Think again, FSF tells Microsoft on GPL3
559718
Between the lines The Free Software Foundation (FSF) appears to be polishing up its legal sabers over possible violations of the General Public License (GPL) by Microsoft.â¦
140916
Blog: As an industry we are terrible at working on interoperability.  The open source world should be the one to fix this.
448085
InfoWorld - The new GNU General Public License (GPL) version 3 is not a fit for Linux because switching would require permission from the kernel&#39;s thousands of de facto owners, a maintainer of the SCSI portion of the kernel said on Thursday. Also, Microsoft released a statement that the company has no GPLv3 obligations.
639745
MicrosoftWatch: The Redmond software firm is set to make available more of its code under an open-source license on Tuesday. Microsoft is preparing to release a third piece of code under an open-source license
118639
Linux creator Linus Torvalds, in an interview being made public by the Linux Foundation Tuesday, stressed that version 2 of the GPL (GNU General Public License) still makes the most sense for the Linux kernel over the newer GPL version 3.GPL 3, which was released last year by the Free Software Foundation (FSF), reflects the FSF''s goals while GPL 2 closely matches what Torvalds thinks a license should do, Torvalds said.?"I want to pick the license that makes the most sense for what I want to do. And at this point in time, Version 2 matches what I think we want to do much, much better than Version 3," said Torvalds, who is now a fellow at the foundation. He was interviewed in late-October by Linux Foundation Executive Director Jim Zemlin.Among GPL 3 highlights are protections against patent infringement lawsuits and provisions for license compatibility. Torvalds acknowledged he had spoken out against GPL 3 before it was released. He had opposed digital rights management provisions in early-2006, calling them burdensome.There could be a change in his stance, though, Torvalds said. GPL 2 basically has acted as a single license covering a huge bulk of source code. Version 3 splits this base with some projects covered by version 2 and others by version 3 or later, he said. Version 3 might be useful if "there ends up being tons of external code that we feel is really important and worthwhile that is under the version 3 license," said Torvalds.He added he cannot change the license on his own anymore. "I mean, because I have accepted code over the last 15 years by people who kind of accepted my original choice of the GPL Version 2, I?m not just, I think, ethically bound by those people?s choices, I am also actually legally bound," Torvalds said.Torvalds also was asked about the Linux development process being centered in North America and Europe despite Linux's now-global reach. Developers, Torvalds said, tend to come from countries with a high density of Internet access. While China and India have a lot of people, they have issues with Internet access, he said.Language and cultural barriers also present an issue. While some Asian countries have huge Internet use and a great deal of education, they do not contribute a lot to the kernel or other open-source projects, said Torvalds. South Americans, meanwhile, may not necessarily speak English but culturally, they are closer to Europe and the U.S., which makes it easier to enter the fray, according to Torvalds.?Asked why the kernel does not have a stable device driver ABI, Torvalds said one reason is that people ask for one but do not want to merge their source code into the stable kernel or the standard kernel."And that, in turn, means that all the people who actually do all the kernel work and maintain the kernel are basically unable to work with that piece of hardware and that vendor because if there are any bugs whatsoever, we can?t fix them," said Torvalds.Commercial vendors have moved away from wanting anything to do with binary drivers because they are not maintainable, he said.Torvalds said Linux started out as a hobby of his, but he has now been working on it full-time for the last four years.
341837
If Linus and the other key kernel developers were to back a shift to GPLv3, and if there were reasonable legal air cover from respected Open Source authorities for doing so, it seems unlikely that we'd see a substantive challenge to such a move.
756640
Boomshakalaka A General Public License (GPL) test case in the US looks dead in the water after a start-up promised to abide by the GPLv2 rather than duke it out in court with the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC).â¦
45525
The software giant addresses three vulnerabilities within the Windows operating system.
637381
SANTA CLARA, CALIF. -- Noting two evolving areas of software licensing, Microsoft is pondering how to license when multiple instances of an application are run on a single computer, but is not eyeing a plan for utility-based computing, in which charges are based on individual usage.
110530
That's Systems Management Server to you Microsoft is beefing up policing for Windows licensing after going back to the drawing board on its asset management strategy.â¦
54808
Blog: GPLv3, for all its sound and fury, has not had much impact on the industry...yet.  Very few projects have adopted it.  Here's why.
679827
(InfoWorld) - Novell has published details of its landmark November 2006Â Linux partnership agreements with Microsoft. Novell published on Friday redacted versions of the three agreements it signed with Microsoft in its annual 10K filings to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, providing the public with itsÂ first detailed lookÂ into a deal that some see as critical to the future of Linux. The 10K filing had been delayed by an internal stock options review at Novell, which was concluded Wednesday. Under the terms of the agreements, Microsoft will spend hundreds of millions of dollars on licensing fees and sales and marketing costs over five years, including $240 million for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server subscription certificates. For its part, Novell has agreed to pay Microsoft a percentage of revenue from open-source products. [ SEE ALSO:Â Microsoft, Novell defend pactÂ | Special Report:Â Microsoft takes aim at open source, LinuxÂ ] Linux advocates are expected to scour the documents for signs of how the agreement may affect Linux and whether anything in it will put Microsoft or Novell inÂ potential violation of the upcoming version 3 of the GNU General Public license (GPL). The GPL is used in licensing many components of the Linux operating system. Open-source advocate Bruce Perens said he would be looking to see exactly what Novell was given through the deal and whether there is any requirement for the Linux vendor to defend Microsoft's patent claims. "What I'm actually looking for is, to what extent was there a violation of faith?" he said. Microsoft has claimedÂ that Linux violates more than 235 of its patents, and because the deal offers patent protection to Novell users, it is seen as potentially driving a wedge in the Linux community. "Novell had a choice here, and Novell's choice was to be in the same boat with the rest of the free software community, or not," Perens said. Based on an initial reading of the documents, Perens said the deal does not appear to provide full patent protection to Linux users. "Novell did not get complete rights regarding Microsoft patents," he said. "For example, office productivity applications are specifically excluded. ... OpenOffice.org is excluded by name, WINE and Open-Xchange are excluded by name," Novell executives declined to be interviewed about the filings. "We've already provided the high-level comments when we announced the deal in November -- around making Linux and Windows work better together, the areas of tech cooperation, the covenants not to sue. All the customer-focus stuff that drove the deal," said Novell spokesman Bruce Lowry, via instant message. "The agreements provide more meat on the bones in support of those objectives." The patent agreement between the two companies seems to make it clear that Novell does not accept any of Microsoft's patent claims. Section 3.4 says, "Nothing in this Agreement shall imply, or be construed as an admission or acknowledgement by a Party, that any Patents of the other Party are infringed, valid or enforceable." Microsoft and Novell say the deal has helped push Linux adoption in the enterprise by promoting interoperability between the two platforms. Contrary to its image as a threat to open source and Linux, Microsoft is the chief source of Linux business for Novell, and the deal between the two companies has been a boon for SUSE Linux, said Justin Steinman, director of marketing for Novell's Linux and Open Platform Solutions, speaking earlier this week. "Microsoft was Novell's number one channel partner in the first quarter of 2007," he said. "We've seen 60 percent (first-quarter) growth in SUSE, year over year." Paul Roberts, a senior editor at InfoWorld, contributed to this story.
481653
I'm back, with a very interesting topic too!  Joel Spolsky, ex-Microsoft Manager and software engineering guru has a new essay, How Microsoft Lost the API War that is creating quite a big storm in the blogging communitiy.  Joel posits that the priests in the holy Temple of Microsoft have lost their way, because it has split into two factions, and the wrong faction is winning. One faction worships on the alter of backward compatibility, while the other is led by fervent priests who are proselytizing to raise up the new gods of .NET and Longhorn. Joel suggests that the new gods will cause the destruction of the holy Temple because Microsoft's great victories were built on the altar of keeping customers happy with backward compatibility. Furthermore the old gods of the Windows API continue to grow more grotesque and cruel with the passing of time, driving former worshipers into the arms of the friendlier gods of World Wide Web.  This story sounds extremely plausible. I must admit that i fit the profile of the developer who used to develop on the Window's API, is familiar with COM and Win32 who now develops mostly using PHP and Python. However I continue to develop and maintain Windows apps that keep our customers happy, and we still plan to develop new Windows apps. Some points:  Temple of the Blind? Firstly, Microsoft is still a compelling place to work for to people who feel that they can make a difference. The Temple continues to attract talented people with a Unix background. For example we have the recent hiring of Ward Cunningham, author of the Wiki.  Microsoft is still able to keep talented people like Raymond Chen, and others like him who continue to look after the Windows API, and Longhorn apparently will still give high priority to backward compatibility. Open sourcerers like Miguel Icaza are sufficiently attracted to the .NET vision to stake their careers on Mono. Longhorn and .NET are compelling technologies, so even if Win32 is not so cute anymore, M'soft is providing something that remains very attractive.  What i do see M'soft doing wrong is that they aren't disseminating the .NET runtime fast enough. It remains an optional install in XP Service Pack 2 for example. Also their IE dev team appears to be hog-tied due to political reasons; nevertheless IE remains good enough, particularly when I can embed IE as an activeX control, something I cannot do with Mozilla (AFAIK) - Update: I'm wrong.  Temple of the Spider?  Secondly, people don't merely use a web browser. They run the web browser in the OS.  So let me ask you, if you are using DreamWeaver or HomeSite or Photoshop or vi or emacs or Gimp, how many of you are willing to give it up for a java applet (or whatever your favorite technology is) running in your web-browser? Precisely.  Temple of the Abandoned?  Third, Joel makes the claim that developers are not developing to the Windows API. Well he could be right. But I bet a lot of them are still calling Win32.  If you are using a framework or IDE like Delphi or wxWindows (or .NET or VB) then you certainly are insulated from the Windows API, but that doesn't mean that you're not calling the Windows API all the time. I don't see Borland dropping their Windows version of Delphi at any point in time.   In fact, the fact that many developers are using some form of framework is a compelling argument for Microsoft to enhance the .NET framework to attract developers who are using other frameworks.  Today, not that many students learn x86 assembler, but that doesn't mean that Intel lost the CPU wars. Just because fewer people are learning Win32 doesn't mean Microsoft has lost the API wars, if the frameworks run predominantly on Win32.  Temple of the Lost  Joel even warns you in the beginning that "because I'm talking about big trends, I need to exaggerate and generalize". But you still get sucked in because Joel Spolsky is a first-class writer, in the same order as Philip Greenspun or Eric Raymond. That makes him so persuasive and plausible. But this is not Indiana Jones and doomed temples, but Steve Jobs and reality distortion fields.  Other opinions:  Harry Fuecks (PHP is ASP's upgrade path),  Dennis Hamilton (M'soft is just covering all bases), Robert McLaws (Joel is wrong in 7 points), Oliver Travers (the web is not good enough), One Run-time to Rule them all....
108011
(InfoWorld) - Xandros CEO Andreas Typaldos said Thursday his company did not agree that its Linux distribution violates any Microsoft patents nor did the software giant ask Xandros to do so as part of theÂ patent cross-licensing dealÂ the two signed Monday. But he says feedback from the Linux community has been on the order of âyou shouldnât really be talking to the devil.â Typaldos told Network World that at no time did Microsoft reveal to Xandros, which develops Linux desktops, servers, and management tools, any of the 235 patents thatÂ Microsoft says Linux violates. Microsoft has yet to detail publicly specific patents violated by Linux and some critics think the statement is a smoke screen in order to undermine the open source community. âWe did not discuss patents [with Microsoft] and we donât think Linux violates any patents and we were not asked about it,â Typaldos said. âIt is a non-issue for us.â Linux and open-source advocates believe it is a big issue and say the Xandros deal, and another signed by Novell with Microsoft last year, erodes open source licensing provisions especially around intellectual property issues. Indeed, the Free Software Foundation isÂ rewriting its GNU General Public LicenseÂ (GPL) 3.0 to prohibit such patent deals in the future. In terms of the forthcoming GPLv3 and its changes, Typaldos said, âWe do not enter into agreements if we don't believe we can handle them. We plan to honor whatever agreements we have in GPLv2, and will have under GPLv3 or with whomever we are licensing stuff from. When you create agreements you cannot anticipate the future, but you have to be comfortable you can deal with whatever happens one way or another.â He added that since GPLv3 is not yet completed (the final version is due June 29) that he canât really comment on the impact it will have on the Xandros/Microsoft deal. â[Our deal] is a forward looking thing, we are licensing certain technologies,â said Typaldos. He said the technologies will help Xandros integrate its Linux-based server and management software with like software from Microsoft. But he acknowledged that customers have concerns they could be hooked by patent claims and may want some insurance to protect themselves. âLinux says it does not infringe on patents, Microsoft say otherwise. But customers say let me buy some insurance because if there are any flying sparks I donât want to be caught in the middle of that.â Typaldos says that was the genesis of Mondayâs deal with Microsoft that covered interoperability and IP licensing and included âcovenantsâ to protect customers using Xandros software from any potential patent-infringement claims from Microsoft. Microsoft said last month it would seek royalties for patents that it says are being infringed upon by open-source technologies such as Linux. The company, however, said it would prefer to sign patent and cross-licensing deals with open-source distributors rather than seek payments via litigation. On Wednesday, Microsoft inked aÂ patent deal with LG Electronics. It also has signed patent contracts Novell, Samsung and Fuji Xerox among others. NovellâsÂ patent cross-licensing deal with MicrosoftÂ is nearly identical to the one Xandros signed Monday.Just like Typaldos, Novell said its agreement was in no way an acknowledgment that Linux infringes upon any Microsoft intellectual property. Novell made that statement in a Nov. 20 open letter to the open source community after being accused of caving into Microsoftâs patent threats. In the same letter, Novell highlighted that the agreement was focused on developing new technologies and standards in server management, virtualization and document file format compatibility. Typaldos says Xandrosâs motivation in dealing with Microsoft was to license technology beyond basic protocols in order to ensure interoperability between the pairâs server software and Xandrosâs BridgeWays management tools and Microsoftâs family of System Center management tools. Xandros also will develop connectors for better interoperability between Microsoftâs Open XML file formats and the Open Document Format. âIn the last six months, we have been delivering BridgeWays and the focus is to tell customers, who really do not want to be boxed into Windows or into one version of Linux, that they have freedom of choice. And to manage all of that stuff, they don't need to learn a different product every time,â said Typaldos. âAs we move up on the food chain in that area, then interoperability is more of a coupling of the lower levels of the products and the need to know how to open up the hood and fit all these things together.â Typaldos says the deal with Microsoft ensures that management tools from the two vendors are a perfect fit. He says that sort of value has to be delivered to customers for Linux to be successful in the market and to quicken the pace of adoption. âYou have to recognize you have a Windows world out there,â he said. âThe customer in the market place is dictating what we are doing, not my engineers, not my private views of Microsoft vs. Linux, it is customers that say I have Windows over here, Sun over there, this over here, and I donât want to worry about Windows or Linux. They want to run their business with single pane of glass management.â
546266
Ziff Davis - Opinion: eWEEK.com Senior Editor Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols thinks although there will be a bitter battle, there's no way around it: The GPL must be revised.
31682
Earlier than scheduled, Microsoft Corp. has gone public with its announcement of its third open-source code contribution to SourceForge.
682777
Developers of open-source Samba software will find their work a little easier thanks to an agreement with Microsoft, signed Thursday, that will give them access to previously secret data on how the Windows operating system works.Microsoft was compelled to make this information available following a March 24, 2004, European Commission antitrust ruling against the company. In July 2006, the EU fined Microsoft &#8364;280.5 million ($338.6 million at that time) for failing to provide documentation on Windows protocols to its rivals.&#160;Microsoft lost an appeal of that decision&#160;in September, setting the stage for the deal.The deal was signed with a nonprofit group called the Protocol Freedom Information Foundation, (PFIF) which negotiated on behalf of the Samba team because Samba is not represented by a corporate entity. PFIF will pay a one-time fee of &#8364;10,000 and, in return, will be able to allow open-source developers, including the Samba team, to access the documents.Developers will have to sign nondisclosure agreements and will not be allowed to redistribute Microsoft&#39;s documentation, but they will be able to write open-source software that implements the Windows protocols. The deal will also clarify which patents Microsoft believes are related to this technology, making it easier for open-source developers to avoid patent violations.Antitrust rulings forced Microsoft to set up protocol-licensing programs in the past, including the MCPP (Microsoft Communications Protocol Program) and the WSPP (Work Group Server Protocol Program), but these efforts were not compatible with open-source software licenses.That is apparently not a problem with the PFIF agreement.&quot;They&#39;re giving us all the documentation to make everything work,&quot; said Jeremy Allison, co-author of Samba. &quot;We will have no more excuses to suck &#8230; if we don&#39;t have something, we won&#39;t be able to say it&#39;s not our fault, we don&#39;t know how to do it.&quot;Samba is an open-source version of the file-and-print software used by Windows. It is a standard component of the Linux and Unix operating systems, allowing these systems to share data and work alongside Windows clients.But development of Samba has traditionally been back-breaking work. Developers would analyze network traffic to try and glean how Windows was working and then build their software based on that knowledge -- a process called reverse-engineering.With the new agreement, developers will have access to Microsoft&#39;s own protocol specifications and will be able to build their software based on those documents, Allison said. That, in turn, will accelerate the team&#39;s development of its next generation of software, which will implement the new Sever Message Block 2.0 protocol used by Windows Vista.Though the deal was reached on Thursday, developers were still waiting for the final technical aspects of the document hand-over to be settled, Allison said. He expects to get his hands on the technical specifications fairly soon. &quot;I&#39;m guessing that for my Christmas vacation I&#39;ll have some enjoyable things to read,&quot; he said.