono could run on .NET providing they have control to the point Mono would never surpass.NET, fragmenting and embrassing somehow OSS that way, and having an income point also...

... in short *DRM certification*...

DMCA for sure will put people on US at inprisonment peryl, and will constrain the rest of the world trough a certification programm. The only problem to MS is that it will probabily shed many of the shareware/freeware people, oppening a little windown for OSS growth.

Now i belive it is only a warning!

Blurry licensing

Posted Jun 25, 2005 11:32 UTC (Sat) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link]

What exactly is it they're demanding a license _for_?

Amazing, but that's how businesses often work. Quite often I have read news like "Company X licenses Technology T from Company Y", but I could not tell what they were exactly paying for.

Going through the body of the news article with a mental list similar to your excellent dissection of "Intellectual Property" would yield no results at all. No copyrights, no trademarks, no contracts (yet), no trade secrets, and often no (sensible) patents; so that left some unspecified "technology" claims. In my mind, Company X was just buying the right not to be sued, which is sad and disgusting. The outcome would be uncertain, but what is for sure is a big waste of money for both parties.

Well, I think that is what they are demanding a license for.