Novell Injects MS Lawsuit Exploit Into Open Office

F.M. Petain writes, "It looks like Microsoft's first move in the 'Linux owes us' game is to move a Pawn. A few days ago, a Novell programmer, Noel Power, submitted patches to add VBA compatibility to Open Office's spreadsheet module. This is great for people trying to convert the business desktop from closed source to open source, but is this gift really a ticking time bomb? What happens when Microsoft declares that the VBA code was stolen?" The patches may have been submitted only a few days ago, but the code must be considerably older; the article claims that nine distros in adition to SUSE already support the VBA extensions in their versions of Open Office. (Linux.com and Slashdot are both part of OSTG.)

Poison pill

Microsoft is trying to slip poison pills into projects that endanger their cash cows... Be very, very careful!

I'm truely amazed that Novell is co-operating to let them do this. How can they benefit from Linux being threatened when their entire business is revolving around Linux these days??

Re:Poison pill

How could SCO benefit by declaring "better to use windows than linux?" :) SCO did not benefit. Their managers probably did.

Re:Poison pill

This is oblique, but not fully off-topic.

Maybe the slashdot icon for Microsoft should be switched from Bill the Borg to Admiral Akbar with Steve Balllamer's face photoshopped on.

Just a thought.

Re:Poison pill

1. Novell owns the LAN server market. Is too fricking stupid to keep developing and eventually is crushed by NT and Linux for servers.

2. Novell envies Microsoft so buys WordPerfect. WP for Windows is initially a pathetic joke and MS Word takes over the number 1 spot. Novell continues to piss around, WordPerfect continues to lose market share, and eventually, after WordPerfect is way, way behind, Novell sells WP to Corel (another loser company) for peanuts compared to what they originally paid.

3. Novell buys SuSE and then Ximian. Immediately moves to change SuSE default desktop to Gnome, alienating many of SuSE long time customers. SuSE continues to lose market share and the Germans wish they'd been taken over by a company that (a) isn't a building full of pussies, and (b) has a fricking clue.

4. Novell is STILL trying to sell fricking Netware. Doesn't seem to notice that nobody fricking gives two turds about Netware anymore.

5. Novell is "indemnified" by Microsoft for any IP that might be included in SuSE (HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!) in return for a cash infusion to delay the inevitable. Novell is instantly ostracized (a la SCO, another Microsoft shell company) by the entire Linux community, which ironically HASTENS its inevitable demise.

Novell: One very lucky company... one time, twenty fricking years ago, when they somehow managed to produce an outstanding product called Netware... for it's time. The responsible developers apparently left shortly thereafter because it's been an embarassment to themselves and to those stupid enough to let themselves be acquired by Novell ever since.

What a bunch of maroons.

Re:Poison pill

FWIW, I run SuSE (retail) for most of my office machines and for my home machine. I also run CentOS and Ubuntu. Most of the machines are going to be upgraded to SuSE 10.2. Say what you will, but not everyone is going to dump SuSE until there is a good reason to. We might go OpenSUSE this time around rather than pay for the distribution, depending on what is tainted in SuSE Retail. Given the timing, I doubt SuSE 10.2 is tainted with anything from Microsoft at this point. That might change in SuSE 10.3 or SuSE 11. Given how slowly Microsoft tends to move, it's possible that even next autumn's release won't be tainted at all with their crud.

If you're running SuSE already (10.1 or earlier) there is little reason to dump what you have, but keep your options open and reevaluate the larger distributions periodically. Given the refinement of KDE in SuSE, I'm reluctant to dump it even for kubuntu.

Re:Poison pill

4. Novell is STILL trying to sell fricking Netware. Doesn't seem to notice that nobody fricking gives two turds about Netware anymore.

Sadly in the big corporate world that just isn't true, I wish it was (would make life a lot simpler). I get asked for Netware / eDirectory / Groupwise (you missed that one) integration all the time. The people asking aren't asking for nostalgia - they are running networks with 10k+ desktops on those products right now.

Re:Poison pill

=== Sadly in the big corporate world that just isn't true, I wish it was (would make life a lot simpler). I get asked for Netware / eDirectory / Groupwise (you missed that one) integration all the time. ===

I have never used Groupwise, although those who have and still do say it is an excellent product. My spouse uses their web-based client for work and it seems as good or better than any web version of a featureful mail system (for what that is worth).

As far as eDirectory, and to a lesser extent Netware goes, I would respectfully disagree. eDirectory was and still is a very very good directory product. After fighting with inActive Directory for 3 years I would tell any enterprise with a large directory that is considering migrating off eDirectory that they are nuts - stay with it until Novell gives up the last gasp.

sPh

*all* patches from Novell must be rejected

All patches from Novell must be rejected, as of now. As well as a statement of our standpoint wrt/ their actions, it can only be assumed that they will include a poison pill that makes Microsoft's case.

Oh, and for Saturday night relief - even the mighty can be seduced by MS charm: farewell, Napoleon! [ifilm.com]

Proof or STFU

Q4. With this agreement, will Novell include Microsoft patented code in its contributions to the open source community?

No. Novell will not change its development practices as a result of this agreement. It has always been our policy in all development, open source and proprietary, to stay away from code that infringes another's patents, and we will continue to develop software using these standard practices. If any of our code is found to infringe someone else's patents, we will try to find prior technology to invalidate the patents, rework the code to design around the infringement, or as a last resort remove the functionality.

Novell is committed to protecting, preserving and promoting freedom for free and open source software.

http://www.novell.com/linux/microsoft/faq_opensour ce.html [novell.com]

Re:*all* patches from Novell must be rejected

Given Novell's recent actions I'm thinking of going back to Red Hat
 
The macro that is included as a VBA demo in the article http://www.linuxtalk.co.uk/ooo_vba/hypocycloid-dem o.xls [linuxtalk.co.uk] works with the OpenOffice that is included with Fedora Core 6. I just tried it on this computer. So the "evil patch" is apparently already present in Red Hat's OpenOffice.

Re:*all* posts from "/." must be rejected

Dear sir,

I am intrigued by your non-sequiturs and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

Re:*all* posts from "/." must be rejected

If there's one thing that Microsoft does well, it's business. Their technical skills may be poorly managed, but they do killer business. How else do you think they kept their position if their software is so bad?

Re:*all* patches from Novell must be rejected

All patches from Novell must be rejected, as of now. As well as a statement of our standpoint wrt/ their actions, it can only be assumed that they will include a poison pill that makes Microsoft's case

If MS/Novell releases open source code is because they want to make it opensource. That means that Microsoft/Novell would *agree* on releasing it as opensource code.

If Microsoft wanted to sue Linux companies for patent usage, he could do it without injecting any "poison pill". The patent system is so broken (even MS admits it) that Linux is very probably infringing thousand of Microsoft patents.

Re:*all* patches from Novell must be rejected

The patent system is so broken (even MS admits it) that Linux is very probably infringing thousand of Microsoft patents.

Thousands of Microsoft patents, or thousands of valid Microsoft patents?

Why MS prefer patent FUD to patent WAR

If Microsoft wanted to sue Linux companies for patent usage, he could do it without injecting any "poison pill".

The point is that Microsoft doesn't want to sue at this time.

MS (like most of the big patent-pushers) does not want a Big Patent War before they get software patents passed in Europe - because the chances of getting software patents passed after a Big Patent War are slim-to-none.

European Patent Wars Heat up Again [technocrat.net]

Re:*all* patches from Novell must be rejected

Rejecting all OpenOffice patches by Novell effectively makes OpenOffice a Sun project. Last time I checked, 80% of new contributions came from Sun, 15%ish came from Novell, and the remaining 5% from all the other contributors (I think Red Hat came in at about 1.5%).

The VBA code in OO.o isn't entirely new either. There was a presentation at Linux '05 by some Novell guys on the VBA code that they had written for OO.o, and they claimed then it was very close to supporting all the functions people actually used.

Pwned Office,

anyone?

Ads

I found it vaguely amusing/disturbing that the ad I saw below the article was a Novell advertisement for "The Linux you've always wanted."

I'll pass on MS-controlled Linux, thanks...

Re:Ads

That was an open letter to Steve Ballmer.

Now we're screwed...

"Unfortunately, there's no easy way of identifying whether your distro supports the VBA interoperability apart from trying some VBA code."

Great, now I don't don't know if I'm vulnerable until it's too late. How do I disable it? Is now the time for a Linux anti-virus?

This story is idiotic

Besides the presumptuous headline, can we please try to distinguish between VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) and VBS (VBScript, I assume). Next, it appears that the Novell programmer is simply integrating a patch into the mainline product which the other distros have been applying during their packaging procedure for some time now. Is there any evidence that the VBA code was lifted from Microsoft (ie. they're setting people up for a copyright liability), or that some aspect of the VBA implementation is patented? No? I didn't think so.

Re:The word is "caution".

Why bother? Patent violations can exist in either. Even copyright violations can exist in either.

Of course, but how is it more likely to occur in this case than in any other open source project? Because Novell and MS are both involved (although only Novell directly)? I'm just not ready to take that as proof of poison.

Given the recent events, a higher level of caution would be advisable. Whether you agree or not.

A higher level of caution does not justify the baseless accusations present in the slashdot summary.

This module was first documented a year ago from what I can tell. See the history on this wiki page: http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/VBA [openoffice.org]

While it seems that Novell does maintain and develop the code now, I'm sure somebody familiar with the ooo-build repository can track down the original author(s).

I'll Wait.

Even though I dislike OpenOffice, I would suggest taking a wait-and-see approach, rather than just throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Cut the crap

Cut the crap, this is pure paranoia. Since when exactly does every little action by Novell employees deserve an article at Slashdot?

Require a Developer's Certificate of Origin

Presumably the best defense against claims of stolen code is to do what the Linux kernel folks are doing and require contributors to certify that they have the right to provide the code. Here are the current rules [lwn.net] for submitting code for the kernel, and here is the Developer's Certificate of Origin [osdl.org]. Significant contributions should also be well publicized so that anyone claiming infringment is forced to bring it up soon, before people come to rely on it. In this case, it would then be Novell's problem, not the community's, if Microsoft claims that the code is theirs.

Non-Article

Seriously people, this article is simply an install and usage guide, without much of a comment on the timeline etc. Since most distros ship this stuff already (e.g. Debian), and have been for a while, it would seem to me that this code was written from scratch, unless MS was handing off code to Novell before the agreement.

So therefore we have not a copyright issue at all, but a software patent issue. Let the patent discussion begin!

VBA? Feh....

Who cares about VBA in OOo when you can write OOo macros in Java, Python, Perl, Beanshell, and Javascript; and probably COBOL, Prolog, Lisp and Oberon as well...

Re:VBA? Feh....

If MS is contemplating a lawsuit (nothing in TFA indicates that), it's not because of one user coding up macros to make their lives easier. MS doesn't make (much) money from individual users, they make their money on corporations, some of which have an infrastructure investment in Excel macros (I know, I know, it's a horrible idea... but it's true). Those macros represent a huge moment of inertia for an organization to overcome before they can switch to another spreadsheet-- that's why it's "cheaper" to pay the massive licensing fees for MS Office than to change to free software. Changing platforms requires planning, controlled conversion, and meticulous testing of code that does something that in many cases no one even remembers precisely. Many users don't even know they're running macros, they just know to 1) load the spreadsheet, 2) press Ctrl-X or something, and 3) type in some new numbers. That creates a very difficult situation for someone planning to change platforms.

If OOo includes transparent VBA support, which can be demonstrated to be reliable, much of that inertia is overcome. MS doesn't care about an individual coder who wants to write spreadsheet macros, whether they're in VBA or Haskell or Snobol or RPG-- they've already lost those users. It is very much in their interest to keep those 50-seat (or 20,000-seat) user licenses coming in. And protecting that revenue stream will pay for a lot of lawyers.

Paranoid Slashdotters Strike! Film at 11!

First off, this code has been around since SLED shipped, if not before. Anyone who recalls Nat Friedman showing his Spirograph under OOocalc, well, this is what they're talking about.

Secondly, the Slashdot post seems to be confirming that the open source community has no way of validating code, and blindly accepts any code offered, assuming that there's no patent infringing code in it.

Good job, FSF. You've managed to do what Darl couldn't-- Completely shatter the open source community, and turn them against themselves. Bravo!

It is time

to banish Novell/Suse to the Linux Leper Colony.

Do it now while there's still time. Reject any code coming out of Novell.
They could have been poisoning the well for months and months before this deal was made public.

Microsoft is like the dragon.

Meddle not in the affairs of Microsoft, for you are crunchy and good with ketchup.

What happens?

All hell breaks loose for Novell, not OpenOffice. Presumably this is being done officially by them and so the blame would fall on Novell.

Not surprising

The author's reaction, that is. A lot of the above comments are saying the article is garbage and FUD and paranoia and etc., and maybe it is, but keep in mind that for a lot of people (and probably, a lot of projects), this kind of paranoia is going to be the first thing that crosses their mind with they see patches from Novell.

"How will this possibly screw us later?"

Get used to these responses, it's the new Novell.

So...

Now I can run pretty much any visual basic program (one of the most used languages in the Real World) under linux and hence switch many people to linux, but people prefers to title it as "novell may be doing some dirty things"

It's amazing how one of the most wonderful news I've heard in months can become FUD. Wake up: Patents already existed before the novell-MS pact. Microsoft has been able to sue companies for years. Getting VBA compatibility is a Good Thing. I only can thank Novell for this code.

A working solution for the problem

A working solution for the problem:
boycott Novell.

Make them understand that we do not accept the deal they've made,
regardless of whether it complies or not with GPLv2.

For upstream people:
reject their patches, regardless of the content.
Reject their feature requests.
Create new bug report state in trackers:
"WAITING for submitter to cancel cancerous deal with Microsoft".

For Novell management:
cancel the deal with Microsoft and tell us how much you are sorry.

For Novell engineers:
protest with management, and if you are left unheard eventually start
looking for alternatives.

For users:
if you are using Suse, move away. Try other distributions, there are
better ones btw.
Let Novell know that you do not want to use Suse anymore because of their deal.

Novell has put all other distributions in danger, let us not let them get away with it.

Anonymous Coward.

Please Microsoft, not THAT obious !!!

Man. come on. One needs to be subtle when pulling a trick.

2 days earlier novell gig, then 'linux owes us' 1 days ago, and now, this.

Its TOO obvious to fool anyone, even supreme court judges who are totally inaware of i.t. technology.

One thing they missed

Next thing you know, some brilliant chum over at M$ is going to claim that he invented the personal computer and every manufactureer owes him a royalty back-payments for patent infringement...

If you can drink wine, OOo this is fud

After reading all the scathing criticism lately about Mono and OOo being tainted by MS patents, it leaves me to wonder why WINE never had so many skeptics (though it did have a few). With the same line of reasoning, WINE should be at a greater risk.

Anyway not that I think any of these will face any problems,
1. Anti-Trust - It will be difficult for MS to pull of anything close to killing a small competitor out of business using patents.
2. Massive attrition at Microsoft - All things being equal, people tend to work for saner, lesser-evil companies. There is a certain pride in it, and I don't fancy a lot of people saying - Yeah I work for SCO! (I just dug this interesting article from Paul Graham about MS Patents [paulgraham.com])
3. MS has benefited from interoperability, and cross-technology support for years (Remember how Word had Word perfect emulation modes and shortcuts). I don't think patents cover those APIs too.
4. And piss off the large clients??
5. Total loss of good-will and PR disaster.
6. Can OIN (Open Innovation Network) patents be used against Microsoft?
7. Only a tiny fraction of Mono and OOo will ever fall under the patenttotine, and those will no doubt be re-written and re-implemented the same weekend.

Odd behavior from MSFT is the norm

If MSFT is going to try and litigate Linux they're going to try it with or without Novell. OpenOffice is compatible with a lot of file formats, including PDF export. If this was some attempt to poison an open source code base it's both clumsy and ineffective.

Unless Ballmer is completely stupid...and I wouldn't necessarily rule that out...then you have to believe the SCO litigation-by-proxy is seen internally as a huge, embarrassing mistake. If anything the whole fiaSCO actually highlighted how strong Linux is from an IP standpoint. SCO demonstrated that attacking Linux is bad business, and the reaction of the open source to community to an attack from MSFT could be even more extreme.

In my opinion Ballmer is bluffing. It would be stupid for MSFT to launch a direct attack against Linux. More likely this is their own clumsy way of trying to cut a deal, handicapped by naturally poor corporate execution and their ego driven CEO. You don't have to look any farther than Zune to see another glaring example of ego inspired faltering execution. Ballmer wanted to grab a piece of the iPod market because he doesn't like Jobs and had they been anyone but MSFT they might have succeeded. This same group isn't going to be any more effective or execute any better against Linux. So don't give them the satisfaction of going off the handle and every bit of drool that comes out of Ballmer's mouth.

No need to fear -- and what M$ is really up to

Certainly Novells actions are bogus and not designed for the good of the OS community at all but we don't need to fear their code any more then code from any place else; Microsoft wants Linux out of the picture and is a fearce competitor in any market it participates in; especially is core markets like PC and micro server operating systems.

Microsoft business is good sales are up but that is because the market is growing, others like Apple and Linux are takeing a part of the share M$ is used to haveing about 98% the writing on the wall says it won't stay that way unless something is done. Think about it we are rapidly approching the point where everyone has a PC or many and business have about as many as they know what to do with. Thats not to say people and orgainzations won't be always buying computer they will but it will be mostly a retire replace thing rather then a 1 + 1 = 2 like it has been the last 2 decades. Microsoft wants to keep 98% share. They know how to deal with traditional competitors. They can't deal with everyone and their brother producing different but mostly compatable platforms and more then the business modle IBM had around the PC could deal with the clone market. They sure can deal with RH and SUSE though. They are trying to play a patent game and ensure a finite number of traitional large corporate competition so they can do what they have always done; give away enough of their crack to get people hooked and at the same time starve the competition for revenue.

If M$ can kill the Linux market outside of Novell watch for windows to be suddenly free(as in beer) and come with free as in beer support. M$ can give windows away; after all they have other products to sell for you to run on top of it. Most people will then see windows as cheak as suse not understadning that with suse they'd be getting all the other stuff like web,sql,office apps, to and pick windows because its familiar. That is what M$ wants; they want to be able to kill linux they way they killed Netscape, Netware and countless others. They can't manage that right now because with all sorts of basically not for profit distros, debian and small commecial distros that are selected by very specific people for specific reasons like slackware. There is no clear revenue stream to attack. The mass of people useing and developing the software remains big enough that it continues to improve and inovate to the point where it becomes dangerous to them and they cant stop it.

Think about GNU/Linux is not quite but almost good enough to push replace windows in just about every desktop and server space it owns save a few without much pain. It does not need to be as good as windows just good enough and cheaper. Now even when those conditions are reached its still not going to be a big Linux title wave; in fact nothing at all will happen because people generally like the status quo. Ahh but what if a KILL APP was found something that you just can't do with windows but you could do easily with GNU/Linux. I don't know what that would be but at that point the war would be won over night. Windows would be a legacy platform like netware. That is what they fear.

In the mean time though M$ played their cards wrong and so did Novel. Novel was thinking this little patent game with M$ could effectivly make them a Monopoly or part of a Oligopoly in the Linux market which while not huge would be better from their point of view then the current situation. Novel is wrong of couse because if it worked out that the developers would dry up. Nobody wants to write free code for Novel. They want to write code that the whole community can use. They do it because its fun to have your name on something that lots of people depend on. They do it because its a fun challenge and it produces a useful product for them and friends. They do it because they benifited from and OS project and feel they should give something back. They do it to show off their skills and make themsevels more marketable. They do it for all sorts of ot

VBA code from MS?

From the original article, it seems the code predates the Novell-MS agreement. That would suggest it didn't come from MS. So why is this a problem?

Can the other distros (which the article claims had previously added the code) add MS compatibility code and have no problem, but when Novell adds the same code, they'll be accused of adding MS-supplied code?

Hopefully Novell will clarify their standing with MS such that any code released by Novell under the GPL is truly free GPL code.

Another area is the restriction that Suse development is limited to hobbyist development only. Commercial developers get no protections when using GPL code from SuSE. Sounds like SuSE may have shot themselves in the foot.

-l

basic programming needed?

In this age of OOA/OOD, why can't the code in question be encapsulated in a delegate or interface wrapped and be done with it?

I mean it's a good compromise to allow the code to operate for those users who need it (providing the features to help F/OSS), and when/if the posion pill is used, just replace it with something more FOSS--as if the need is great someone will find an alternative to get things working [with another piece of code]--that's the beauty of FOSS: there's always a way out. This is interface programming 101. Just as long as it's not tightly coupled to the main baseline/tree, there's nothing to worry about unless some lawyer wants to twist the facts (death to all lawyers as someone said?)

Transition from closed source to open source isn't as simple as a 'throw the old stuff away' switch over scenario. If it is, then we've been watching too many hollywood movies.

fork Ooo from here on

fork the further development of Ooo into a Novell (Microsoft) and a Debian fork. see how far the Microsoft influence goes, and see how far the FSF influence goes. THEN choose your pick.

exploit

brilliant title

Be careful - MS has patents on visual basic

They patented VB's "IsNot" operator.

http://www.regdeveloper.co.uk/2005/02/22/real_slam s_ms_patent/ [regdeveloper.co.uk]

Sure this may be in other distros but Microsoft probably already considers those distros as in violation of their patents, now that it's in Suse, when they start raising a stink about this patent, people can have the option to switch to Suse.

Microsoft is being extremely evil and Suse is just playing ball with them. I'm sure the developers at Suse justify this, who can blame them, without Microsoft's money they would be unemployed. But this patch should be looked at as an omen, nothing less. Be careful, this is part of Microsoft's strategy. At this point it's a game of chess for Ballmer to see how he can abuse OSS. At this phase in the game he's planting seeds.

What's this have to do with Linux?

It looks like Microsoft's first move in the 'Linux owes us' game is to move a Pawn. A few days ago, a Novell programmer, Noel Power, submitted patches to add VBA compatibility to Open Office's spreadsheet module.

How is this a move in the "Linux owes us" game? OO.o isn't particular to Linux. OO.o itself may be running afoul of MS (and others') patents, but this has nothing to do with Linux.

Why not ask Microsoft?

I'm sure someone will tell me why this won't work but can't OpenOffice just send a mail/letter/fax to Microsoft with a polite question about the code.
"We've recieved this piece of code and will include this into our software. If you see any problems with this, get back to us within 90 days or we will take your silence as an acceptance and a promise not to take any action against us, legal or otherwise". Or something like that.

 

.haeger

Ignorance and news title

I'm going to quote John Stewart at Crossfire on this one, aimed at Slashdot:
Please, please, please... STOP. You're hurting us.

We all know ignorance spurs fear. And granted, we should all somehow fear this Novell/MS deal. But a sensationalist headline like this, is not just F, it's not just U and it's not just D. It's a capital I, of Ignorance. PLEASE, if you're going to post something that is going to be read by thousands of people, at least try look into it before you slam a title like this.

If you actually looked around a bit, you'd see that what has been submitted is something that has been lying around for some months now, which is actually already present in other distros. I know this is Slashdot... but again, this IS Slashdot, and it is not acceptable.

Foot, meet Bullet

So, Microsoft figures it's going to win by pissing off the geeks? *That* ought to be an amusing debacle.

The public follows the geeks: it's part of the trickle-down effect. When the geeks decide they've put up with enough bullshit and that it's time to move to a real OS, Microsoft is going to go bye-bye.

And frankly, I could not care less. Fuck Microsoft: it's been incompetent and lazy and evil for about ten years longer than it should have.

Microsoft has jumped the shark.

Unmentioned reason why the story is moot

Yes, this is a review, but some of you guys may have not thought long enough about the smoke and mirrors and are still are in denial about Novell:

1. The MS/Novell deal really was just Novell paying for both companies to announce protection for Novell customers. The rest was just window dressing.

2. Balmer [computerworld.com.au]

You already know about the Balmer thing, but maybe you need to think it over again without deal-fluff: a taste of things to come and you can thank Novell for it.

This alleged exploit and its reactions of paranoia or debunkings are just noise. Sanitize now.

no big deal

If Microsoft wanted to slip Microsoft-proprietary code into an open source project, they'd have easier ways of doing it.

In the end, every open source project needs to know where its source code comes from (and almost all of them do), and it needs to get a legally clear license statement from its contributors. Should the code infringe copyrights or patents, the contributor may be liable, Novell in this case, in particular if they did so knowingly. And if it turns out that Microsoft hired Novell to put this code in, then the project is in the clear anyway.

Even if "bad code" gets into a project, it's not the end of the world. Should Microsoft assert a claim, the offending code would simply be removed and that would be the end of it.

All this hand-wringing over proprietary code is just supporting Microsoft's FUD strategy. Open source projects simply do not seem to be particularly vulnerable to patent claims in the real world; at worst, the infringing code is removed and the rest of the project goes on.

componentize

As I mentioned in another thread, I think all these patent worries are just attempts to spread FUD and have no real basis in reality.

However, in general, I also think that applications like OpenOffice should be more componentized. Some of the Firefox extensions, for example, are probably infringing on patents, but Firefox itself is in the clear. Most of OpenOffice functionality should be provided like Firefox extensions. That's particularly true for Microsoft-compatibility, not because there is much real risk, but because it cuts down on the FUD.

Unfortunately, creating a robust extension system is hard in C/C++. Even Firefox only works as well as it does because most extensions are not native code.

A touch of reality from an openoffice.org hacker

The RTFA is an accurate statement of fact. The summary on slashdot is not. Facts of interest:

• Noel, who not a MS schill and is actually a very nice guy, has been working on this for a long time and this code has been shipping with ooo-build for a long time. The ooo-build code is in gnome-cvs, and you can peruse the history youself if you like. The patches are in the patches/src680 directory. You probably are interested in the ones with the vba- prefix.
• ooo-build is a build wrapper that also applies patches. You can select which patches you want and which patches you don't. Most Linux distros use ooo-build to build their packages. Thus these patches go through evaluation by most distros for their "freeness" (DFSG and others). All patches in ooo-build must have a JCA (Joint Copyright Assignment) signed, which amongst other things requires that the contributor actually own the copyright of the code in question.
• This code is all LGPL. For those that are not familiar with the LGPL, here is a snippet

  For example, if a patent license would not permit royalty-free redistribution of the Library by all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through you, then the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to refrain entirely from distribution of the Library.

  As the joint copyright holder (see above), this means Novell.
• For the last time, Openoffice.org is not mostly Java. It's almost entirely C++.
• Openoffice.org is a very challenging project and is in need of good hackers. For all the bashers on slashdot who say that it is too bloated or too old, I invite you to help. Few free software projects enable you to have your code literely run by millions of people all over the world. If you want to help, jump on #openoffice.org or #go-oo or one of the mailing lists and dive in.

I haven't changed yet

I am still running SUSE 10.1, there are some things I need to do before I can think about the change. However, I will be making it sooner than I anticipated.

While running an update this morning I noticed that the "Mono implementation of ASP.NET" was being updated. Why the fsck should I need this on a desktop machine?

Stop the Conspiracy Theories

OK, just because a Novell programmer added VBA support doesn't automatically mean MS is going to start suing people over it. If that does happen remember that MS has to actually prove that it was stolen. That's a pretty tall order considering that it probably wasn't. Why does Slashdot have to take something good and spin it into a bad thing?

This is not *automatically* bad

VBA is a language created by Microsoft. Open Office now has some VBA capability. Now think of the Mono project, it is there as an implementation of Microsoft's .Net.

The patches which add VBA capability did not go in in the last week or so, they predate the Novell / Microsoft agreement. Since Novell did not have access to Microsoft sources when this code was written, where is the difference? It is just a programming language is being implemented here.

I also imagine that if this turned out not to be the case, whoever submitted the patches would have a problem - especially if they acted in bad faith. Open Office is mostly under the LGPL, so what happens to people who take proprietary code which does not belong to them and place it under the LPGL? In particular, what would happen if the company they worked for then was paid several hundred million dollars by the patent owners?

Looking at this from another direction, I thought Microsoft were dropping VBA at some point. Are we going to have a situation where VBA applications will only work under Open Office and not under Excel?

Speaking personally, VBA is a security risk. The only thing I want to have to do with it on my system is to disable it in the setup options. I use SuSE 10.1 but did road-test OpenSuSE 10.0, I am thinking of moving back again for 10.2 (my laptop is brand new so I will need it) but this issue is not a show-stopper.

How's this for a scenario?

MS dominates the PC OS market and will do so for years to come, mainly because Windows is installed on almost every new machine before it leaves the factory. So Linux isn't a problem because it will always cost more effort to download/install. OpenOffice on the other hand is way cheaper than the MS equivilent and a major threat to an important MS revenue stream. Solution: cosy up to companies that support Linux and enlist their aid in undermining OOo.

Slashdot - illinformed news, FUD that matters?

How this is exactly news? How this is matter?

No, Microsoft/Novell deal isn't nothing, it matters, but please let's take that into acount that there are lot of companies who contribute GPL code, but have different NDA with different companies, patent licenses (IBM, for example), etc. Just because it BIG BAD Microsoft, it should be something deadly, right? World wasn't exactly black/white before this deal either, just let's check out Samba and Wine.

Ximian/Novell worked on lot of integration stuff of Microsoft document formats before. For OpenOffice.org to be accepted in majority of users, it SHOULD support Microsoft Office formats better than it is now, period. Like it or not, nothing else will help it. Yeah, OpenDocument is nice, but people simply don't care. And calling them idiots won't get you anywhere either.

So suddenly, all this stuff is "viral" now? How it is very different than before? AFAIK, just deal won't help Microsoft nor in court, nor with DOJ, if there will be change in direction of current things.

This Novell action was important, and no one is denying to have strong feelings about it, but please, at least do not make a hyperbole out of it.

Re:Stolen posts.

"...nine distros in adition to SUSE already support the VBS extensions in their versions of Open Office."

Do people really think before posting? Any OO distributed by anyone other than Novell may be violating IP. Think damn it, think.

Re:Stolen posts.

Wrong. If Novell can distribute it, then everyone else can. If everyone else can't, then neither can Novell, though for different reasons. (If everyone else can't distribute it because of patent issues, then Novell can't distribute it because the GPL doesn't grant distribution rights if you can't or don't license the patents too.) This means that if MS sues another distro over patent issues, and the offending code is traced to Novell, then everyone ELSE who has code in the kernel can then sue Novell for brach of contract/copyright violation, especially if they continue to distribute the code themselves. (Depending on the outcome of the case mentioned a couple days ago.)

Re:Stolen posts.

Erm, the Novell/MS agreement is garbage. It doesn't protect people who redistribute code they receive from Microsoft, and only applies to commmercial free software producers (i.e. Sun) insofar as that code ends up in OpenSuSE. If the same "infringing" code ends up in RedHat then Redhat (and the people who supplied RedHat with the code)can be sued.

Novell can implement all sorts of Microsoft-patented ideas, hand it to and if that project is distributed by a commercial distro, then the distro can be sued by Microsoft for patent violations. Novell is in the clear due to the agreement, people who redistribute their code aren't.

Novell might get clobbered by section 7 of the GPL (or, in this case, the equivalent LGPL section), but only if it tries distributing the same code itself.

I don't know if this scenario is likely - but Microsoft are certainly hyping it up as a possibility. Did you catch Monkeyboy's proclamation the other day about how Linux infringed its patents, and Linux users owe them money?

Re:Stolen posts.

Thank you ... everyone above the line had their knee jerking spasmodically. I have mod points, but neither "flamebait" nor "troll" is lethal enough.