Slashdot Log In
Microsoft's SUSE Coupons Have No Expiry Date
Posted by
Zonk
on Fri May 18, 2007 09:13 PM
from the oh-is-it-ever-a-trap dept.
from the oh-is-it-ever-a-trap dept.
mw13068 writes "In a recent article in the Seattle Post Intelligencer FSF General Council Eben Moglen points out that the Microsoft SUSE coupons have no expiration date. The result? 'Microsoft can be sure that some coupons will be turned into Novell in return for software after the effective date of GPL 3. Once that has happened, patent defenses will, under the license, have moved out into the broad community and be available to anybody who Microsoft should ever sue for infringement.' Groklaw is also covering the story in it's inimitable way."
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
Don't worry Zonk (Score:5, Funny)
Expirey? (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
1. A state of expiration, not quite fully expired, but not as good as new. Kind of like milk that's been sitting in the fridge for a while, but still hasn't reached its expiration date.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
However, neither of these should be confused with "ex pyre i", which is what happens when you burn a dyslexic witch.
Re:Expirey? (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Blackadder: Do you know what expirey is, Baldrick?
Baldrick: Oh, sure, it's like breezy or slackery or yggdrasily...
Re:Max character limit (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I hate to be the one to have to say this, but maybe you'd better get a better dictionary.
The default one in Firefox (dictionary.reference.com) isn't too bad; you can get it by typing "dict {word}" into the URL field. Although honestly, Google seems to just get better and better as a spell-checker; actually it'd be pretty slick someday if spelling packages could failover to Google for suggestions, on de
Great, (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Great, (Score:5, Interesting)
As far as the MS/Novell deal, Novell paid a small sum (relatively speaking), Microsoft paid a much larger sum, in part for these coupons which they are reselling. I forget the numbers but they should be easy to google.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Great, (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:What I want to know is.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Microsoft can't sue anyone cause they are violating patents themselves. If they sue some random open source developer, IBM through a couple of patent pooling organisations will step in and sue Microsoft. This is the whole mutually assured destruction thing.
So no-one really cares about Microsoft suing them.. except, ya know, a few fortune 500 companies who are afraid of what any announcement of a lawsuit will do to their stock. The problem is, these idiots are quite happy to fork Microsoft a few dollars for an assurance that they won't be sued. This means Microsoft feels bolder to pretend they are going to sue, which means they get more licenses, etc.
Parent
Just one. (Score:3, Informative)
Heck, what about GNU? Can't have linux without GCC or the lib. Unless Novel wants to fully fork their distro, they don't have much of a choice. Someone is going to use GPL3.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
not an issue (Score:3, Informative)
AFAIK, GPLv3 and GPLv2 code can be linked, so nothing needs to be stripped. If they can't track down the author for some old piece of code, they can just leave it under GPLv2.
So, they could probably put a large chunk of the existing code under GPLv3 plus all new code, making the kernel effectively GPLv3 in its entirety (of course, you're free to use the GP
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Great, (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Great, (Score:5, Insightful)
If Novell chooses to distribute only old forks, good luck to them, they're dead in the water already.
Parent
So M$ Suse is like WinDOS? (Score:3, Interesting)
If MS are giving away coupons for a version of SUSE, what the hell is stopping them from giving away the disk version from the day they made their coupons?
You mean try to push it as bits in a box like Vista or XP with a five year "cycle" time?
They could do that, but no one will buy them and that will hurt M$. Who wants to pay for a year old version of free software? Sure, it works but you can just download one that works better. The terms of the deal were that Novel would pay a percentage or a minimum
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Let me tell you a story... (Score:5, Funny)
When I was a wee lad of 5 or 6, my grandpa would sit me on his lap and tell me about life and learning. He'd say things like "Boy, always treat people as you'd like them to treat you" or "A penny saved is a penny earned".
My favourite one was "Boy, never, ever misspell the word "expiry" or you'll look like a fucking retard."
I sure miss Grandpa.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Good news for Digg (Score:5, Insightful)
From TFA:
Great news! Let's start all posting the AACS key to Digg, again. After all, you won't be distributing AACS yourself, and you are not going to provide access to download anything.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Reservations about the timing. (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think that these coupons would be effected by the change over to GPL3. I'm betting they're a not too hard legal fight away, tops, from legally declaring that these coupons were released for a particular legal/business situation and making them not count for GPL3 versions of the product.
And even if this all goes down the way groklaw says it will, I don't believe you could mount an effective legal challenge against Microsoft when they invalidate all the vouchers and offer either a refund or a product of equal monetary value.
I also kind of get the feeling that if these guys waited they coulda sprung this on Microsoft at the first legal challenge they offered and totally took the advantage or at lest made a nice high profile case with more amusing geeky stories following it up. Now, I think the Microsoft legal beagles will shut this down before it comes to anything.
It happens.
Danger of the GPL? (Score:4, Interesting)
Could a user legally force a developer who released software under a prior GPL version, with the future version clause included, to pay such a sum?
From Wikipedia... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract [wikipedia.org]
If the terms of the contract are uncertain or incomplete, the parties cannot have reached an agreement in the eyes of the law.[19] An agreement to agree does not constitute a contract, and an inability to agree on key issues, which may include such things as price or safety, may cause the entire contract to fail. However, a court will attempt to give effect to commercial contracts where possible, by construing a reasonable construction of the contract.[20]
Courts may also look to external standards, which are either mentioned explicitly in the contract[21] or implied by common practice in a certain field.[22] In addition, the court may also imply a term; if price is excluded, the court may imply a reasonable price, with the exception of land, and second-hand goods, which are unique.
If there are uncertain or incomplete clauses in the contract, and all options in resolving its true meaning have failed, it may be possible to sever and void just those affected clauses if the contract includes a severability clause. The test of whether a clause is severable is an objective test - whether a reasonable person would see the contract standing even without the clauses.
By allowing major modification against the will of one of the parties, is the GPL "Incomplete"? Would this standard would allow a distributor to not be bound by clauses in a contract that were not even existant at the time of the contracts inception?
With the GPL's 'viral' nature, wouldn't it be a huge liability for anyone to agree to such an open ended contract?
Could arguing this case damage Open Source, by showing a possible danger of contributing anything under the GPL?
Not saying the GPL should change however it wants, however, allowing one party to an agreement to unilaterally change the terms after the fact is a bad idea. Unless you want your rent to triple, and still be bound to your lease, and you lease extended to 99 years, payable in advance.
Re:Danger of the GPL? (Score:4, Interesting)
Presumably, distributors would simply choose not to distribute under the new license. And they can always choose not to distribute the software at all, just like people can choose not to sell or buy new versions of Microsoft software that may come under new licensing terms.
Could a user legally force a developer who released software under a prior GPL version, with the future version clause included, to pay such a sum?
First, the developer can change the license and just strike the "or later" clause for future releases if he likes since he owns the code.
Second, the standard clause says "or later", which means that you can continue to distribute under the old version.
Parent
It's very simple for Microsoft (Score:5, Insightful)
You get one of the coupons. You wait a couple years, and by then the current SuSE is 11.2.
You turn in your coupon.
And guess what? Microsoft or Novell or whoever handles fulfilling the coupons sends you a bright new shiny copy of SuSE 10.7.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Second There is only SUSE 10. The next will be SUSE 11. That is SLES and SLED for you
Third, the versions you talk about is openSUSE. openSUSE 10.3 Alpha 4 just came out and is unrelated to this whole deal.
There are no coupons for openSUSE. You can just download it.
Now SLES or SLED are valid for 7 years anyway.
Also understand that these coupons buy you one year of free updates on SLES or SLED. Now what if in 8 years they are at SUSE 14 and you recieve a coupon from Microsoft. What m
Granny Weatherwax (Score:4, Interesting)
The Granny Weatherwax way : she doesn't have the vampire in her blood, the vampire has her in his blood.
Expiry Dates (Score:4, Insightful)
It's bad enough when gift vouchers have an expiry date. The way I see it, when I buy someone a gift voucher from a store, I am lending the store money; and by slipping the gift voucher inside a birthday card, I am transferring the debt to a third party. It's not fair for the store to dictate that they will refuse to honour the debt after a certain date.
What's worse, I bet if I took out one of the same store's payment cards (not sure why I'd want to: only valid in their own and other participating retailers' outlets, and up to twice the interest rate of a normal credit card, looks a poor value proposition to me), I bet they wouldn't like it if I said something like "If I haven't paid you back in full within 12 months, I'm not going to pay you anything at all".
Why should the store, as my debtor, be allowed to get away with imposing an expiry date on a gfit voucher? THEY OWE ME (or the recipient of the gift voucher) MONEY, FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!
Disclaimer: I Am Not An Economist (But I Am Tight With Money).
Re:Well (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Contracts Law (Score:4, Insightful)
IAJALS*, but contracts are always subject to interpretation as to meaning and intent. There are rules (which are silly, generally) limiting what can and cannot be brought in as evidence of intent - but terms like "advantadge of the bargain" and "intent of the parties" weigh heavily on judges minds when they look on contracts like this. One of the big principles of law is that there is no such thing as "magic words" in law that force parties to subject themselves to unfair (technically "inequitable") results. -actually, property law is an exception to that.. deeds are very formulaic under most state systems, but that's just real estate, which is not touched here-
Here MS has granted a limited liscense.. there is ample evidence as to intent at the time of the contract formation (many press releases from all concerned parties) and then this defense is practially a template for how to show bad faith on the part of a contracting partner. As discussed above, Novell has little / no option except to distribute under the 3.0 GPL, but doing so subjects their partner to very harsh terms which are explicity intended to fuck them over. That is a text-book worthy demonstration of abusive languge in a contract.
I'm not saying the FSF folks don't know what they're doing - they're very clever and this is sharp stuff - but this is no one sided tidal wave bearing down on MS, and they do have their own lawyers (as you may have heard), who are also very smart (and they drink the blood of virgins.. so bonus evil points).
-GiH
* = I am just a law student
Parent
Re:Contracts Law (Score:4, Interesting)
So if MS wants to argue the intent thing, they may have a problem. I am sure MS will find a way to get out of this but arguing over intent
is not likely to be it. Nobody turned around and, as you so eloquently put it, "fucked them over". They knew damn well what they were getting
into ahead of time.
Parent
Re:expiry its (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
3rd grammar error (Score:3, Insightful)
"Expiry" and "it's" were two of the grammar errors, but there is a third. The phrase should not be "some coupons will be turned into Novell in return for software". Instead, it should be "turned in to Novell".
It's hard to give a formal justification for this (it's not a grammar rule taught in school, but it is nevertheless followed in real-world writing), but the best I can explain it is that "turned in" is one underlying structure in the sentence and "to Novell" is another. So uniting the "in" from
Re:This doesn't make any sense... (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re:This doesn't make any sense... (Score:4, Insightful)
modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2
of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The GPL does not contain this clause. What you're referring to is this (from the GPL HOWTO [gnu.org]):
Re:This doesn't make any sense... (Score:4, Informative)
MS (effectively) bought a bunch of coupons for SuSE. MS is who will be handing out those coupons.
So either MS just shrugs its shoulders, and counts the money they paid to Novell as a loss (meaning - they don't give away the coupons), or they somehow give away all the coupons before anything in SuSE uses GPL3 (which is the only way what you're saying would matter), or..., and the point of the GP, MS uses the coupons realistically, and by so doing sanctions the GPL3 as it is Microsoft giving out the coupons, not Novell.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Well, of course! (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:GPL v3 - Patents - Kernel - Linus (Score:5, Informative)
The GNU part of the userland will definitely go to GPLv3, and that is as much a part of linux as the kernel.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
1) I'm skeptical this will force MS into anything in regard to the GPLv3, except
Short Hand (Score:3, Interesting)
- Microsoft engaged in a contract with Novell, MS distributes coupons for Novell software, Novell gets a liscense granting freedom from MS patent concerns. Money traded hand.
- FSF and others went WTF Novell - you can't do that, you're distributing under the GPL, that code is GPLed, WTF are you doing.
- Novell found a nice big loophole in the GPL and ran through it with a truckload of MS cash.
- FSF is releasing GPL 3.0 which closes the loophole
- It is assumed that when GPL 3 comes out, Novell will choose