LWN: Comments on "Microsoft to sponsor the Apache Software Foundation (ars technica)"

Microsoft to subborn subversion of the Apache Software Foundation (ars technica)

lysse — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 02:40:51 +0000

As I understand it, it's a little more subtle than that (at least under UK law, which I have studied formally but am not qualified in). If you have the right to enforce a particular contract, or part thereof, and you promise not to pursue that right for a particular length of time, and people rely on that promise, you are estopped from then going back later and saying "actually no, I did want to enforce that clause after all". You can change it in the future - you can say "I will be enforcing this clause from now on"; you aren't bound by your promise then to forever forswear from enforcement - but you cannot pursue action retroactively when you said you wouldn't, even though you legally had the right to do so at the time.

But basically, yes - the law frowns on setting contractual bear traps for people, and the doctrine of promisory estoppel is what will prevent your bear trap from catching anyone.

Microsoft to sponsor the Apache Software Foundation (ars technica)

emk — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 13:08:03 +0000

$100,000 will pay for 1 full-time corporate developer in most markets, or maybe a bit less.

Base salaries run anywhere from $50,000-100,000 depending on location and skill set. For a
full-time employee with benefits, an office, and the usual corporate overhead, you would
multiply that by 2. Remember that in the U.S., the employer pays for medical insurance.

But the Apache foundation is a non-profit, and it presumably doesn't need to have office
buildings, a Human Resources department, or other corporate overhead. So they won't need to
multiple the base salary by 2. But still, they're unlikely to get more than one full-time
developer for $100,000.

Microsoft to sponsor the Apache Software Foundation (ars technica)

jpmcc — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 11:35:21 +0000

I'm out of touch with US rates, but I guess that would pay for 2-3 FTE corporate developers? I
wouldn't be surprised to find there are more Microsoft employees than that already
contributing to the ASF as volunteers..

John

Microsoft to subborn subversion of the Apache Software Foundation (ars technica)

AlexHudson — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 11:03:37 +0000

"On the contrary"? I agree it provided a defence. I guess maybe I'm less certain that a
paragraph in a FAQ trumps the actual legal text than you are...

Microsoft to subborn subversion of the Apache Software Foundation (ars technica)

AJWM — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 07:08:54 +0000

The defense would be "promissory estoppel".  If MS tries to sue, they are "estopped" (legalese
for stopped, more or less) by the promise they made in the FAQ.

The basic principle is that it's unfair, unjust (and impolite) to tell somebody it's okay to
do something and then turn around and sue them for doing it.

IA,however,NAL

Microsoft to subborn subversion of the Apache Software Foundation (ars technica)

JoeBuck — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 03:37:50 +0000

On the contrary, an FAQ officially published by Microsoft constitutes a promise. If the original license didn't permit something, but an official document permits it, it provides a legal defense.

Microsoft to sponsor the Apache Software Foundation (ars technica)

abartlet — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 07:13:00 +0000

On the MAPI plugin issue, OpenChange (unrelated to the Apache foundation) is being brought
into Debian and Fedora, with packages for this and their build dependencies (such as Samba4)
pending review for inclusion into these distributions.

remember when IBM was also called Itty Bitty Monopoly?

sbergman27 — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 04:59:49 +0000

"""
companies can turn around.
"""

And once they do, they can turn back around faster.  I'd say that now we have the snake by the
tail.

Microsoft to sponsor the Apache Software Foundation (ars technica)

gdt — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 10:48:00 +0000

The POI Java library (which parses Microsoft file formats) seems to be the Apache software Microsoft wish to encourage.

On the plus side, a usable specification for MAPI and Exchange 2007 can only help in getting Linux mail clients which can talk with Microsoft mail servers. The current lack of good integration with Exchange is a large obstacle for many business people who try Linux on their personal computer. Linux become the Swiss Army Officers' Knife of computer networking by supporting every protocol, and perhaps that is the way forward for the Linux desktop.

I did try Novell's new MAPI plugin for Evolution. It didn't work against my employer's Exchange 2003 server and the convoluted build process for the plugin's source code didn't encourage me to fix this.

Accepting the money without interference

bdelacretaz — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 09:27:13 +0000

> ...My recommendations to ASF: accept the money, but only under 
> the most ironclad guarantees of non-interference and only so 
> long as measures can be undertaken to avoid dependence on 
> future recurring funds from that source....

This is exactly what the ASF does: we do not accept directed donations, and as the list of
sponsors at http://www.apache.org/foundation/thanks.html shows, we are not dependent on any of
them individually. 

As a public charity, our financial reports and board minutes are available at
http://www.apache.org/foundation/records/ .

The ASF is all about people, not companies, and our structure and rules have been designed so
as to avoid any company interference. This is not always easy to execute, as many companies
want to be associated with the ASF brand today, but as this is one of our core principles we
spend a lot of energy in making sure we stay true to that. That's valid with respect to any
company, be it a sponsor or not.

-- Bertrand Delacretaz (expressing my own opinions, not an official ASF statement)

remember when IBM was also called Itty Bitty Monopoly?

dlang — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 00:40:30 +0000

companies can turn around.

keeping my fingers crossed, but examining things closely.

Microsoft to subborn subversion of the Apache Software Foundation (ars technica)

smitty_one_each — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 23:49:29 +0000

>The important bit is that GPL software is suddenly indemnified from patent lawsuits if the
implement MS's "open" protocols.

I might be missing something, but isn't the Apache license, in spirit, much closer to BSD than
GPL?
Or are you making a deeper point about somehow making it harder to run GPL'd software atop
Apache?

OSP GPL compatible now?

mjw — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 23:46:07 +0000

It would be interesting to know if that FAQ entry covers all the issues discovered by the
SFLC: http://www.softwarefreedom.org/resources/2008/osp-gpl.html

Microsoft to subborn subversion of the Apache Software Foundation (ars technica)

AlexHudson — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 22:15:05 +0000

It creates a potential defense, but it doesn't change the language of the OSP, or override it
- the FAQ isn't legal advice.

I think the problem was that without that statement, there was sufficient gap between people's
interpretation of the OSP and what it actually said to argue that it wasn't good enough. I
think that gap has narrowed a lot.

Microsoft to subborn subversion of the Apache Software Foundation (ars technica)

rahvin — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 21:54:14 +0000

That FAQ itself becomes legal protection. By affirming that GPL is protected in the FAQ they
create legitimate defense against action by Microsoft because they now say that the language
of the agreement says as much. As this isn't a contract the Judge isn't limited to the plain
language of the "promise" and can consider other sources of information such as Microsoft's
own FAQ where they try to explain the agreement in plain language. This promise and FAQ on the
promise creates a legal expectation that MS won't sue, if they do sue they could probably
terminate rights at the cost of reimbursing anyone that spent money or took reasonable actions
based on this promise.

Microsoft to subborn subversion of the Apache Software Foundation (ars technica)

Sutoka — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 21:48:20 +0000

It's be /several/ years since I tried Apache on Windows (assuming this is about the web server
and not just in general), and it run and work, but 'work' isn't all there is to
interoperability. The web server integrating nicely with Windows' other tools, like the
service manager (iirc, this didn't work well when I tried it) and anything else like that can
also help. 'Interoperability' could also be a GUI configuration system that integrates with
the Administrative Tools on Windows, or using some of Vista's security features.

If you put aside Microsoft's long history of hidden-agendas and duplicity, that statement
could be perfectly reasonable. Microsoft could make the changes themselves, but spending 100k
on having on of their developers do the work might scare some of Microsoft's lawyers/PR
people, but just dropping 100k on the ASF would alleviate some of their fears while still
helping to achieve their (hopefully positive) goals.

Of course since this is Microsoft you have keep a close eye on anything they do, but simply
being Microsoft doesn't *require* everything they do to be evil for all time.

Microsoft to subborn subversion of the Apache Software Foundation (ars technica)

AlexHudson — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 21:24:43 +0000

As far as I can tell, the OSP itself hasn't changed - just MS's FAQ on it. So either you have
to believe that it was always ok in the first place (and, I guess, go along with
OpenOffice.org et al), or you believe that MS are lying and it still doesn't offer the
necessary rights. 

Groklaw I would trust about as far as I can sneeze their website on this issue, but I don't
understand why PJ has suddenly u-turned. Trying to make an FAQ update look like a license
change to back-pedal quietly, perhaps?

Microsoft to sponsor the Apache Software Foundation (ars technica)

rfunk — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 21:17:51 +0000

Keep in mind that the Apache Software Foundation has a lot of 
non-webserver projects.  It may be a mistake to assume this is all about 
httpd.

Microsoft to subborn subversion of the Apache Software Foundation (ars technica)

vblum — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 21:09:58 +0000

See the groklaw article on the issue (also somewhat cautious). The important bit is that GPL
software is suddenly indemnified from patent lawsuits if the implement MS's "open" protocols.
That's new?

Microsoft to subborn subversion of the Apache Software Foundation (ars technica)

AnswerGuy — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 20:41:44 +0000

I call bull!

... "likely to be driven by consumer demand for interoperability" ...

What interoperability problem is there for Windows users of Apache? What would prevent
Microsoft from making any changes needed (to their OS or to the Apache sources) to achieve
this interoperation?

As it stands, I don't know of anything preventing MS users from running Apache on their
Windows systems. They *might* need to install Cygwin ... but that's just as free as Apache.
I think Apache can be compiled to run under Win32 APIs directly .. without any need to install
Cygwin. There *might* be some performance issues (comparing Apache under Linux to the same
version of Apache under MS Windows). If we stretch the meaning of "interoperability" to
include performance issues then we can still say that Microsoft already has all the resources
and licenses necessary to make any improvements they like to their OS and to the Apache
sources.

So it is absurd, on the face of it, to claim that Microsoft's motivation for spending this
money has anything to do with technical interoperability. It is, at best, PR fluff. It's far
more likely that Microsoft hopes to eventually buy enough influence through their
"contributions" so that they can later gain some advantage thereby. Given their history any
leverage they gain is likely to be used in a way which i hostile to Microsoft's "competition"
(which fundamentally is any operating system that isn't owned by their brand).

To Microsoft "fostering its own community" means: tie your applications to our OS so that your
users must be our customers. They realize that they can't start with this ... but they can
lure people in with "contributions" ... choose some key applications and spray enough money
towards them in the short term that the organizations behind them (ASF, for example) become
dependent on MS for most of their funding. At which point the mere risk of losing that
funding will provide tremendous influence on the decisions made by those organizations (even
if no overt threats are made).

My recommendations to ASF: accept the money, but only under the most ironclad guarantees of
non-interference and only so long as measures can be undertaken to avoid dependence on future
recurring funds from that source. Take extra care to assure the public (and various open
source and free software communities) about your organization's continued independence ... and
be prepared with full disclosure of the terms. Make absolutely certain that there is nothing
in these terms that even hints at any sort of "patent covenant." Have the meanest, most
devious detractors scrutinize the proposal prior to acceptance with an eye toward devising the
slimiest, sneakiest most duplicitous way that those terms might be used in hostile PR. Forbid
Microsoft from speaking on behalf of Apache foundation and require that all references to
Apache by Microsoft representatives and publications shall refer readers to the ASF web site.

In short: beware!