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contact them?contact them?Posted Jun 25, 2008 14:12 UTC (Wed) by louie (subscriber, #3285)In reply to: contact them? by corbet Parent article: A belated look at the Red Hat/Firestar patent settlement
That would have been good to have in the article. Would have been good to have asked them about the (fairly strong) allegations as well, but that is at least a start.
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contact them? Posted Jun 25, 2008 15:41 UTC (Wed) by donwaugaman (subscriber, #4214) [Link] I think it's better for LWN to run with this article even without Red Hat's comments or input; a company shouldn't be able to squelch discussion of its actions merely by not responding to unwelcome questions from the media.
contact them? Posted Jun 25, 2008 15:46 UTC (Wed) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] FWIW, I don't think my question was "unwelcome" as such. Post-summit burnout is probably more than enough to explain some latency at Red Hat at this point.
contact them? Posted Jun 25, 2008 15:54 UTC (Wed) by louie (subscriber, #3285) [Link] Given that the tone of the article is so negative (basically parsing statements in a press release into a strong implication that they are screwing everyone who isn't RH, despite a strong track record of doing otherwise) it shouldn't surprise that readers assume the question would be unwelcome. [Disclaimer: I worked at RH Legal last summer and have a very high opinion of their integrity, which is why it bothers me that someone with such a big pulpit to stand on is basically impugning their integrity based on a FAQ and a press release, and no other communication with the company.]
contact them? Posted Jun 25, 2008 16:10 UTC (Wed) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] Interesting. I don't believe I was attacking anybody's integrity - with the possible exception of the trolls who started the whole thing. What I was trying to say is that, while Red Hat has taken a different and wider approach to a patent settlement than has been done before, (1) it's still a patent suit settlement, and (2) there are a lot of open questions which can only be answered by seeing the actual terms. Yes, I also said it would have been nice to kill the patent altogether, but that, as an outsider, I couldn't say that it was Red Hat's duty to do so.I never said anything like "screwing everyone who isn't RH." I do say that protection for users who are not RH customers is very carefully not discussed, and that projects not shipped by RH are quite clearly not covered. Is there something wrong with those statements? I feel you've read stuff into the article that I didn't intend to be there. I'll happily accept responsibility for that; it's my fault as a writer if I was insufficiently clear.
contact them? Posted Jun 25, 2008 16:45 UTC (Wed) by pr1268 (subscriber, #24648) [Link] While I agree in part with louie's opinion that the tone and bias of Jon's article seems to question Red Hat's behavior in this matter, I don't for a second disagree with our editor's stance that this patent is of questionable merit with which to cave to the patent holder's claim(s). First, this appears to be an unusually weak patent--certainly prior art exists from mid-1990s; second, the unanswered questions our editor mentions in the article might be misinterpreted as RH hiding something they don't want others in the open-source community to know1; and third, what legal, philosophical, and ethical basis does the community have with respect to deriving, using, and distributing the code for which RH alone paid money to permit? IMHO this seems like a weak example with which to demonstrate GPLv3-compliant patent licensing. I'm still trying to figure out why PJ is so ecstatic about this over at Groklaw. I'm hoping that in the coming weeks we find out more about what RH's license really means for itself and for the FLOSS community. 1 I've been known to entertain conspiracy theories, so take my second point above with a grain of salt. I honestly don't think RH would do something so injurious to its relationship with the FLOSS community.
contact them? Posted Jun 26, 2008 4:33 UTC (Thu) by louie (subscriber, #3285) [Link] "This very carefully-worded text leaves one very interesting question open: what about users of the software who are not Red Hat customers? ... There is a lot of text in the press release and FAQ suggesting that non-customer users should be protected too, but that is never said explicitly. An omission like that in a carefully-written, lawyer-vetted document can speak loudly; one must wonder what is going on." This doesn't quite say 'RH carefully and deliberately left non-RH users unprotected', but it pretty much strongly implies it. Admittedly, 'screwing them' is a bit strong, but isn't that big a jump from the implication that they were deliberately omitted.
contact them? Posted Jun 26, 2008 8:58 UTC (Thu) by jschrod (subscriber, #1646) [Link] >> "This very carefully-worded text leaves one very interesting question >> open: what about users of the software who are not Red Hat customers? ... >> There is a lot of text in the press release and FAQ suggesting that >> non-customer users should be protected too, but that is never said >> explicitly. An omission like that in a carefully-written, lawyer-vetted >> document can speak loudly; one must wonder what is going on." > > This doesn't quite say 'RH carefully and deliberately > unprotected', but it pretty much strongly implies it. Well, I have to say: No, neither the article nor your quotation implies that. It says 'It looks as if RH left non-RH users unprotected'. In no way it implies that this was deliberately done; and I also can't read the statement that this *action* was carefully done into these sentences. Quite to the contrary, your reading suggests that your involvement with RH Legal seems to have left your nerves too raw. Just my 0.02 EUR from an uninvolved reader. (I don't use RH and that patent very probably isn't valid in my part of the world anyhow.)
contact them? Posted Jun 27, 2008 1:57 UTC (Fri) by geek (guest, #45074) [Link] "based on a FAQ and a press release, and no other communication with the company.]" I think that's no other communication FROM the company. They did and do have an opportunity to reply.
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