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What Will Happen to Zimbra? (Groklaw)
Groklaw takes a
look at the Zimbra project. "I'm worrying about Zimbra, a
project I had high hopes for. You'll find it interesting how the Zimbra
forum is anguishing over a proposed Microsoft hostile takeover of Yahoo!
since it's obvious it won't wish to help Zimbra, a competitor to a
Microsoft product, Exchange. Note how one forum member writes that the
only way to protect it is if it is GPLd." Some of Zimbra's source
code is currently available under a Yahoo Public License.
(Log in to post comments)
What Will Happen to Zimbra? (Groklaw) Posted Feb 5, 2008 23:33 UTC (Tue) by zotz (guest, #26117) [Link] Interesting thought: Put in a poison pill type play for your company that in the event of a takeover (hostile?) or sale or bankruptcy, will stipulate that your software copyrights (other copyrights?) will all be put under the GPL (or other appropriate Free and copyleft license in the even of non-code) and then transfered to the FSF or some such organization. Put it in your articles of association if you can. Put it in an agreement of sale and sell a copy of the software to the same organization. Put it in an agreement with code contributors. Anywhere else that could help? all the best, drew
What Will Happen to Zimbra? (Groklaw) Posted Feb 6, 2008 4:49 UTC (Wed) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] I suppose you could setup a bank (or whatever is most apropriate) as a sort of conservator. (not sure about the legal term for it) That is the corporation working on the source code would hand over copyrights to this conservator group. Then the corporation would have a contract with that conservator that they retain the rights to relicense as they see fit, but under certain circumstances the conservator would release the code to full-GPL license outside their control or release it to the FSF or whatever. That way a corporation could retain control over the copyrights, as if they actually still owned them completely, but it would remove the ability of corporation to go back on their agreements. It reduces the chances for conflict of interests or for hostile take overs to hurt third party's interests with the code in question. THis way companies like Sun who want to agressively deal with other rival companies still can be trusted by their licensees.
What Will Happen to Zimbra? (Groklaw) Posted Feb 6, 2008 7:01 UTC (Wed) by Cato (subscriber, #7643) [Link] In some proprietary software contracts, the customer inserts a clause on 'change of control' meaning that when the software vendor is taken over (or in some cases even if their software is no longer competitive generally), the source code is automatically released. A very common contract item is that if the vendor goes bust their source code is released. This is done through 'source code escrow' in which a trusted third party is given snapshots of code by the vendor whenever there is a new release, and the third party has strict rules based on contract as to when it can release the software to the customer. The NCC is a UK organisation that does a lot of this, and has a useful set of guides - see http://www.ncc.co.uk/research/projects/escrow_guide.cfm - and there's also a short Wikipedia article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source_code_escrow. There are many commercial providers of source code escrow.
What Will Happen to Zimbra? (Groklaw) Posted Feb 6, 2008 15:13 UTC (Wed) by proski (subscriber, #104) [Link] Would not Yahoo be prevented from giving away or spinning off its assets while Microsoft is bidding on it? It's an unsolicited bid, but isn't it still a bid? It's not like I can put a computer on eBay and start taking away its parts is I don't like the highest bidder.I wish Yahoo could do something about Zimbra, but I'm afraid it may be too late.
What Will Happen to Zimbra? (Groklaw) Posted Feb 6, 2008 18:08 UTC (Wed) by allesfresser (subscriber, #216) [Link] I guess they'd just have to change their bid. Poor them. ;-) If there's no contract between them, there's no grounds for any objection from an unsolicited bidder.
What Will Happen to Zimbra? (Groklaw) Posted Feb 6, 2008 19:29 UTC (Wed) by proski (subscriber, #104) [Link] Actually, Yahoo is a publicly traded company, which may put some limitations on them. If not - fine, I just wanted to make sure.
What Will Happen to Zimbra? (Groklaw) Posted Feb 7, 2008 2:01 UTC (Thu) by jordanb (guest, #45668) [Link] Logically if one business could restrict a competitor from making certain business moves (like getting rid of subsidiaries) by floating a hostile takeover bid, wouldn't such bids be flying around all the time?
What Will Happen to Zimbra? (Groklaw) Posted Feb 7, 2008 3:14 UTC (Thu) by sepreece (subscriber, #19270) [Link] For public companies, the shareholders (and board of directors) might be unhapy with the company giving away its assets to avoid a takeover. They might be more interested in the premium the bidder would be willing to pay than in keeping the company out of the buyer's hands.
What Will Happen to Zimbra? (Groklaw) Posted Feb 6, 2008 10:16 UTC (Wed) by achitnis (guest, #20) [Link] The "Poison Pill" idea (sounds a bit bad, because it isn't really bad) was what Trolltech put into Qt - in the event of a takeover where they could no longer develop Qt, the code goes BSD. Would have preferred GPL, but in this case it made business sense - one could just pick up the BSD'd code and start a new company with it.
What Will Happen to Zimbra? (Groklaw) Posted Feb 7, 2008 10:25 UTC (Thu) by buchanmilne (guest, #42315) [Link] Would have preferred GPL That wouldn't make much sense, since the idea is to make it freer than the licenses currently available (GPLv2, GPLv3), especially for customers who have bought licenses which allow them to create proprietary software based on Qt.
What Will Happen to Zimbra? (Groklaw) Posted Feb 7, 2008 10:36 UTC (Thu) by buchanmilne (guest, #42315) [Link]
What Will Happen to Zimbra? (Groklaw) Posted Feb 7, 2008 11:07 UTC (Thu) by job (guest, #670) [Link] Only the open source version of Zimbra which is missing some functionality. What you really want, if you use it in a corporate environment, is their non-free version. This is a legitimate worry in light of the recent announcement.
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