Hi Harald, On 2006-11-17 at 06:41 +0000 Harald Milz sent off:

Jose Luis Ricardo Chavez wrote:

...

what extent do Novell have control on the OpenSuSE distribution? Is it also covered by the MS-Novell deal?

No, it is not covered. OpenSUSE is a community effort, very much like Fedora.

I think you are wrong here. AKAIK OpenSUSE is also covered by the patents part of the Novell-Microsoft deal. One may like that or not. And OpenSuSE is still a very Novell-driven distro there is not much the community can really have influence on. To call it a "community effort" or not very much depends on what you mean with having influence. Mostly anything you can do is report bugs and make suggestions in an open bugzilla but if Novell does not like it it won't be done. This is not what I understand to be a "community effort". Cheers Bjoern --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-amd64+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-amd64+help@opensuse.org

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9005171&source=NLT_AM&nlid=1 Jim Stalewski wrote:

I think you're all (except for Harald) off-base and are falling prey to anti-M$ "fud" from the OSS community.

This deal does not have anything to do with OSS per-se, or the inclusion/exclusion of proprietary, licensed, patented M$ crud finding its way into OSS projects like OpenSuSE.

http://www.novell.com/linux/microsoft/faq_opensource.html http://www.novell.com/linux/microsoft/faq.html

OpenSuSE is not part of the M$ agreement. It's partly a promise to extend patent indemnification to Novell customers. OpenSuSE is fully OSS, so that's not part of it at all.

The co-development part of the deal, as concerns OSS, only concerns making it easier to use virtualization technologies to support a mixed open and closed source environment, and making sure OpenOffice will interoperate well with MS Office when M$ pushes their "open" format on their victims.

It has nothing to do with a) putting closed-source, patented code into OpenSuSE or any of the programs that come with the OpenSuSE Distro or b) putting closed-source, patented code into OpenOffice.Org or changing the OpenDocument Format.

Get a grip, folks.

*/Bjoern JACKE /* wrote:

Hi Harald,

On 2006-11-17 at 06:41 +0000 Harald Milz sent off: >Jose Luis Ricardo Chavez wrote: >> what extent do Novell have control on the OpenSuSE distribution? Is it >> also covered by the MS-Novell deal? > >No, it is not covered. OpenSUSE is a community effort, very much like >Fedora.

I think you are wrong here. AKAIK OpenSUSE is also covered by the patents part of the Novell-Microsoft deal. One may like that or not. And OpenSuSE is still a very Novell-driven distro there is not much the community can really have influence on. To call it a "community effort" or not very much depends on what you mean with having influence. Mostly anything you can do is report bugs and make suggestions in an open bugzilla but if Novell does not like it it won't be done. This is not what I understand to be a "community effort".

Cheers Bjoern --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-amd64+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-amd64+help@opensuse.org

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One other thing - Novell has refuted Ballmer's claim that the payments Novell will be making to Microsoft as part of the deal is for Microsoft IP. Novell says they are paying Microsoft for their agreement not to sue Novell customers, not for any IP, and that Novell is not purchasing licensing to any Microsoft patents as a result of, because of, or in order to, do this deal. Note that there also is no indemnification of Novell itself - this is simply IP indemnification of Novell customers (and not just their SuSE customers.) It's another selling point for Novell software that not only does Novell indemnify their customers, so does Microsoft. Ballmer can belch FUD in his sleep. Don't buy into it. Don't buy into the knee-jerk FUD the slasdotters are spreading about Novell or any Novell-supported product. Boycotts are just plain stupid, and tend to hurt the boycott-ers more than the boycott-ees. If you must boycott anyone in this deal, boycott Microsoft. Don't buy an X-box. Jim Stalewski wrote: Yeah, that's just Ballmer being Ballmer, spreading more FUD about IP. There's no Microsoft IP that will be added to any GPL code. Novell has made that statement repeatedly, as has Miguel de Icaza stated in no uncertain terms regarding Mono. You'll notice Ballmer won't own up to exactly *what* Microsoft IP he thinks is supposedly in Linux. That's because there isn't any. It's just more Ballmer blowing smoke out his ass, as usual. If there were any Microsoft patented code in Linux, do you really think Microsoft would hesitate to sue everyone for it? They know that if any were uncovered, it would be written out in an eyeblink and they'd have no case. The "IP indemnification" thing here is way overblown. I'm sure next week we'll see some official statement from Microsoft trying to cover Ballmer's ass for making an ass of himself in public again. "Geir A. Myrestrand" wrote: http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9005171&source=NLT_AM&nlid=1 Jim Stalewski wrote:

I think you're all (except for Harald) off-base and are falling prey to anti-M$ "fud" from the OSS community.

This deal does not have anything to do with OSS per-se, or the inclusion/exclusion of proprietary, licensed, patented M$ crud finding its way into OSS projects like OpenSuSE.

http://www.novell.com/linux/microsoft/faq_opensource.html http://www.novell.com/linux/microsoft/faq.html

OpenSuSE is not part of the M$ agreement. It's partly a promise to extend patent indemnification to Novell customers. OpenSuSE is fully OSS, so that's not part of it at all.

The co-development part of the deal, as concerns OSS, only concerns making it easier to use virtualization technologies to support a mixed open and closed source environment, and making sure OpenOffice will interoperate well with MS Office when M$ pushes their "open" format on their victims.

It has nothing to do with a) putting closed-source, patented code into OpenSuSE or any of the programs that come with the OpenSuSE Distro or b) putting closed-source, patented code into OpenOffice.Org or changing the OpenDocument Format.

Get a grip, folks.

*/Bjoern JACKE /* wrote:

Hi Harald,

On 2006-11-17 at 06:41 +0000 Harald Milz sent off: >Jose Luis Ricardo Chavez wrote: >> what extent do Novell have control on the OpenSuSE distribution? Is it >> also covered by the MS-Novell deal? > >No, it is not covered. OpenSUSE is a community effort, very much like >Fedora.

I think you are wrong here. AKAIK OpenSUSE is also covered by the patents part of the Novell-Microsoft deal. One may like that or not. And OpenSuSE is still a very Novell-driven distro there is not much the community can really have influence on. To call it a "community effort" or not very much depends on what you mean with having influence. Mostly anything you can do is report bugs and make suggestions in an open bugzilla but if Novell does not like it it won't be done. This is not what I understand to be a "community effort".

Cheers Bjoern --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-amd64+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-amd64+help@opensuse.org

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On Fri, 2006-11-17 at 15:55 -0500, Patrick Shanahan wrote:

* Jim Stalewski [11-17-06 14:58]:

...

One other thing - Novell has refuted Ballmer's claim that the payments Novell will be making to Microsoft as part of the deal is for Microsoft IP.

Please post plain text, ie: no HTML.

thanks for your expected consideration.

Also, please post it somewhere else. This subject is clearly OT for the AMD64 list. I expect it's OT for the main opensuse list as well but that's another discussion :) Cheers, Dave --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-amd64+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-amd64+help@opensuse.org

Paul C. Leopardi wrote:

... Let's say that Microsoft releases some software ("A") under the GPL...

And you, like so many others, have completely missed the point. Patent violations have nothing to do with what the patent holder puts out. They have only to do with what the user or vendor uses. Microsoft will almost certainly (unless it's all smoke-blowing, as some have guessed) start suing for patent violations of code put into OSS software by _others_. These others will have to defend their code against Microsoft's assertions. In our corrupt court and patent system, it's almost a foregone conclusion that whoever has the most bucks wins, even if he's obviously wrong. How do you think Microsoft held off an excellent Justice Department suit for nearly a decade until a friendly administration came into office? When Microsoft starts suing, it will be for code that Joe Geekster wrote in his bedroom fifteen years ago, implementing concepts that Microsoft got a patent for fifteen months ago. And, even if Microsoft can't make their case stick, they don't have to. They simply have to drag it out, as so many big companies have done for decades, until the opposition collapses. We can only hope that IBM is as serious as they say about open-source, because no one else has the resources to fight even an obvious case against Microsoft. But IBM has their own patent portfolio to defend, too. Will they really defend OSS, possibly against their own financial interest? ...Unless Novell has something huge up their sleeve, which I hope for, without felling very confident. -- John Perry --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-amd64+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-amd64+help@opensuse.org

Hi Jim, Thanks. I'll take it point by point below. Best, Paul On Saturday 18 November 2006 15:34, Jim Stalewski wrote:

OK, I'll try to explain it to you. Read on.

--- "Paul C. Leopardi"

wrote: ...

...

As to specifics, under "Non-Assertion of Patents Pledge" is stated: "Microsoft hereby covenants not to assert Microsoft Patents against each Individual Contributor (also referred to as “You”) for Your distribution of Your personally authored original work (“Original Work”) directly to openSUSE.org, but only if, and to the extent, (i) Your Original Work becomes part of SUSE Linux, SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop or SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, and (ii) You ensure that as a result of Your contribution, openSUSE.org, and all further recipients of Your Original Work, do not receive any licenses, covenants or any other rights under any Microsoft intellectual property. This pledge is personal to You and does not apply to any use or distribution of Your Original Work by others."

What that means is, if anything contributed to OpenSuSE makes its way into SuSE Linux Enterprise, then Microsoft promises not to try to extort anything from you based on a claim of Microsoft IP being part of whatever you contributed to.

Read it again. It doesn't say just "SuSE Linux Enterprise". It says "SUSE Linux, SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop or SUSE Linux Enterprise Server". It specifically says "SUSE Linux". And you know as well as I do that that is the same distro as "openSUSE" as at version 10.2.

Again, that's 1) not laying claim to the existence of M$ IP in Linux, whatever the distro - it's a promise that IF (big if) they find something in Linux that happens to be part of the project you contributed to under the OpenSuSE project, and it's been accepted as part of a SuSE Linux Enterprise release, you won't be a party to any action, and 2) does not affect OpenSuSE or any of the associated projects in any way. Essentially, the change is only for anything that gets into SuSE Linux Enterprise, and it's a promise not to exercise IP "rights." Without this agreement, there is NO promise not to exercise IP "rights" against ANY contributor to ANY OSS project. Duh.

It *does* affect openSUSE. What do think "SUSE Linux" is?

As to provision ii - that's leaving M$ an "out" to allow them to pursue royalties if you distribute otherwise-licensed-by-Microsoft IP. That doesn't violate the "copyleft." It affirms it - under the GPL, you're not supposed to be able to legally distribute someone else's otherwise-licensed IP. The GPL covers that - and is why things like Macromedia Flash doesn't get distributed in "free" GPL-based distros but have to be obtained through other means (also free, but not GPL.)

It does not say "otherwise-licensed-by-Microsoft IP". It specifically says "any licenses, covenants or any other rights under any Microsoft intellectual property". Read that again. *Any* licenses. *Any* Microsoft intellectual property. "Any licenses" must include the GPL, if applicable, just as "Any Microsoft intellectual property" must include Microsoft copyright.

...

One important thing to note here is that "SUSE Linux" is now "openSUSE". See

http://lists.opensuse.org/archive/opensuse-announce/2006-Jul/msg00001.html

Yes, but the agreement is NOT for "SuSE Linux AKA OpenSuSE." It is for SuSE Linux Enterprise, which is the commercial Novell distro (server and desktop) that are only available for a fee. Don't try to twist the language to fit your interpretation by equating the rename of the OSS project to the name of the commercial distro.

I am commenting on the patent pledge, not on anything else. There is nothing in the patent pledge which distinguishes between SUSE Linux", SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.

...

Condition (ii) is of most interest to me. It refers to "any Microsoft intellectual property" but does not refer to any definition of this. I will now give a hypothetical example which at least to me shows how this condition potentially violates the GPL and any similar "copyleft" licences.

Let's say that Microsoft releases some software ("A") under the GPL. ( This is not impossible. For example, parts of "Utilities and SDK for UNIX-based Applications" are licenced via the GPL.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/R2/unixcomponents/webinstall.msp x

...

) Now, what happens when Microsoft updates or patches the GPL code "A"? In order for Microsoft to continue distributing code "A" under the GPL, Microsoft must distribute the patch ("B") under the GPL. That is, Microsoft intellectual property, that is the copyright for patch "B", must be licenced using the GPL. Now, lets say you as a developer receive GPL code "A" with Microsoft patch "B", and you want to add to it and contribute it to openSUSE.org. Under condition (ii) you must ensure that "as a result of Your contribution, openSUSE.org, and all further recipients of Your Original Work, do not receive any licenses, covenants or any other rights under any Microsoft intellectual property". But you can't ensure this, because code "A" with patch "B" is licensed under the GPL, which is incompatible with condition (ii). The GPL is incompatible with condition (ii) because it insists that all recipients have the right to further distribution under the GPL.

That's where your logic falls apart. If M$ distributes patch B under the GPL, they can't lay claim to any other licensing rights to the IP - the GPL forces them to give that IP to the OSS community. If they try to charge for it, they are in violation of the GPL and are open to legal judgment against them.

It does not matter whether or not Microsoft claims any *other* licensing rights. Condition (ii) says that I as a developer ensure that recipients do not receive *any* licenses under *any* Microsoft intellectual property. As I explain above, this *must* include the GPL, where applicable. So the GPL itself ensures that Condition (ii) cannot apply. So Condition (ii) is not compatible with the GPL. So, as a developer, I cannot agree to Condition (ii) if GPL software is involved, just in case some portion the software might have a Microsoft copyright attached to it.

...

I am not a lawyer, but I think my understanding of this hypothetical case is pretty watertight. If you can do so, please hire a lawyer to show me where my reasoning is faulty.

Yah, like I'm gonna hire a lawyer to refute the opinion of an omitted non-lawyer in a newsgroup thread. I already pointed out the major flaw in your reasoning.

No you did not. You yourself claim that the GPL overrides Condition (ii). "If M$ distributes patch B under the GPL, they can't lay claim to any other licensing rights to the IP - the GPL forces them to give that IP to the OSS community." More exactly, if Microsoft distributes patch B under the GPL, it comes under the copyleft provisions of the GPL and all recipients receive the GPL for patch B, which is a license under Microsoft intellectual property, since patch B is under Microsoft copyright.

...

... Do you or does anyone on this maling list know if openSUSE.org plans to include the provision 'openSUSE.org agrees ... openSUSE.org.' above into its "binding contribution agreement"? Who decides if this provision is to be included? Novell? If this provision is included, would developers agree to it? For example, would the Samba team agree to it? http://news.samba.org/announcements/team_to_novell/

OK, now, could again please explain to me how "OpenSuSE is not part of the M$ agreement"?

I have seen nothing to indicate that contributors to the OpenSuSE project will be asked to sign on to or otherwise agree to any kind of "binding contribution agreement" of the sort Microsoft is talking about in the blurb you quoted. Everything I've seen stresses Novell's commitment to the open source community and adherence to its principles.

OK, if there will be no "binding contribution agreement" then why is Microsoft talking about it? Microsoft is one of the two parties to the deal. Are you suggesting that Microsoft does not know what it is talking about? --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-amd64+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-amd64+help@opensuse.org

On Saturday 18 November 2006 21:42, Volker Kuhlmann wrote:

Funny, how open source people scream "FUD FUD FUD" at Microsoft all the time, but then they do a 180 and take every word from microsoft.com as gospel. Shouldn't they know better by now?

It is FUD. Microsoft is deep in the FUD business. The chair-throwing dancing monkey has a black belt in FUD. However, it's quite expensive FUD. If I get the figures right, Novell gets about half a billion dollars from Microsoft, and Microsoft gets some new FUD fodder in return*. Like being able to say "Linux uses our IP". No matter if that's true or not. I suppose the proof of that is in the same suitcase where the SCO proof is ;-). The indemnification, the protection money, is not worth much for Novell, but it doesn't seem to cost much, either (the money flow is in direction of Novell). The FSF will kill any attempt to make GNU&Linux proprietary, so being the only one who can sell an indemnification won't help - under attack you either have to sell a transitive indemnification that can be passed along further, or you sell nothing at all (that's already a consequence of section 7 of GPLv2). It's the typical devil's gold that turns into lead at dawn. But as long as Microsoft doesn't sue anybody, there's no violation of the GPL, because the indemnification is not necessary to redistribute further. Being granted not to be sued from Microsoft today is as useful for any Linux distribution like being granted not to be biten by the pitbull next door. *) And also may sell SuSE Linux coupons, if they like to (I can imagine Ballmer: "The whitest washing Linux ever**!!!11!!! Buy one, get one for free!!!11!!! Limited offer until our Windows-based FTP server will crash under the load!!!11!!!"). **) Must be this one, Ballmer is an expert: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bild:Linux.vollwaschmittel.jpg -- Bernd Paysan "If you want it done right, you have to do it yourself" http://www.jwdt.com/~paysan/