same old same old
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| Rascalson Oct 23, 2007 4:46 AM EDT |
How is this "deal" any different from the US? Someone will still have to pony up the money to take MS to yet another court to once again force them to accept the terms of their conviction. This is old hat to MS. The chances of the documentation being any more enlightening than what the Samba project already knows is slim to none. The chance of MS complying completely and in an even remotely close to timely manner( read as: within 5-10 years) on future "enhancements" to "Their" protocols is even slimmer. I can just imagine the cards Balmer played in the "closed" discussions with Mrs. Kroes. Speaking of which, I can understand some plea bargaining in certain instances but we are talking about an orginization convicted of the business equivalent to capital murder. Why were those "discussions" with Mrs. Kroes not conducted in open court? |
| dinotrac Oct 23, 2007 7:30 AM EDT |
>How is this "deal" any different from the US? Huh? The US agreement did not require Microsoft to divulge technical information. |
| Rascalson Oct 23, 2007 5:44 PM EDT |
Wow Dino, several signs of aging in less than two sentences. Deafness and selective myopic reading comprehension coupled with a tendency to make blunt blanket statements that have not even a shred to back them up. |
| tracyanne Oct 23, 2007 6:38 PM EDT |
Quoting:The US agreement did not require Microsoft to divulge technical information. In what way is that statement incorrect? |
| jdixon Oct 23, 2007 6:40 PM EDT |
> ...coupled with a tendency to make blunt blanket statements that have not even a shred to back them up. Would you care to detail where in the US agreement Microsoft was required to share technical information with their competitors? I don't remember any such stipulation, and a quick search of the appropriate web documents didn't turn up anything. Added: They were required to document some API's, but that's all I could find. I think the EU agreement goes quite a bit farther than that. |
| dinotrac Oct 24, 2007 6:07 AM EDT |
>Added: They were required to document some API's, but that's all I could find. I think the EU agreement goes quite a bit farther than that. It's hard to say just how far it goes without the details, but, yes, it sure does seem to. One other thing struck me as interesting -- Microsoft's agreement to reduce their licensing fees by an order of magnitude -- including patents. I wonder. Could that be recognition by Microsoft that, if they were to push the issue, their patents could be become worthless? With recent court decisions in the US, an awful lot of patents that are on our books won't stand up to scrutiny. |
| Sander_Marechal Oct 24, 2007 12:58 PM EDT |
Quoting:I wonder. Could that be recognition by Microsoft that, if they were to push the issue, their patents could be become worthless? I doubt it. I think it's just a matter of lowering the amount of money involved enough that open source projects have some vague hope of raising enough money to afford it. The EU pushed a great deal on making it easier for open source software to interoperate with Microsoft technologies (see the press releases), but I have the distinct feeling that the EU didn't quite understand the intricacies that FOSS has to deal with. From a layman's point of view the deal would overall seem quite good for FOSS while in reality it isn't all that great. Did the EU have someone advise them of the FOSS implicactions of the deal? Whoever it was failed to convey the most important point: Any construction that does not involve royalty-free sublicensing is essentially useless to FOSS. |
| dinotrac Oct 24, 2007 1:16 PM EDT |
>Any construction that does not involve royalty-free sublicensing is essentially useless to FOSS. Kind of yes, kind of no. A problem for GPLv3 projects. Not a problem, I believe, for BSD and some others. Reasonable fees might bring the cost of filling in the consumer-oriented goodie bag: codecs, what-have-you. At any rate, there is more than FOSS on the competitive landscape, and anything that helps competition is good for consumers. |
| Sander_Marechal Oct 24, 2007 2:18 PM EDT |
Quoting:Not a problem, I believe, for BSD and some others. Care to explain? I don't see how a BSD-licensed project would be able to redistribute code if it cannot do so without cost and without sublicensing. |
| dinotrac Oct 24, 2007 2:38 PM EDT |
> I don't see how a BSD-licensed project would be able to redistribute code if it cannot do so without cost and without sublicensing. Distributing source code would be a problem, but the BSD license allows binary-only distribution. With a little design work, one potentially can isolate the patented or otherwise licensed bits in a module/library/class so that closed code is kept to a minimum |
| Sander_Marechal Oct 24, 2007 3:30 PM EDT |
Quoting:the BSD license allows binary-only distribution Yes, but then it's no longer FOSS, is it :-) So my point still stands: For FOSS code to be able to use the licensed technology, the license needs to be royalty-free and sublicensable. Anything else is useless (from a FOSS point of view). |
| dinotrac Oct 24, 2007 4:21 PM EDT |
>So my point still stands: No, your point doesn't stand. FOSS is perfectly free to use patented technology under license -- with restrictions. GPLV3 code is not free to use it. For that matter, there is no reason why the code can not be distributed in the case of patent licenses. Recipients could not use the patented stuff with out securing their own licenses, but that's a long way from FOSS (which encompasses a whole lot more than GPL software) can't use (which encompasses more than writing code) technology made available through a patent license. |
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