Matthew Aslett has been talking with Bradley Kuhn at the Software Freedom Law Center, and has some important things to say:
Kuhn’s letter to the FOSS development community continues:"A careful examination of Microsoft's Patent Pledge for Non-Compensated Developers reveals that it has little value. The patent covenant only applies to software that you develop at home and keep for yourself; the promises don't extend to others when you distribute. You cannot pass the rights to your downstream recipients, even to the maintainers of larger projects on which your contribution is built."All the glitters is not gold, in other words.We already pointed out that while the romantic image is of Linux being created by many individual developers working for the common good, the vast majority of Linux development is done by developers paid or sponsored by Linux-friendly vendors.
Not only is the offer of limited scope, it is also not to be relied upon, according to Kuhn. “Microsoft has explicitly reserved the right to change its terms at any time in the future. A developer relying on the pledge could wake up any day to find it revoked,” he writes.
I'm glad that Novell is now on the record stating that it won't use patent FUD to sell SLES. Microsoft, however, is less affirmative:
“If people want to have patent peace and interoperability, they’ll look at Novell’s SUSE Linux,” he said. “If they make other choices, they have all of the compliance and intellectual property issues associated with that.”I think it's going to be very hard for Novell to keep from using the patent-safety stick with its customers. If its fortunes start to turn (and there are signs that this is the case), then it will be easy to avoid doing so. But if it's struggling...all bets are off.These sort of comments might be good for Microsoft and are bad for open source, but where do they leave Novell? Is it a willing or unwilling participant in the FUD-spreading?
Posted by Matt Asay on November 10, 2006 07:54 AM
