Why the Novell / MS Deal Is Very Bad 367
jamienk writes "PJ from Groklaw has taken the time to really explain the big picture of the Novell/MS deal and how it all fits into the SCO case and the strategy some have employed to attack Free Software. If you thought PJ was becoming too shrill before, or if you haven't understood what the big deal is with Novell's agreement, it's really worth a read." From the article: "This is Groklaw's 2,838th article. We now have 10,545 members, who have worked very hard to disprove SCO's scurrilous claims, and we did. We succeeded, beyond my hopes when we started. But here's the sad part. As victory is in sight, Novell signs a patent agreement with Microsoft..."
Re:WTF: Novell moves to waive SCO's case? (Score:5, Informative)
Novell also retained the unusual right to require SCO to follow its directions to amend, supplement, modify or waive these licenses and, if SCO does not comply, Novell can do so on SCO's behalf.
Re:Okay I just don't get it (Score:5, Informative)
MS is probably never going to come after you for license money. But they might go after big companies that support linux -- IBM, RedHat, etc. And they might scare large enterprise customers away from linux.
If these things happen, your free ubuntu starts to wither and die. All of a sudden there aren't the hardware drivers you need, the fancy new desktop software, etc.
Linux is an ecosystem, and all of the parts need to be healthy in order for it to continue. While this situation doesn't threaten you personally, it does effect other vital members of our ecosystem, and if they go down, we're all going to be a lot worse off over the long run,
Re:Okay I just don't get it (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Okay I just don't get it (Score:3, Informative)
The deal (Score:3, Informative)
Bottom line I work for pointy haired bosses but they will not under any circumstances question what distro I run in the enterprise...novell put that in your pipe and smoke it. EV1 learned a valuable lesson and Novell should have taken note of what happens when you try to bend the rules.
Re:Just wondering (possibly O/T) ... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:blah blah (Score:5, Informative)
So basically anyone who purchases Novell's Open Platform Solutions is also paying a Microsoft tax, as Novell's new partner Steve Balmer noted, "because open-source Linux does not come from a company -- Linux comes from the community -- the fact that that product uses our patented intellectual property is a problem for our shareholders" and Steve expects to be paid.
No mitigation of infringement, no proof of infringement, no analysis of the patents to even verify if Microsoft actual has valid IP. Nope, but Novell does us all a favor and bypasses all that boring routine. Thanks but no thanks.
That is easy to imagine, linux would be where OS/2 is. That's how Microsoft cooperates.
I look at where linux is today and I don't think it needs anything from Microsoft.
Re:All of a sudden there aren't the hardware drive (Score:5, Informative)
The other key highlight of this talk was:
Closed source Linux kernel modules are illegal.
Closed source Linux kernel modules are unworkable.
Closed source Linux kernel modules are unethical.
So who the hell is this guy? He's Greg Kroah-Hartman. Who the hell is that? He's a kernel developer. His name appears 149 times in my kernel sources (Ubuntu patched, 2.6.15). And, perhaps more tellingly it appears at the top of the files:
drivers/pci/pci-sysfs.c and
drivers/pci/search.c
both of which contain many functions which are called from functions in this file:
NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-8776-pkg1/usr/src/nv/os-inte
What's that? It's wrapper for the closed source NVIDIA kernel module. What license is that under? The NVIDIA Software License [nvidia.com]. It's basically a proprietary EULA with a redistribution (without modification) exception for distros. It sure aint the GPL, or "as free" as the GPL (which is techically what the GPL requires for derived works).
So Greg.. why don't you sue them? You've made your position clear, fight them. If you havn't got the money, contact the FSF, assign your copyright to them, get them to fight. Given the choice between opening their source code or not being able to distribute their software at all, NVIDIA will choose to open their source code. How can I be so sure? Cause people buy their chipsets to integrate into things like set top boxes and other devices that run Linux. They need that embedded market, that's why they released the drivers in the first place. The problem is that no-one is making them choose.
Re:WTF: Novell moves to waive SCO's case? (Score:5, Informative)
Patenting code is like patenting music. (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Not because they are pussies (Score:3, Informative)
And as long as they aren't actually distributing code, they can get away with it.
You misinterpreted the word they in that sentence, and I confess I should have written that more clearly and I inadvertently encouraged your confusion. The they above is Nvidia and co, not Ubuntu.
Look, here's how I see it, and I suspect how the kernel devs may well see it. Nvidia has found a loophole to exploit. Nvidia doesn't distribute the kernel. They do distribute a shim, which is clearly a derived work of the kernel, but they obey their obligations on the shim. The binary blob, in and of itself, is NOT clearly a derived work of the kernel, it's Nvidia's own property.
Now this doesn't solve the problem, but it shifts the act of infringement. Nvidia is not directly infringing. Anyone that ships the three parts, the kernel, the shim, and the blob, together in a useful form, IS infringing - but Nvidia has enough wiggle room to argue in court.
A distro shipping their shim+blob driver, on the other hand, is technically infringing. But they aren't doing it with malice - they're just trying to do the right thing for their customers, who really don't want to deal with all this. It's Nvidias fault, not theirs. Hence it makes sense to deal with the distros gently - even though they are the ones that are technically in violation, they aren't the ones from whom the intent to violate is coming. And free software has always been fairly gentle with compliance issues, seeking compliance rather than to punish. How much more gentle then, when dealing with a distro maker, a member of the community, that genuinely believes (though in error) that they are doing the right thing?
Is that more clear?
Re:When all you have... (Score:4, Informative)
1) SCO is suing IBM because SCO believes SCO copyrighted code is in the Linux kernel.
2) Microsoft and Novell signed an indemnity agreement regarding patents.
3) There is no relation between the two. SCO isn't suing IBM over Microsoft patents, and Microsoft isn't indemnifying Novell's customers regarding SCO's copyrights. These are two seperate issues, and trying to conflate them is evidence only that your tinfoil hat is on too tight.
Re:Not because they are pussies (Score:2, Informative)
It's clear that a binary compiled against Linux kernel headers is a derivative work of those headers, but it's not clear that the source code itself is a derivative work. Otherwise, I completely agree. Great post.
Re:All of a sudden there aren't the hardware drive (Score:3, Informative)
Re:WTF: Novell moves to waive SCO's case? (Score:5, Informative)
SCO are trying to assert legal ownership of key IP in the Linux system, and in Linux as a whole. They're sued IBM as a way of establishing this right, and for their pains they are currently being slowly flayed by IBM in the courts.
Novell bought SUSE, one of the big commercial distros. If SCO succeed in their suit, Novell has to buy a licence from SCO or stop distributing Linux. Additionally, Novell reckon that if there is any proprietary IP in Linux, they've got a better claim to it than SCO, and they can prove it. So in the case of SCO, Novell are on our side.
At the same time, Novell have entered into a deal with Microsoft. Most of it seems to be smoke and mirrors, but what it appears to boil down to is that in return for Novell paying a royalty to MS, MS will help their competitive position with respect to the other distros by threatening to sue rival distributors, developers... almost anybody really. Even SUSE users aren't safe, since MS can cancel the agreement with anyone, any time and for any reason. So it's pretty much a promise not to sue unless they really feel like it. Reassuring, huh? Novell also agreed not to use their patent arsenal to defend Linux against MS, and in return, they get a big pot of cash.
In this case, it's rather harder to approve of Novell's actions. The deal may not have any legal implications for linux users anywhere, but the patent agreement is going back on a promise they made earlier to the Linux community. On top of that, it's just not a friendly act towards the rest of the community. Other objections have been raised, such attempting to circumvent the PLL, but I can't see how that works, and neither can Mogen Eblen, so I think the whole thing's a combination marketing-and-barratry-deal.
There are some reservations still as to what else may have been agreed upon. A lot of people are concerned that Novell may try and inject code that clearly violate MS patents into one or more open source packages. Mono and the new OpenOffice fork are particularly worrying in that regard.
So to sum up:
Bad Guys:Microsoft, SCO.
Self-Serving Opportunists:Novell
Good Guys:Linux devs, distributors other than Novell and SCO, users
Caught In The Crossfire:SUSE devs
Hope that helps. Have a nice day.
Re:Not because they are pussies (Score:3, Informative)
The binary blob, as you call it, specifically, nv-kernel.o or "the resource manager" as the wrapper calls it, is a derivative work of the wrapper, and is therefore also required to be under the GPL, and so on. This is classic "how do I make proprietary modifications to a GPL program?" nonsense. Anyone who distributes this stuff is guilty of contributory copyright infringement.
Correct -- and therefore NVidia does not distribute nv-kernel.o. They cause it to be compiled on the user's machine. Few users will distribute that file further, but if they do, they would be violating the GPL.
NVidia distributes source code (it need not be under the GPL) to the shim, and a binary module that only depends on the shim. The binary module is useless by itself and, in particular, independent of the kernel (in principle they could write a different shim for another OS, like FreeBSD, and the same binary module -- perhaps that's what they actually do, I don't know). They're free to distribute that. The licence of the source of the shim doesn't matter to them.
If Ubuntu (or someone else) does the same thing, only through a nicer package manager, they should be in the clear too.
Re:All of a sudden there aren't the hardware drive (Score:3, Informative)
NVIDIA just wants to protect its right to conceal its chip architecture from its competitors. After all, NVIDIA DOES provide drivers for Linux, Solaris and FreeBSD. And if they were to pull them, users could still migrate to different hardware.
(And besides, which 3D accelerated graphics adapter would you suggest that has a GPL-ed driver?)
A broader base of drivers that can (and will) be shipped with GNU/Linux distributions only helps to enlarge the user base.
Nobody wants to use Windows. Me neither. But I definitely wouldn't run Linux if I couldn't make use of my hardware. So, NVIDIA's driver is the ONLY reason I'm using Linux. I have an NVIDIA card. I have no interest in using Linux with the non-3D open-source NVIDIA driver that comes with X.org (that'd be like using standard VGA in the year 2006). And I'm sure many people feel this way about the issue.
Re:Get over it, there is no fucking war. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:All of a sudden there aren't the hardware drive (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Why I don't read Groklaw... (Score:3, Informative)