What about Nat Friedman? [LWN.net]

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