Weekly Edition
Return to the Announcements page
| ||||||||||||||||
|
| ||||||||||||||||
FFII: EU tells open source to start paying MS patent tax
FFII PRESS RELEASE -- [ Europe / Economy / Innovation ] ======================================================================== EU tells open source to start paying MS patent tax ======================================================================== Brussels, 23 October 2007 ? EU Commissioner Kroes' deal with Microsoft creates real dangers to Europe's growing open source economy, warns the FFII. Using patent licenses that exclude businesses, the software monopolist has turned the EU competition ruling into a victory, and now gets implicit support from the Commission to proceed aggressively against its competitors. Neelie Kroes European Commissioner for Competition and Microsoft agreed that the royalties payable for the interoperability information will be 10,000 Euros, and that Microsoft can use its EPO software patents to charge 0.4 percent of all the sales of its competitors. The FFII says that these conditions effectively exclude open source competitors and add costs for all who wish to communicate with Microsoft products. This is a new transaction cost for all society, its the opposite of an open Internet. "We assume that the Commission wanted a paper victory after all this delay," says Pieter Hintjens, president of FFII. "The guilty party agrees not to appeal, takes the slap on the wrist and promises to behave. And the Commission gets good press. But who pays? Who is the patsy? It is European industry, which increasingly depends on free and open source software." Benjamin Henrion, FFII representative in Brussels, agrees that this deal is a big win for Microsoft: "The Commission does not understand how open source works. It naively accepted Redmond's assurances that they will play fair. It is a sham. They have planned for years to control the open source economy through software patents. This scheme now moves ahead, thanks to the Commission's haste to make a quick deal." Henrion concludes, "Kroes has ensured that EPO software patents - which the EU rejected in 2005 - will now strengthen the monopolist's grip for years to come." ======================================================================== Background information ======================================================================== The European Patent Office (EPO) continues to grant software patents and business method patents in violation of the European Patent Convention by applying its own interpretation and "case law", outside of any EU legal framework. The EU rejected in 2005 a proposal to legitimize the EPO's case law. Microsoft recently published its MCPP (Microsoft Communications Protocol Program) patent license which requires competitors to pay royalties for each copy of software distributed. For example, a free software project making a print server would have to pay USD 8 to Microsoft for each copy downloaded. Reuters reported that "Commercial developers such as IBM or Red Hat must pay a license fee of 0.4 percent of revenues to Microsoft when they redistribute that software, to protect against patent challenges." Commissioner Kroes has said, of the deal, "That percentage royalty has become a nominal, one-off payment of Euro 10,000. This is all that has to be paid by companies that dispute the validity or relevance of Microsoft's patents". ======================================================================== Links ======================================================================== * Press conference by Neelie Kroes, European Commissioner for Competition Policy http://www.europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?referen... * Reuters: Microsoft finally bows to EU antitrust measures http://uk.reuters.com/article/UKNews1/idUKKIM25281920071022 * DigitalMajority: Microsoft finally defeats EU competition ruling with patents http://www.digitalmajority.org/forum/t-24002/microsoft-fi... * FFII: Microsoft will trump EU competition ruling with patents http://press.ffii.org/Press_releases/Microsoft_will_trump... * Permanent link to this press release http://press.ffii.org/Press_releases/EU_tells_open_source... ======================================================================== Contact ======================================================================== Benjamin Henrion FFII Brussels +32-2-414 84 03 +32-484-566109 bhenrion@ffii.org (French/English) ======================================================================== About the FFII ======================================================================== The FFII is a not-for-profit association active in over fifty countries, dedicated to the development of information goods for the public benefit, based on copyright, free competition, and open standards. More than 850 members, 3,500 companies and 100,000 supporters have entrusted the FFII to act as their voice in public policy questions concerning exclusion rights (intellectual property) in data processing. _______________________________________________ FFII Press Releases. (un)subscribe via https://lists.ffii.org/mailman/listinfo/news, or contact media@ffii.org for more information. (Log in to post comments)
Will this hurt Samba? Posted Oct 23, 2007 13:59 UTC (Tue) by georgm (guest, #19574) [Link] Samba is free. And 0.4 percent of 0 is 0. Ok, they will get 10k once (what is a shame), but not any more from that...
FFII: EU tells open source to start paying MS patent tax Posted Oct 23, 2007 14:52 UTC (Tue) by dmantione (guest, #4640) [Link] More BS. EU didn't tell anything to open source. EU told something to Microsoft. Is Samba in danger of Microsoft patents? Yes. Has it been able to evade them? Yes Will this change? No. Well there be a difference between reverse engineered information and information from Microsoft manuals? No. That's it. Samba no longer has to reverse engineer. Other than this, nothing has changed.
FFII: EU tells open source to start paying MS patent tax Posted Oct 23, 2007 15:25 UTC (Tue) by ipes (guest, #43384) [Link] Samba no longer has to reverse engineer.That will very much depend on the license. And since it's Microsoft that writes it, don't expect it to be acceptable for Samba or any other FOSS project.
FFII: EU tells open source to start paying MS patent tax Posted Oct 23, 2007 22:57 UTC (Tue) by dmantione (guest, #4640) [Link] I agree Microsofts promises cannot be trusted too easily, but as I read it has agreed to make the license "compatible with open source". In such case it would have to violate the current agreement and therefore put itself vulnerable to further intervention by the DG Competition.
Open Source != GPL Posted Oct 24, 2007 13:05 UTC (Wed) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] Three-clause BSD license is compatible with almost anything - and it's open source. Microsoft can (and probably will) construct the license to specifically exclude GPL - Microsoft did so in the past and also claimed that "it's compatible with open source licenses"... Take a look on SenderID fiasco...
Open Source != GPL Posted Oct 24, 2007 18:13 UTC (Wed) by dmantione (guest, #4640) [Link] Hello?? Who was withness in court against Microsoft? Samba's Andrew Tridgell. What license does he use? Why wanted the DG Competition to make the terms open source compatible if they were already compatible with the BSD license? You can be confident that the DG Competition means "interoperability" it has compatibility with Samba in mind and will consider anti-GPL constructions as "not compliant" with the law.
Open Source != GPL Posted Oct 24, 2007 22:58 UTC (Wed) by rahvin (subscriber, #16953) [Link] The deal was negotiated in a back room with no presence of any of the plantiffs, of which SAMBA is the sole remaining. This was a brokered deal between Balmer and an EU politico. The license that has already been released requires the patent license to get the interoperability info, you can't disclose source and you around bound to audits and other incomprehensible terms that completely exclude GPL software. The EU Politico that negotiated the "settlement" bent over and snatched defeat from victory while listening to the soft promises of Steve Balmer. Just like the US anti-trust was destroyed by political involvement so was the EU case. Mark my words, Samba will issue a statement saying the settlement offers them nothing.
Open Source != GPL Posted Oct 25, 2007 4:56 UTC (Thu) by dmantione (guest, #4640) [Link] There is no "deal" or "settlement" in the sense of a document with a signature of Mrs. Kroes below it. There is a "verdict" from DG Competition, and a "verdict" from the EU Court of First Instance, which requires Microsoft to publish interoperability information, not patent licenses. Now: * DG Competition interprets providing the "information" to competitors means any competitors, including open source competitors. Therefore open source compatible terms. * DG Competition interprets tying patent licenses with the purchase of the "information" as not complying with the verdict, especially as DG Competition considers the Microsoft protocols not innovative, and therefore has serious doubts on the validity of the patents. However, are outside the scope of the "verdict". * As the current situation is Microsoft has agreed with this interpretation. DG Competition has not agreed with Microsofts terms (as of yet).
FFII: EU tells open source to start paying MS patent tax Posted Oct 23, 2007 16:44 UTC (Tue) by chaneau (guest, #6674) [Link] Well there be a difference between reverse engineered information and information from Microsoft manuals? No.Well probably yes, I remember reading one the developer of Samba saying that they could not rely on the technical documentation provided by Microsoft , but had to code "from the wire" and be bug to bug compatible, otherwise it did not work. Apparently, Microsoft can't follow it's own documentation.
Why should they ? Posted Oct 24, 2007 13:07 UTC (Wed) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] Microsoft is writing the documentation for existing products, not makes the products in adherence to the documentation... Story with OOXML is the same...
FFII: EU tells open source to start paying MS patent tax Posted Oct 24, 2007 7:47 UTC (Wed) by soul_rebel (guest, #26314) [Link] WRONG WRONG WRONG! quote from the EC' FAQ: < Can open source software developers implement patented interoperability information? Open source software developers use various "open source" licences to distribute their software. Some of these licences are incompatible with the patent licence offered by Microsoft. It is up to the commercial open source distributors to ensure that their software products do not infringe upon Microsoft's patents. If they consider that one or more of Microsoft's patents would apply to their software product, they can either design around these patents, challenge their validity or take a patent licence from Microsoft. > The GPLv3 explicitly states that you may not implement features covered be external patent licenses. Therefor these features cant be implemented in GPLed Software. What is even worse is that once Samba has a look at the Documentation they cant even reverse engineer the stuff, because MS will sue for patent infringement or demand the paying of fees from Distributors of Samba (any major GNU/Linux Distro) claiming that the features were not reverse-engineneered but implemented from docu. This will create major legal insecurity for Distributors further harming the reputation of free software. AND this although there legally arent any Software patents in Europe. So this actually IS A DISASTER. I can only recommend to all projects NOT to follow or even look at the documentation.
FFII: EU tells open source to start paying MS patent tax Posted Oct 24, 2007 8:06 UTC (Wed) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link] Due to how patent laws are written, it does not matter if developers look at the documentation or not. If they implement something covered by a patent, they can be sued even if they came up with it by themselves in isolation.
Obviousness test Posted Oct 24, 2007 13:10 UTC (Wed) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] If you read the documentation you can not claim that something is obvious. If you invent something without reading the documentation - you can claim that it's so simple it does not warrant the patent. Weak defense, yes, but weak defense is still better then none...
Obviousness test Posted Oct 24, 2007 18:06 UTC (Wed) by dmantione (guest, #4640) [Link] This is nonsense, since Samba does not use its own protocol but a Microsoft protocol and is therefore by definition not a new "invention". Microsoft has always implemented any feature before Samba did. All information not published has to be reverse engineered. For patents, it doesn't matter a single bit if it is taken from published or reverse engineered information. Therefore, you can just as well buy Microsofts new official SMB manuals.
|
|
|||||||||||||||