Open Source Weblog

Stephen’s post is really worth ready in its entirety, but here’s a couple of key snippets:

On software being free:

“Anyone that ever paid for a Red Hat Advanced Server installation or a Novell SuSE desktop or MySQL Network knows that the solution isn't free, even if they didn't pay a software license fee.
Microsoft continues to think that free and open source software sits at one end of a spectrum that has commercial software at the other end. They apparently still don't realize these two ideas are orthogonal.”

On respect for IP:

“First, F/OSS licensing is completely dependent on strong IP (copyright) law. Second, key projects generally have contributors license or assign the rights of their contributions to the project owner. This is no different than Microsoft licensing third party code for inclusion in Windows or Office.”

On whether customers should care about patents:

“If Microsoft really wants to prove once and for all that customers should really care about paying for patents separate from their solutions, then Microsoft should go sue a customer over Linux systems that allegedly infringe their patents. It would need to be a customer that clearly has a large installed base of roll-your-own-Linux systems. They should go sue Google. Or Bank of America. Then we can all see how important this really is.”

This last part is the really big deal as far as I’m concerned. As I’ve been following this story I’ve had the opportunity to put the same question to Microsoft and Novell representatives:

“You weren’t ever seriously going to sue Novell/Microsoft’s customers for patent infringement though were you?”

The answers were the same: “Of course not,” followed by some vague discussion about customers wanting peace of mind.

Peace of mind about what? It’s not even as if the companies drew up a list of patents that they think the other’s customers might be infringing, according to Microsoft’s UK server director, Bruce Lynn.

“We did not do a drains-up inventory,” he told me recently, adding that the deal “was almost like an insurance policy. There could be stuff that Microsoft is inadvertently using in Linux and Linux is inadvertently using in Windows.”

So if you’re a Novell customer, the deal gives you peace of mind that Microsoft won’t sue you, which it wasn’t going to do anyway, for code that may or may not be in Linux, that may or may not infringe Microsoft patents.

And it works both ways of course. If you’re a Microsoft customer, the deal gives you peace of mind that Novell won’t sue you, which it wasn’t going to do anyway, for code that may or may not be in Windows, that may or may not infringe Novell patents.

And even then, you might not be covered anyway. Over at LinuxWorld, Don Marti reminds us that its important to read the fine print on any offer – that is if you can find it.

“From Novell's point of view, the deal is supposed to be about giving customers some peace of mind over being sued for patent infringement. But the document that is supposed to explain this to customers is missing some information, and the documents that are actually supposed to contain the missing information are secret,” he writes.

“Put it all together, and you get, ‘We promise not to sue you for running some but not necessarily all of the software you get from Novell, unless we stop promising not to sue you, and we won't tell you which software you get from Novell we might sue you for now, or under what circumstances we'll stop promising not to sue you for the rest’,” he adds.

Does that make you feel better?

Seriously, if there are any Novell or Microsoft customers out there that feel this deal gives them peace of mind, I’d love to hear their reasons. Maybe there’s something I’m missing here that neither Microsoft or Novell can explain but a user perspective can.