Open Sources | Rodrigues & Urlocker | InfoWorld | Novell/Microsoft pact violates...the future? | November 17, 2006 09:41 AM

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Novell/Microsoft pact violates...the future?

November 17, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Novell/Microsoft pact violates...the future?

Roger Parloff of Fortune has been talking with Eben Moglen, and has this:

The potentially historic Microsoft-Novell pact announced last week, whereby Microsoft would grant patent peace to users of Novell's Suse Linux software in exchange for royalty payments paid by Novell to Microsoft, will be dead by mid-March, promises Eben Moglen, the general counsel of the Free Software Foundation (FSF). The FSF controls the license that governs the distribution of Linux and many other key forms of free and open-source software.

The license, known as the GNU General Public License (GPL), had already been in the process of revision. In an interview with me this morning, Moglen promised that the foundation will now make "further changes" to the GPL that will make crystal clear that the Novell-Microsoft pact, or any similar pact, will violate it.

"It will surely violate GPL version 3," said Moglen, referring to the forthcoming version. Version 3 had been expected to be in place no later than March 15, 2007, though Moglen said he was uncertain whether the new circumstances would affect that schedule. "GPL version 3 will be adjusted so the effect of the current deal is that Microsoft will by giving away access to the very patents Microsoft is trying to assert."

While Eben wasn't offering any new views on whether the pact violates GPLv2, he's working to make sure it will violate v3. That said, any changes made to v3 will have no retroactive impact on Linux, unless the copyright owners opt to change their licenses from v2 to v3. I'm not sure that will be happening en masse....

Stay tuned.

Posted by Matt Asay on November 17, 2006 09:41 AM

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Mid-march? I think not, Microsoft doesn't invest over 400m into a project that will be void by next year. Microsoft is in for the long haul, open source is here to stay, and it's time for them to take action. Not in a retaliation, but as a support for such code and should be looked upon with open arms.

Posted by: Matt V at November 17, 2006 10:38 AM

Much software that is currently released under GPLv2 will automatically fall under either the GPLv2 or GPLv3 because of the licenese wording:

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or 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.

I believe that the recipient, not the grantor, of the license can choose. The grantor, by using this wording, is allowing the recipient to choose v2 or any later version of the GPL.

It should be noted that this is the default text that many GPL users use. I believe the linux kernel, specifically, is not licensed with this clause, so it can only fall under GPLv2, unless the kernel developers choose to license it differently.

Posted by: Andy at November 17, 2006 02:18 PM

If a customer chooses GPLv3 and it happens that the open source software they are using does infringe on someone else's patents, doesn't that just mean that if Microsoft happens to be one of the patent holders they can simply start suing?

Posted by: AdamS at November 19, 2006 08:46 PM

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