Open source's moment of truth (News.com)

Posted Jun 24, 2003 17:43 UTC (Tue) by sandy_pond (guest, #9734) [Link]

US lawyers and the US judicial system are the bigest risk to the US IT industry.

The rest of the world not follow the US into the toilet and will take advantage of this US weakness to gain the lead in IT.

Posted Jun 24, 2003 18:08 UTC (Tue) by pontus (guest, #3701) [Link]

>However, by not offering at least some degree of comfort to their customers
>through indemnification, they risk ceding an important market advantage to
>those proprietary software companies that do.
Such as?

Posted Jun 24, 2003 18:24 UTC (Tue) by nicke (guest, #12150) [Link]

A quote from a MS software license:

" ALSO, THERE IS NO WARRANTY OR CONDITION OF TITLE, QUIET ENJOYMENT, QUIET POSSESSION, CORRESPONDENCE TO DESCRIPTION OR NON-INFRINGEMENT WITH REGARD TO THE SOFTWARE PRODUCT. "

They also assume a economic liability of $5 or software price, unless forced
by some applicable law.

Is this the kind of customer support that makes proprietary software a better
choise for business use ?

Posted Jun 24, 2003 18:57 UTC (Tue) by jonabbey (guest, #2736) [Link]

Of course, everyone knows that the Association for Competitive Technology (ACT) (for which this guy is intellectual property counsel) is a Microsoft-funded lobbying organization, right? During the antitrust case against Microsoft, ACT was the world's most reliable source for pro-Microsoft quotes.

Not to take away from the validity of what this fellow is saying, but some of it (the notion that giving indemnification would be a 'too radical' and that might run 'counter to the ideals' of the open source subtly implies that the ideals of the open source movement are freedom from accountability and a 'good luck, sucker' attitude.

Posted Jun 24, 2003 19:23 UTC (Tue) by donstuart (subscriber, #4550) [Link]

Just for perspective, note the author's bio:

Richard Wilder is a partner with law firm Sidley Austin Brown & Wood and is intellectual-property counsel for the Association for Competitive Technology.

You remember the Association for Competitive Technology, don't you? They are Microsoft's pet trade group.

Don

Posted Jun 24, 2003 19:23 UTC (Tue) by mmarq (guest, #2332) [Link]

FS/OSS inherently has a marketing position that makes very dificult, and unwise, to "BIG ADVERTIZING CAMPAIGS" be sucessful,... because it's lead is "pure" technical, as will always should, an not marketing as in M$.

That's its best caracteristic, but also its best default, in the point of view of Masses Adoption. I belive the best caracteristic will prevail, because when real informed pro-active people can influence masses, they can only influence to more informed pro-active people(will take longer), and those people will not be detered by any misinformed interpretation.

" Most Long Time HEAVY corporations have ceased to be pro-active from long time ago"
"New better preparared enterprizes will emerge, because you cant stop "evolution" by law, unless you want to get extinct "NATURALY"

WHAT LAWYERS DONT SEE IS THAT THERE'S PLENTY OF VALUE IN THE COMMOM (but whit copyright authors) POOL OF CODE,... THEY ONLY WANT TO KNOW "HOW MUCH" THEY GONNA GET IN ADVANCE..

Example: you help designed a car, and there's no price tag on all the parts you need(grab them), but i can still charge you a fortune to mount it the way you like it... of course you can do it yourself, but you have to know how all the way, and have the necessary tools (buy a factory)... SO PRICE TAG IS MISLEADING.
In modern OSes there is plenty of complexity to even allow landing some help to commom users whitout charge, and wihtout intencionaly make the code hard to "MOUNT".

As anyone hired a lawyer with the condition that if he loses, him (lawyer) gets zip (0)?...this guys will always play along (read FUD) whit those that fill them the pockets!

Posted Jun 24, 2003 19:37 UTC (Tue) by NZheretic (guest, #409) [Link]

As with most Cnet articles it is plastered everywhere including Zdnet.

Richard Wilder is states intellectual-property counsel for the Association for Competitive Technology, a pro Microsoft lobby group which spawned the group involved in the 1999 letters from the Dead campaign.

My reply also posted at Zdnet follows

If the issue is the threat of lawsuits over intellectual property then corporate America and everyone else are actually in a better legal position using GPL'ed Linux than using Microsoft's products as a development platform.

Microsoft has a history of licensing third party code and patents in such a manner that still leaves developers exposed. Even going back to the LZH/GIF Unisys patents,
http://www.unisys.com/about__unisys/lzw/
"Microsoft Corporation obtained a license under the above Unisys LZW patents in September, 1996. Microsoft's license does NOT extend to software developers or third parties who use Microsoft toolkit, language, development or operating system products to provide GIF read/write and/or any other LZW capabilities in their own products (e.g., by way of DLLs and APIs)."

Microsoft also licensed database technology for Microsoft's SQL server from Timeline Inc, under similar license terms as did with Unisys. This license did not grant Microsoft the right to sublicense to third party developers to extend functionality, in some cases even restricting the use of visual basic. Unlike companies like Oracle Corporation and others, Microsoft chose a cheaper option for the license which left third party developers, users of Microsoft SQL Server,Office and other Microsoft products at risk of being sued by Timeline Inc for violation of Timeline Inc patents. Timeline Inc asked Microsoft to upgrade to a similar license used by Oracle, but Microsoft refused, so the whole issue went to court and in 2002, Timeline Inc won.
http://www.timeline.com/021903PR.htm
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/53/29419.html

While SCO has yet to provide any publicly available substantial evidence in their case against IBM and Linux, Timeline Inc has already won a US Washington Court of Appeal judgment against Microsoft in another contract dispute.

How many other cases exist where Microsoft has included third party technology in it products, but has also taken the cheaper licensing option and left developers and even users exposed to the threat of lawsuit? Due to the closed nature of the proprietary business model, how can third party developers even check?

Microsoft's products and platforms do not provide users and developers an absolute safe haven from the threat from lawsuits based on violations of intellectual property. Microsoft's EULA ( End User License Agreements ) provide the developer and end user with no protection against threat from current or future intellectual property lawsuits.

The Gnu General Public License (GPL) and Gnu Library General Public License (LGPL) are based on years of solid legal research.
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/enforcing-gpl.html

Since The SCO Group has knowingly sold and distributed the GPL licensed Linux kernel and other components, it must by the terms of the GPL license, provide all those who receive the code from them an implicit license to use any intellectual property, patents or trade secrets which SCO owns and is used within the GPL'ed source code. That implicit license to that SCO intellectual property is also granted to anybody who subsequently receives the GPL source.
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html

The GPL only grants the right, for reasons of intellectual property infringement or contractual obligations, to stop distributing the GPL'e binaries and source code if the conditions are imposed upon you by a third party. Since The SCO Group claims ownership the intellectual property in question, it must grant all subsequent recipients of the GPL licensed source code The SCO Group has distributed and any GPL'ed derivative, the same implicit license and right to The SCO Group's intellectual property the code imposes upon.

The SCO Group has acknowledged deals with Suse and Lindows to distribute SCO's intellectual property in GPL'ed Linux, and has now stated that it will not prosecute a case against anyone who purchase Linux from The SCO Group. However the GPL license does not grant anyone or any third party organization the right to append extra terms and conditions upon the recipients of the GPL licensed source code.

It is very easy to effectively fold the current development branches of the Linux kernel and any other GPL'ed code back into SCO's distributed GPL'ed sources. This would grant the same implicit license for the infringed SCO intellectual property to the all the current development.

In 1994 a group of Novell alumni formed Caldera Systems International with the backing of Novell's founder Ray Noorda. It is Caldera systems which purchased the "rights" from Novell for SCO and in May 2003 became the current SCO Group. Caldera have since 1994, before the OLD SCO instigated the Project Monterey deal with IBM in 1998, released all it's Linux kernel code and other projects and contributions under the GPL licenses. The GPL licenses are an effective copyright contract strictly controlling the terms and conditions of distribution of both binaries and source. Caldera and therefore new SCO group have been collectively developing and selling under the terms of the GPL "contract" prior to the OLD SCO deal with IBM. There is no way that that the current SCO Group can claim to be unaware of the implications of the full terms and conditions of the GPL license.

Both Old SCO and Caldera actively participated in the development of the same Linux enterprise features that the current SCO Group are suing IBM over.
http://twiki.iwethey.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/TrillianProject

Read the OSI Position Paper on the SCO-vs.-IBM Complaint
http://www.opensource.org/sco-vs-ibm.html
The SCO Group do not have much of a case to speak of.

In fact:
http://www.opensource.org/sco-vs-ibm.html#ip_theory

Since the dispute has moved to Federal court, it is now within the court's purview to rule on more general issues of intellectual-property law as they pertain to this case. OSI pleads to the court to find as follows:

* To find that claims of trade secrecy in software are incompatible with a routine business practice of selling the source code licenses to that software to educational institutions or for use as training materials. (Techniques commonly taught in classrooms cannot be considered secrets.)

* That any software vendor, having participated in an open-source commons and benefited from the products thereof, is estopped from claiming proprietary rights that would prevent other participants from symmetrically collecting that same benefit. (If you drank from the well, you don't get to poison it.)

* That the GNU General Public License under which Linux is issued is in fact a valid license and does create binding legal obligations on those who accept its terms.

You are in a better legal position using the GPL'ed Linux platform and other GPL'ed software, than you are using Microsoft's or any other closed source software. The GPL license attempt to insure that all involved in developing, selling, distributing or just using GPL'ed products, have the right to use and extend the source code under the same terms of the GPL license.

Posted Jun 24, 2003 20:11 UTC (Tue) by verzonnen (guest, #9406) [Link]

The whole idea that free software needs to compete with comercial software seems to me very strange.

I can think of a lot of different reasons why someone likes to write "free" software, but why would one even wish to compete with comercial (or free) software. There are probably good? buisiness reasons for companies not to adopt this free software, not that I understand those reasons.

Having earned my bread as a consultant in the past, the best thing for me has been flakey software. Lots of work and I could always lay the blame of any problems with the vendor. Any suggestion by myself to use linux and free software has always been blocked by management. Frustrating, but what the heck, it's their money!

Let SCO show the coppied code, there will pe plenty of capable programmers to rewrite it and Linux will be clean once again (untill the next time) There are far bigger problems to worry about, like global warming.

Final thought, if SCO put there own people in a demonstration, could they have sank so low as to add the disputed code themself? They wouldn't have would they?

Have fun you all

Posted Jun 24, 2003 21:07 UTC (Tue) by pben (guest, #2538) [Link]

Ten years ago Microsoft stole IP from Stac Electronics. It hasn't stopped anybody
from giving money to Microsoft. If a company is afraid of SCO and stolen IP in
Linux then they were only looking for an excuse not to use Linux. It is impossible
to write code of any length today in the USA without "stealing" someone's IP. The
whole IP went off the rails in the eary 1990 when patents were applied to
software. If the current IP framework existed in 1975 Microsoft could never have
written BASIC for the Altair.

The system is broken beyond all hope and I am getting sick of this SCO story.
The main problem with the US courts is it takes three years for a claim like this to
get to the apeals process where it will finally be settled. It is going to be a long
an painful ride.

Posted Jun 25, 2003 4:02 UTC (Wed) by mbp (guest, #2737) [Link]

Are IBM being sued because they're using open source software? No, not at all. SCO has standing to sue because IBM signed a proprietary licensing contract with AT&T.

From the point of view of IBM's contract, which is the only thing over which there is actual legal action, the fact that Linux is free software is purely incidental.

If IBM was currently as successful with OS/2 as it now is with Linux then SCO would be suing about OS/2.

Posted Jun 25, 2003 4:21 UTC (Wed) by svachi (guest, #2177) [Link]

> The open-source community must face these fears directly if it
> wishes to continue building their relationship with corporate America.

Not being from America, I wish that the open-source community flourishs
everywhere else, and helps those countries shake the basis of the "leader
of IT industry" that is America :-)

Posted Jun 25, 2003 6:32 UTC (Wed) by kmself (subscriber, #11565) [Link]

Debunked in Drew's deconstruction: Intellectual-property counsel for a Microsoft front group repeats all the tired old phrases about how you never know where code is coming from, and those Open Source hippies need to grow up if they want to be taken seriously.

See generally: TWikIWeThey FUD Fighters page, and/or add to the archive.

Posted Jun 25, 2003 14:25 UTC (Wed) by cspalletta (guest, #12402) [Link]

I am not aware of plagiarism being alleged against any major open source
product since the ATT-BSD-Novell settlement more than 10 years ago.

If there were plagiarism in an open source program it would be detected
sooner rather than later. What SCO is doing is unprecedented - they claim
ALL derivative or related works are "in effect" their property.

Richard Wild writes as if this problem was commonplace, when it manifestly
isn't. Is he merely ignorant, or does he have his own axe to grind?