What about Nat Friedman? [LWN.net]

What about Nat Friedman?

Posted Dec 21, 2006 22:21 UTC (Thu) by vblum (guest, #1151)
In reply to: What about Nat Friedman? by BrucePerens
Parent article: Jeremy Allison Has Resigned from Novell to Protest MS Patent Deal (Groklaw)

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.

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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 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