Hi Jim, I'm not concerned with the deal itself so much as the way Microsoft's "patent indemnification" is actually supposed to work, vs. GPL and any other licences on the code in question. So I'm going to ask some hard questions here and hope that you or others on the list will have some cogent answers. See below. Best regards On Saturday 18 November 2006 04:59, 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.
Please refer to http://www.microsoft.com/interop/msnovellcollab/community.mspx Look at the heading, "Microsoft’s Patent Pledge for Individual Contributors to openSUSE.org" Notice how it is Microsoft's pledge and how it specifically refers to openSUSE.org? Now, explain to me why this pledge exists and what is its purpose, when as you say, "OpenSuSE is not part of the M$ agreement"? This is NOT 'anti-M$ "fud" from the OSS community'. It is Microsoft's own web site. 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." 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 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.mspx ) 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. 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. Also, under "Non-Assertion of Patents Pledge" is stated: "There are a variety of ways to satisfy the requirement under section (ii) above. For example, one way to satisfy the requirement under US law is for openSUSE.org to include the following provision as is in its binding contribution agreement with You: 'openSUSE.org agrees that as a condition of receiving the attached contribution of Your Original Work, openSUSE.org does not receive from You the contributor any licenses, covenants or any other rights under any Microsoft intellectual property with respect to that Original Work, and openSUSE.org will ensure that all further recipients of this Original Work will be subject to this same condition. “Original Work” has the meaning as set forth in Microsoft’s Patents Pledge for Individual Contributors to openSUSE.org.' " 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"? --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-amd64+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-amd64+help@opensuse.org