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What about Nat Friedman?What about Nat Friedman?Posted Dec 21, 2006 20:02 UTC (Thu) by BrucePerens (subscriber, #2510)Parent article: Jeremy Allison Has Resigned from Novell to Protest MS Patent Deal (Groklaw) My commendation goes to Jeremy for taking the ethical path. Nat Friedman has been made Novell's public apologist for their patent deal with Microsoft. Jeremy's decision should reinforce that. I've told Nat, here on LWN, that I feel his ethical position stinks. Nat should leave. Bruce
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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 (subscriber, #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 alarge 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 (subscriber, #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
In fact, it would seem until this anyway, Novell has been pretty good to
That isn't to excuse this action, as the language had to be deliberately
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 turnedaround too, unfortunately.
Well, the shareholders /did/ complain and pretty much oust the previous
One influential kernel hacker employed by Novell/SuSE I've not seen weigh
The weird thing is, all the suits seem to like this thing, even tho the
Time will tell, but it does seem there's always something interesting
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: 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 todistribute 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 and4 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
Even for companies, however, the actual settlement has generally been
Of course, the loss of community prestige is counting for more as the
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?
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