Jeremy Allison Has Resigned from Novell to Protest MS Patent Deal (Groklaw) [LWN.net]

What about Nat Friedman?

Posted Dec 21, 2006 20:39 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

The problem with ethical position is that there are none. Novell and Microsoft designed the deal as if it was deal related to businesses. And "there are no friends in business". If you are not violating you agreements - you are hero. No matter hos sneaky or sleazy the actual deal is: if you can not be thrown in jail for signing it - it's Ok.

But communities (including open source and free software communities) are all about friends! It does not matter if you can be thrown to jail or not - if it's close to "dark side" we'll stop helping you. Take a look on another example: binary-only modules. It's not clear if they are legal or not (it depends on definition of "derived work" and it's hairy thing), but it's clearly wrong thing to do so the decision is clear: I refuse to support them(Linus).

The same is true for Novell vs Microsoft situation - I'm not sure if developers are enraged enough to retaliate with massive switch to GPLv3, but they are clearly not happy when Novell says: "look, we are carefully redesigned the deal so we are not violating the agreement - what's your problem?"...

What about Nat Friedman?

Posted Dec 21, 2006 21:33 UTC (Thu) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link]

The problem with ethical position is that there are none.

You're saying that ethics is not a valid concept with regard to business. That's not true, a more accurate statement would be that the law sees no ethical position. And that's a bug, not a feature.

There are many laws regarding a business and its obligation to stockholders and others. For the most part the laws penalize particular concrete examples of unethical behavior rather than any unethical behavior. Some laws, like RICO, come closer to addressing ethics than others.

You may not go to jail or be successfully sued for breaking a promise. But, as you point out, your business may suffer consequences that are just as bad. As Jeremy pointed out, Novell have made pariahs of themselves. This may well lead to failure of their Linux business, especially since they are headed for a collision with GPL 3 on Samba, Libc3, etc., and they haven't been very successful in generating Linux business even without being a pariah among many people who might previously have recommended them.

Thanks

Bruce

What about Nat Friedman?

Posted Dec 21, 2006 22:50 UTC (Thu) by dmantione (guest, #4640) [Link]

The money Microsoft is paying to Novell exceeds their Linux revenues by a
large factor. Whatever ethics its has, a company cannot ignore the
business side of things. So, business won from ethics in this case, but
this is too little to consider Novell is not our enemy. They did and do
many good things for Linux.

What about Nat Friedman?

Posted Dec 21, 2006 22:51 UTC (Thu) by dmantione (guest, #4640) [Link]

Correction: "this is too little to consider Novell is our enemy"

What about Nat Friedman?

Posted Dec 22, 2006 14:36 UTC (Fri) by skvidal (subscriber, #3094) [Link]

Ethics should always come before business decisions. Otherwise we end up with enron and worldcomm/mci and tyco. That's the shame of it all. We've actually been beaten into the idea that it's acceptable to do evil as long as it is in the name of business. So sad.

What about Nat Friedman?

Posted Jan 7, 2007 20:16 UTC (Sun) by liljencrantz (subscriber, #28458) [Link]

I strongly disagree with your assertion that the fact that the law is not inherently moral is a bug.

My guess is that when you say you want 'ethical laws' you mean laws that correspond with your ethics, but ethics are inherently subjective. Large parts of the earths population considers various actions like the use of prophylaxis, the owning of property, using surgery to correct life threatening medical conditions, working on certain days of the week, eating certain foodstuffs or homosexuality unethical. My aunt, who is hardcore catholic, probably thinks it is unethical _not_ to eat fish on fridays. Luckily she doesn't want to force her views on ethics on the rest of the world. Unfortunatly, the rest of the world doesn't feel that way. Various attempts to encode the ethics of a specific grouping (usually a religion) into common law is a widespread disease, both today and five centuries ago.

I want a world where law is as far removed from morals as possible, and instead focuses on providing a basic framework for different people with different customs and morals to meet and interact with each other as equals. This framework should only consist of fundamental rights like the rights to life liberty and propery. Anything above that should be up to the individual.

What about Nat Friedman?

Posted Dec 21, 2006 22:21 UTC (Thu) by vblum (guest, #1151) [Link]

Maybe this will all play out ok somehow in the end. Or maybe not. In any case, I agree: Nat should have been the one leaving.

Right now it looks to me, that the former Ximian guys must simply be blinded by something. An easy guess is their greed to render their pet project, Mono, less vulnerable to patent _lawsuits_. Ironically, the problem are not lawsuits, it's the fact that there are patents infringed in the first place. That has somehow been ignored for may years now.

Whatever their precise motive - they've done some serious PR damage to SUSE, a distribution which I do not think they cared very much about when they joined Novell. The funny thing is that Nat et al appear to be blind to the damage that they have in actual fact, whether they like it or not. Just this time they're holding something hostage that is not their original achievement (SUSE as whole). THAT stinks.

What about Nat Friedman?

Posted Dec 21, 2006 22:35 UTC (Thu) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link]

Right now it looks to me, that the former Ximian guys must simply be blinded by something.

It could be money, too.

Whatever their precise motive - they've done some serious PR damage to SUSE, a distribution which I do not think they cared very much about when they joined Novell.

Yeah, SuSE are among the losers and the SuSE folks didn't ask for this. And there's not a thing that I see we can do about it, because easing up on Novell to avoid hurting SuSE would make SuSE into Novell's "human shield", and would send a signal that more companies should repudiate their promises to GPL developers.

Bruce

What about Nat Friedman?

Posted Dec 22, 2006 14:43 UTC (Fri) by thebluesgnr (guest, #37963) [Link]

Yeah, SuSE are among the losers and the SuSE folks didn't ask for this. And there's not a thing that I see we can do about it

Sorry, that's just not true.

SuSE was a proprietary operating system. Not only did it include proprietary software, but it required proprietary software to function (I'm talking about YaST here). Whatever the old SuSE did, people had to accept their decision, as the nature of proprietary software dictates.

SUSE is not a proprietary operating system, and that's thanks to Novell. They bought it and released it under a free software license. The entire distribution, including YaST, is now free: if you don't like it you can simply fork it and move on. There is something you can do about it, even if it's just rebranding the openSUSE distribution for the heck of it.

What about SuSE?

Posted Dec 22, 2006 14:53 UTC (Fri) by Duncan (guest, #6647) [Link]

> [E]asing up on Novell to avoid hurting SuSE would
> make SuSE into Novell's "human shield", and would
> send a signal that more companies should repudiate
> their promises to GPL developers.

Perhaps you or someone else can answer this question for me.

I've nothing against SuSE other than the herein stated, but honest
question, what's the big deal with hurting them, since the licensing on
much of their own software was unfree anyway, before Novell bought them.
Someone mentions not seeing a reason to leave SuSE after 10 years... well,
SuSE was never all that great a free software supporter anyway, Novell in
fact made them far freer than they had been, by GPLing YaST and the like.
It's not hard to see how anyone comfortable with the pre-Novell SuSE would
have no problem with staying with it now, either, since they obviously
didn't have a problem with unfree at that point so why should they now.
(Source was available for things like YaST, but it wasn't free code due to
restrictions, sort of like source available but patent encumbered code,
eh?)

In fact, it would seem until this anyway, Novell has been pretty good to
the free software community since they got involved with Linux, anyway.
They've provided a pay check for many FLOSS developers. They've bought
out and freed a fair amount of code and companies, GPLing things like YaST
that was formerly source available but unfree due to a restricted license.
And they've done a lot to destroy the SCO attacks. Until now, their
recent record had been pretty good in fact.

That isn't to excuse this action, as the language had to be deliberately
engineered to subvert the clear intent of the GPLv2, so there's no getting
around a direct intent to do so, and that simply can't be excused.
However, one is left wondering exactly where Novell is headed. Do they
intend to become the next SCO, using the same "assets" they say they never
handed over to SCO? Were they simply blinded by the $$ and didn't realize
the implications? Are they entering a period where much like Sun, they
seem to have multiple personality disorder in their behavior toward the
FLOSS community (just as Sun is hinting they are finally serious about
FLOSS, what with the GPLing of Java and favorable hints toward the GPLv3,
and might actually mean it this time)?

Duncan

Management shifts

Posted Dec 23, 2006 4:14 UTC (Sat) by socket (guest, #43) [Link]

Not long ago, someone (I can't remember who) noted that the top of the food chain at Novell has gone through some significant shifts recently. I wouldn't be surprised to find that the new people in charge aren't so friendly towards free software.

Even if a company has the right idea, it almost seems like wishful thinking to expect that such a state of affairs would persist through major shifts in management.

Is it too cynical to simply not trust companies, in general? I'm not even convinced that they even act in their own "self-interest," supposing such a concept could exist without lots of contradictions and proofs-by-assertion.

I guess the question is: what should we expect out of companies who do business with free software? I don't have a good answer for that, even rhetorically.

Management shifts

Posted Dec 25, 2006 22:41 UTC (Mon) by Duncan (guest, #6647) [Link]

Good point about the management changes. That's what got SCO all turned
around too, unfortunately.

Well, the shareholders /did/ complain and pretty much oust the previous
management in ordered to put these guys in place, so however it goes,
it's definitely shareholder action that triggered it on this one.

One influential kernel hacker employed by Novell/SuSE I've not seen weigh
in is Greg KH. Given his outspokenness on binary kernel modules among
other things, I'd be very interested in reading his opinion. Has he been
keeping uncharacteristically low profile on this or have I just not seen
what he's put out on it?

The weird thing is, all the suits seem to like this thing, even tho the
protection is basically MS saying "We won't sue, unless we /really/ feel
like it", which means there's not really any protection at all.

Time will tell, but it does seem there's always something interesting
going on, often a couple somethings.

Duncan

What about Nat Friedman?

Posted Dec 21, 2006 23:06 UTC (Thu) by dmantione (guest, #4640) [Link]

Yes, Ximian has been more dangerous to free software than SCO has been.
IMO the best solution is to excommunicate Ximian. The principle behind
the GPL is "Liberty or death". It might not be possible to achieve the
death by legal license means, but there are many other, though perhaps
less effective ways to make piece of software die.

Assuming Microsoft patents relate to Mono stuff, as soon as Mono is
irrelevant, the patent part of the Microsoft/Novell deal becomes
irrelevant. Problem solved.

About SuSE: I'm using it for 10 years and I don't see a need to stop
using it. Just don't use Beagle and other Mono crap.

What about Nat Friedman?

Posted Dec 22, 2006 6:46 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

About SuSE: I'm using it for 10 years and I don't see a need to stop using it.

Way too dangerous. Simple scenario:
1. You've bought SUSE and got racket protection
2. You gave your friend disk with gdb, glibc or some other GPL'ed program
3. You've lost your license for glibc and/or gdb - so you can not use them anymore
4. Linux is lost cause for you (you can use router with busybox or something like that - but not Fedora or Debian)

Can something like this happen ? Who knows - it depends on fine details of Microsoft/Novell agreement. And they are secret...

So no - just from practical standpoint SUSE is too dangerous today. OpenSUSE is not, obviously, but is it a good idea to use it while you can not use SUSE ?

What about Nat Friedman?

Posted Dec 22, 2006 7:05 UTC (Fri) by dmantione (guest, #4640) [Link]

Stop the FUD. The GPL says that if Novell looses their right to
distribute software, all their recipients can continue to use it.

Let me quote section 4 of the GPL:
"However, parties who have received copies, or rights, from you under
this License will not have their licenses terminated so long as such
parties remain in full compliance."

So, as long as I don't violate the GPL myself, there is abolsutely no
risk.

What about Nat Friedman?

Posted Dec 22, 2006 8:55 UTC (Fri) by Arker (guest, #14205) [Link]

Yes, but what Novell is doing to dodge the GPL here is pretending that the patent license is not to them, but directly from MS to their customers.

Take that seriously and it means their customers cannot distribute anymore.

What about Nat Friedman?

Posted Dec 22, 2006 13:52 UTC (Fri) by zotz (guest, #26117) [Link]

That is somewhat my thought as well and I haven't seen it touched on much.

all the best,

drew

SuSE continued use scenario

Posted Dec 22, 2006 13:56 UTC (Fri) by Duncan (guest, #6647) [Link]

The no-distribute point is valid, but khim's original comment points 3 and
4 involved use -- saying with the license gone, one couldn't /use/ the
software in question any more. That part's incorrect, as the GPL and LGPL
are very clear that they are not licenses to /use/, only to distribute
(and modify and distribute derived works). They are quite clear that a
license to /use/ the software is not needed (in contrast with software
that tries to use EULAs).

In khim's original scenario, the point 2, distributing to a friend, would
be illegal, but even that isn't likely to be a problem in practice, at the
person2person distribution level anyway, because the owner of the
copyright or their legal agent (note, not any joe blow) would have to seek
the order to stop distribution and any collect damages, and that's
extremely unlikely to occur at the trivial distribution level of the
example. Companies may have things to worry about, individuals normally
wouldn't.

Even for companies, however, the actual settlement has generally been
simply to either quit distributing and pay damages (generally legal costs
plus an agreed amount to some charity), or to yield the source under the
terms of the GPL (again, plus legal costs and a payment to charity), in
source-restricted cases. Patent-restricted cases would be somewhat
different since yielding the source isn't at issue, but the parallel would
be to either ensure the use under the GPL of the patents in question, or,
if that wasn't possible or agreeable, the same distribution cease and
desist. Thus, the only real damage to the company other than costs and
loss of respect/developers/sales in the FLOSS community, is that they lose
the ability to distribute, which they had already lost with the patent
coverage, it just hadn't been enforced with a court order before.

Of course, the loss of community prestige is counting for more as the
community gets larger, and the financial penalty may be worse in the
patent case since the solution won't be as simple as a source release,
particularly when the patents are owned by someone else and therefore
aren't available to the company to make available for use in the GPL
community. What would actually happen could only be determined as the
case played out, at least until a couple such cases had been dealt with.

Duncan

What about Nat Friedman?

Posted Dec 22, 2006 15:44 UTC (Fri) by dmantione (guest, #4640) [Link]

There is nothing Novell or any other *third* party can do to make *me* violate the GPL. I have licensed the software under an automatically granted license from the *original* authors.

The *original* authors granted Novell a license to grant me this automatic license, and so on.

As soon as I have received the software, I have an agreement with the original authors (they are the only ones who can sue for copyright infringement).

Novell is no longer a party in the license agreement and thus can do nothing to invalidate *my* agreement with the original authors

What about Nat Friedman?

Posted Dec 22, 2006 2:26 UTC (Fri) by jamienk (guest, #1144) [Link]

Nat and Miguel too have lost A LOT of their credibility to me lately. Their defense of the Novell deal smack of spin and PR.

What about Nat Friedman?

Posted Dec 22, 2006 3:45 UTC (Fri) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]

Nat and Miguel too have lost A LOT of their credibility to me lately.

You've obviously never heard Miguel speak. Had you heard one of his talks, he wouldn't have had any credibility left to lose. He was, is, and will always be a shill for Microsoft.

What about Nat Friedman?

Posted Dec 22, 2006 6:24 UTC (Fri) by k8to (subscriber, #15413) [Link]

Hmm, Miguel has always shown a strong fondness for Microsoft technology, but a shill? Are you serious?

Jeremy Allison Has Resigned from Novell to Protest MS Patent Deal (Groklaw)

Posted Dec 22, 2006 12:31 UTC (Fri) by job (guest, #670) [Link]

While I do agree with you that de facto standards often triumph over "paper" standards, it is important to note that Office OpenXML is neither. Nobody uses it and it is not an official standard (yet).

I think it is dishonest to pretend like the new document format will be widespread just because all the old Office formats are. Mass migration to a new format will take a long time no matter which format it is. So far OpenDocument has a larger marketshare than OpenXML, which has zero.

Tomorrow may be different, of course, and I may have to take all this back. Until then, however, with no documents "out there" the only thing an independent implementation of OpenXML will accomplish is increased acceptance in public organizations.

Jeremy Allison Has Resigned from Novell to Protest MS Patent Deal (Groklaw)

Posted Dec 22, 2006 17:43 UTC (Fri) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

"if you want to 'punish' Novell the best possible way you can do it is to create a effective and easy to deploy open source-based network directory system to rival Active Directory and eDirectory... which the Free and Open Source world lacks completely"

See http://directory.fedora.redhat.com/

Jeremy Allison Has Resigned from Novell to Protest MS Patent Deal (Groklaw)

Posted Dec 23, 2006 12:06 UTC (Sat) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

That's a LDAP server.

Active Directory and eDirectory system uses LDAP for holding information, but it goes far beyond that.

You have easy integration into AD built into every windows desktops. You can perform all sorts of authentication on many different services and have fairly decent ways to visualize information and allow more normal people to add users and set permissions on network file systems etc etc.

It's kinda like the difference between having a file system for a operating system versus a operating system.

Right now it's possible to have something that does most of the important functionality of AD/eDirectory using Kerberos + LDAP + dozens of other packages, but there isn't anybody out there offering a coesive FOSS solution for it and it's very difficult to setup and very difficult to administrate.

Nothing like Small business server were you can have one somewhat-experianced setup a small business with a Active Directory system were more normal staff are able to add and remove users and such.

This isn't nessicarially a bad thing. I feel personally that Single Sign On is overrated and is a HUGE security risk. It's much safer to have individual servers with individual passwords for everything. There isn't much of a real technical reason for SSO/AD/eDirectory for a small business...

But nowadays Active Directory is the _minimal_ requirement for most of the things you'd use Windows servers with Windows desktop for in most any sized business. It's what people want and what they expect.

Jeremy Allison Has Resigned from Novell to Protest MS Patent Deal (Groklaw)

Posted Dec 24, 2006 0:34 UTC (Sun) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

" That's a LDAP server.

Active Directory and eDirectory system uses LDAP for holding information, but it goes far beyond that. "

Just curious. Have you actually tried it out? Can you mention specific features that you found lacking?

Jeremy Allison Has Resigned from Novell to Protest MS Patent Deal (Groklaw)

Posted Jan 5, 2007 18:06 UTC (Fri) by jschrod (subscriber, #1646) [Link]

What's missing? Group policy objects, to start with.

Jeremy Allison Has Resigned from Novell to Protest MS Patent Deal (Groklaw)

Posted Dec 22, 2006 19:39 UTC (Fri) by cpm (guest, #3554) [Link]

"Some governments may be adopting ODF for political reasons, "

And the same, and other governments may be adopting ODF because it's
the SANE thing to do. It's the RIGHT thing to do. All politics aside.
If politics is involved, it's involved in keeping governments from
adopting open and free standards.

Jeremy Allison Has Resigned from Novell to Protest MS Patent Deal (Groklaw)

Posted Dec 23, 2006 11:55 UTC (Sat) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

Politics is what your talking about.

Liberty is essentially a political persuit. The idea that information should be aviable to all end users without having ot pay Microsoft is a political thing.

Jeremy Allison Has Resigned from Novell to Protest MS Patent Deal (Groklaw)

Posted Dec 22, 2006 5:13 UTC (Fri) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

Do you?

I think he will have a MAJOR problem...

He has already been hired by google. It would take a lot to convince him to work for somebody else.

Jeremy Allison Has Resigned from Novell to Protest MS Patent Deal (Groklaw)

Posted Dec 22, 2006 19:34 UTC (Fri) by amikins (guest, #451) [Link]

-1, flamebait. :(

Licensing matters for many people because quality of code isn't the only consideration; for some, certain freedoms are as important or even moreso.

WHICH freedoms, now that's the interesting part..

Jeremy Allison Has Resigned from Novell to Protest MS Patent Deal (Groklaw)

Posted Dec 22, 2006 20:16 UTC (Fri) by pyellman (guest, #4997) [Link]

Look how surreal things have become: Microsoft does a deal that by any objective standard constitutes an outright attack on Linux and the foundations of free software, and some dude pipes up with "Does everything have to be an attack on Microsoft?". And this seems to be happening over and over! Crazy!

Peter Yellman

Objective?

Posted Dec 23, 2006 20:22 UTC (Sat) by niner (subscriber, #26151) [Link]

So in what _objective_ way does the deal constitute an attack on Linux?
The GPL has not been breached. No one has lost any rights that he had before. There are no new legal obstacles in the way due to the deal.

All there are, are fuzzy concerns and accusations like that the deal was an implicit agreement that Linux software violates MS' patents though both sides (including Microsoft!) have officially and openly said, that this is not so.

Remember: as long as no patent violations are discovered, no one needs a patent license to distribute or use the violating code. So Novell's customers can fulfill any obligations they have due to the GPL, even though they cannot extend the covenant not to sue to any other people. The freedoms the GPL tries to preserve (that's the often cited spirit of the GPL!) are protected and in no way harmed.

So what are these objective standards that you talk about? All I see are people on witch hunts and talks about Novell being touched by the "dark side".

Objective?

Posted Dec 23, 2006 22:25 UTC (Sat) by pyellman (guest, #4997) [Link]

It's quite simple, niner. The deal undermines one of, perhaps the key underpinning of free software (specifically, the GPL): you must give to others the same rights that were accorded to you.< period. You say it yourself ("even though they cannot extend the covenant not to sue to any other people"), though in apparent complete ignorance of the implications of your own words! I sense behind your words an all too common (mis)interpretation of the intent of the GPL to mean something like "to protect my -- or anyone else's -- freedom to do whatever I want".

The deal also creates categories, or "castes" of "free" software users and developers. Completely antithetical to the philosophy and practice of free software.

I could go into detail, blather about patents, when they will and won't be enforced, etc., but if you can't see the big picture above, such a discussion would be just an opportunity for some smoke and mirrors on your part. Why bother?

Peter Yellman

Objective?

Posted Dec 26, 2006 19:16 UTC (Tue) by peace (guest, #10016) [Link]

Please note Steve Ballmers statements regarding this deal and tell us why you think this is not an attack on Free software?

Ballmer:
"Novell pays us some money for the right to tell customers that anybody who uses SUSE Linux is appropriately covered, this is important to us, because [otherwise] we believe every Linux customer basically has an undisclosed balance-sheet liability."

and plenty more.

The first software battle saw developers on the front lines. The next front will be populated by lawyers.