Mailinglist Archive: opensuse-project (144 mails)

["Paul C. Leopardi" <paul.leopardi@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Mark,
Reply below. Best regards, Paul
On Saturday 25 November 2006 05:16, Mark Shuttleworth wrote:
> Novell’s decision to go to great lengths to circumvent the patent
> framework clearly articulated in the GPL has sent shockwaves through the
> community. If you are an OpenSUSE developer who is concerned about the
> long term consequences of this pact, you may be interested in some of
> the events happening next week as part of the Ubuntu Open Week:
>
>   https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuOpenWeek
>
> We are hosting a series of introductory sessions for people who want to
> join the Ubuntu community - in any capacity, including developers and
> package maintainers. If you want to find out how Ubuntu works, how to
> contribute or participate, or how to get specific items addressed, there
> will be something for you. I’ll also be on IRC on Tuesday 28th to answer
> any questions you may have of me specifically, such as Luis’ questions
> about our position on software patents at
> http://tieguy.org/blog/2006/11/22/and-ubuntus-patent-stand/
...

I have been a member of the Sydney Linux User's Group for almost as long as I 
have been using SuSE Linux, so I have heard a bit about Ubuntu, particularly 
from Mark Waugh.

Here are some of the questions I'll be asking later, possibly on Tuesday 28th:

I'd be interested to hear what you have to say about Pia Waugh's 
comment, "Ballmer 0wnz us" http://pipka.org/blog/2006/11/23/ballmer-0wnz-us/ 
about Bruce Perens' petition http://techp.org/petition/show/1 and about
"Microsoft’s Patent Pledge for Individual Contributors to openSUSE.org" 
http://www.microsoft.com/interop/msnovellcollab/community.mspx#E3

In particular, does Ubuntu have a "binding contribution agreement" and does it 
say anything like "as a condition of receiving the attached contribution of 
Your Original Work, Ubuntu does not receive from You the contributor any 
licenses, covenants or any other rights under any 'company X' intellectual 
property with respect to that Original Work, and Ubuntu will ensure that all 
further recipients of this Original Work will be subject to this same 
condition", where 'company X' is eg. Microsoft? In your opinion, is such an 
agreement compatible with GPLv2, especially in the case where 'company X' has 
itself contributed software to Ubuntu under GPLv2?
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