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Microsoft’s deal with Linspire inspired (Or should I say “linspired?” No. No, I shouldn’t.) a lot of coverage this week which reverberated in an echo chamber of questions, guesses and speculation. But not all of it was noise.
Here is a grand buffet of some of the most illuminating analysis and reportage of the week.
Patent threats bad for Microsoft business - Red Hat
By Alastair Otter
18 June, 2007Microsoft going around threatening customers with patent litigation does not make good business sense. This is according to Red Hat’s Middle East and Africa channel sales manager, David Postel, who was speaking in Johannesburg last week.
Postel said that Red Hat customers do not have to worry about the threat of patent litigation because not only was it unlikely that this would happen, but the company also provides protection for customers against the possibility. He said that customers were protected at two levels.
“In the first instance Red Hat will repair or replace any software found to infringe patents. And Red Hat will also pay to defend any customer that does have to face ligitation,” said Postel.
Ubuntu, Red Hat reject Microsoft patent deal
By Martin LaMonica and Richard Thurston, CNET News.com
Red Hat Remains Unmoved
“Red Hat said there would be no such deal. Referring to previous statements distancing itself from Microsoft, the company insisted: “Red Hat’s standpoint has not changed.”
“The company referenced a statement written when Microsoft revealed it was partnering with Novell, saying that its position remained unaltered. Red Hat director of corporate communications Leigh Day added: “We continue to believe that open source and the innovation it represents should not be subject to an unsubstantiated tax that lacks transparency.”
Many open-source followers argue that Red Hat, as the largest Linux vendor, would have a lot to lose from partnering with Microsoft.
Microsoft’s Linux patent threats dismissed as baseless
By John Fontana
“The reality is that they are not going to sue a single customer,” says Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation. “It would not be in their business interest. Microsoft is not going to sue their customers.”
But Zemlin says the contracts are hurting Linux “only in the fact that Microsoft uses them to create a perception of risk that in reality is not there.”
Microsoft Freshman Course: How To Monetize Patents
Posted by Charles Babcock
Yes, this activity can be interpreted as support for Microsoft’s patents, but please note as well that money is changing hands, $440 million in the case of the Novell pact. Microsoft will spend that amount in give-aways of support for Novell’s SUSE and spend that on other aspects of the deal. It’s a boon for Novell at a time when its business plan is limping.
For Microsoft, doing so strengthens a weak competitor, which helps it fend off future antitrust accusations, while theoretically weakening a strong one, Red Hat.
Interview conducted by Robert Krátký 11 June 2007 for ABCLinux, a Czech site
Q: What is your take on the Novell - Microsoft deal? Should Red Hat be a party to such agreement sometime in the future, what would that mean for you?
A: Personally I think it’s a bad idea and that Novell are going to get stung by the GPLv3, and rightfully so. The license is designed to keep the software free, if it fails to do this then it needs fixing, so GPLv3 hopefully will fix this flaw.
If Red Hat did deals with Microsoft I’d hope they would find a better way to do things, to co-operate on things that help end users but not to compromise the freedom of the code or play any funny games.
Q: Do you share some people’s fear of Microsoft’s threats (concerning patents and intellectual property)?
A: I don’t think they are the biggest danger. As Microsoft has been finding out recently it is the patent trolls, and organisations with buried patents in interesting areas that are the biggest threat in the USA. The real answer to that problem however is to pull the USA back into line with the majority of the world which simply does not recognize patents on software but respects them as literary works subject to copyright law. Also therefore we have to make sure the continuing US attempts to spread bogus patent law into the EU are defeated.
A narrative is forming around Microsoft’s patent FUD campaign, and it’s not a paean to their business acumen, nor an ode to their brinksmanship. The real story is more of a folktale-in-progress that turns on a simple dramatic question: What is Red Hat going to do?
FOSS activists like these at BinaryFreedom.info see Red Hat as an “important domino” and say,
Don’t let Red Hat fold! | binaryFreedom.INFO
We have seen Microsoft’s FUD cause our comrades to pay for patents and intellectual property that doesn’t exist and if Red Hat caves in, many more will follow. Let’s rally our support behind Red Hat to make sure it doesn’t happen! […] Let’s make sure that everybody at Red Hat knows they have the FULL backing of our community if they stand up to Microsoft’s FUD and they have NO backing from us if they don’t.
Amnesty International has launched a campaign to bring attention to the growing threat to Internet freedom posed by governments (and acquiescent IT companies) around the world. Unfortunately, it’s a growing problem that needs more attention.
Irrepressible.info is a user-fed news aggregator documenting instances of censorship and persecution for sharing information and other threatening online activities like “reading” or “looking at” forbidden content. There’s even a place where bloggers can find html fragments of banned content to post on their blogs in order to demonstrate that information cannot be repressed.
It’s not as if this issue needs much explaining, but Cory Doctorow’s usual editorial prowess in support of Irrepressible.info is on full display in The Guardian.
In a brazen attempt to undermine Microsoft’s recent patent infringement sabre-rattling (and perhaps to call attention to an ambitious open source documentary project) a shadowy (compliment) outfit called Digital Tipping Point has started a Sue Me First, Microsoft wiki for open source users to line up for a chorus of bluff-calling.
As of today at 9:45 AM, EDT, the Sue Me First, Microsoft wiki had 906 signatories supposedly just itching for some hot patent litigation
DTP’s Christian Einfeldt says on the wiki “We are asking that people include their name, email address, version of GNU Linux disto(s) being used, and a short statement explaining why you are using that distro.” and adds that although he is a lawyer, he is no way offering legal advice and does not practice patent law.
Some of the comments people are leaving attached to their names are pretty funny.
Digital Tipping Point also has a nice collection of over 400 short films and videos about the free and open source software movement available at the Internet Archive.
There’s a lot happening on the M$ patent front. Here is a quick roundup.
Two from InformationWeek:
Three Scenarios For How Microsoft’s Open Source Threat Could End — Microsoft Takes On Open Source
CEO Of Open-Source Software Vendor SugarCRM Speaks Out
From Computerworld UK:
An interesting spin from the Open Source Industry Austrailia (OSIA)
Microsoft Admits Patent Weakness
Open Source Industry Australia Limited (OSIA) welcomes this week’s admission by Microsoft in magazine articles, including Fortune magazine, that the atents it has identified against open source are liable to be struck out as invalid.
Eben Moglen offers up this tidbit via the Seattle Post Intelligencer.
Free Software lawyer discusses Microsoft patent claims
Eben Moglen, legal counsel to the Free Software Foundation, discussed the details of the draft General Public License Version 3 — including its defenses against the Microsoft-Novell deal —
And Groklaw, of course, is all over it.
Moglen: SUSE Vouchers Have No Expiration Date! (Unlike MS’s Patent Bullying)
Moglens slides and notes regrading Suse Vouchers.
This story is evolving quickly. Check back for updates as the patent war escalates or unravels, whichever happens first.
M$NBC sparked a controversy several weeks ago when it restricted internet use of its Republican Presidential Primary Debate covereage. Under pressure from political bloggers of all stripes (many Republicans came through in a big way), a few Democratic candiadtes (Obama, Dodd and Edwards), and Lawrence Lessig, M$NBC backed down and “engaged in a constructive dialogue” with Lessig about what their policy should be moving forward. Since then CNN and NPR have agreed to place no restrictions on their debate coverage. Fox News has chosen to keep their coverage freedom-free for now.
So far, other networks, the RNC, the DNC, Hillary Clinton, and the entire Republican primary field have yet to weigh in, leaving citizens to wonder why they are so incredibly lame.
To test the limits of the Smithsonian Institution’s grip on (and ability to derive revenue from) 6288 apparently public domain photographs housed at SmithsonianImages.SI.Edu, a shadowy (that’s a compliment on this blog) non-profit group that calls itself Public.Resource.org has uploaded all of the lo-res versions of the images to Flickr. They’ve even divided the photos into 262 contact sheets which can downloaded for free (or purchased, bound) at Lulu.
Public.Resource.Org states in a public “memo” addressed to “The internet” that they have three goals for posting the Smithsonian’s images…uh…well…publicly.
We have three goals in diffusing this knowledge:
1. The unwieldy archive of low-resolution images on the Smithsonian site makes it hard for people to ascertain the public domain status of the vast majority of these images. By placing the database on sites such as Flickr and in convenient-to-examine PDF and tarball formats, we hope that the Internet commnunity is able to form a better judgement.
2. Some images are clearly in the public domain and of immense public importance. For these images, our nonprofit organization is attempting to systematically purchase these images and place them on the net for use without restriction.
3. We would like to see the Smithsonian adopt a policy for on-line distribution that is much more closely aligned to their mission, focusing on vastly increasing the store of public domain materials available on the Internet.
This should be an interesting case to watch.
From InformationWeek:
“It’s certainly a lot more likely that Microsoft violates patents than Linux does,” said Torvalds, holder of the Linux trademark. If the source code for Windows could be subjected to the same critical review that Linux has been, Microsoft would find itself in violation of patents held by other companies, said Torvalds.
Geesh. Maybe he shouldn’t be such a shrinking violet.
Quicktime | Real
Real Stream | Ogg Theora
The death of software patents?
Wikipedia Tries Approval System to Fight Vandalism
More on GPL-compliant patent settlement
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