| Perens blasts Microsoft/Novell "protection racket" |
Mar. 19, 2007
Salt Lake City -- In a small conference room across the street from the location of Novell's BrainShare conference, free-software advocate Bruce Perens attacked Novell's patent deal with Microsoft and said that Novell was enabling Microsoft to run "a protection racket" with the threat of its patents.
Perens, a vocal opponent of the Microsoft/Novell patent deal, stated that while the arrangement was legal under the GPLv2, Novell's deal was made in "bad faith with the open-source community and [was] not moral."
More than that, though, Perens said, if the Novell-Microsoft patent deal is allowed to stand. It would take only as few as "two or three intellectual property law-suits" of open-source developers or small business at a cost of at least $5 million dollars a pop, to destroy open-source development. So, from where he sits, Novell is running a "protection racket" with "Big Mikey" as the enforcer.
The activist opened his press conference by reading a note from the president and founder of the Free Software Foundation, Richard Stallman. In the statement, Stallman wrote:
The GPL defends the freedom of all users by blocking the known methods of making free software proprietary.
Novell and Microsoft have tried a new method: using Microsoft's patents to give an advantage to Novell customers only. If they get away with scaring users into paying Novell, they will deny users the most basic freedom, freedom zero: the freedom to run the program.
Microsoft have been threatening free software with software patents for many years, but without a partner in our community, the only thing it could do was threaten to sue users and distributors. This had enough drawbacks that Microsoft has not yet tried it. Attacking in combination with a collaborator in our community was much more attractive.
If nothing resists such deals, they will spread, and make a mockery of the freedom of free software. So we have decided to update the GNU General Public License not to allow such deals, for the future software releases covered by GPL version 3.
Stallman made essentially the same statement last November. Crafting the language that would prevent another company from making such a deal has proven to be quite difficult.
Months after the final version of the GPLv3 was due to appear, Peter Brown, the FSF's executive director admitted in mid-March that, "We continue to work on the details of the GPLv3 as it relates to the situation presented by the Novell and Microsoft deal. We are researching issues related to potential unintended consequences of the language we plan to adopt. As soon as we are satisfied with the results of our research we plan to bring forward the next draft."
Perens said that he believed that this next draft would be released at The Free Software Foundation's annual associate member and activist meeting at MIT in Cambridge, Mass. on March 24. When pressed, however, he admitted that he is no longer involved in working on "open-source internal matters" such as the GPL, and that he doesn't know if the next draft will appear then.
Novell, however, according to Perens, could solve the problem for itself by keeping its technical agreement with Microsoft while repudiating its patent agreement.
He doesn't think Novell will do this, though, because Novell's Linux business hasn't taken off, and won't anytime soon. Therefore, he's "forced to think that this is the first part of an exit strategy." Perens then rhetorically asked, "Will Novell become a Microsoft proxy? Will they be bought out by Microsoft?"
In particular, Perens continued, Novell will be forced to do this because as vital code for Linux goes under the GPLv3, such as the FSF's C libraries and programs, Novell's Linux will become forked and Novell will not be able to afford to maintain it.
To Perens, Novell was once a supporter of open source but has now become a "parasite."
When asked about Perens' comments, Jeff Jaffe, Novell's executive VP and CTO, said "When someone has gotten to the point of name calling they don't have any content."
"The serious question that people ask about this deal," Jaffe continued, "is: 'will this agreement foster of hurt open source?' We believe that this agreement will foster the growth of Linux and open source big time. There are numerous examples of this. We're creating new open source assets in management and interoperability."
Jaffe concluded, "The attention we're putting on interoperability with Windows and Linux is helping Linux. Our customers moving to Linux [story] is great evidence of this support." In the meantime, "People are rushing to judgment" on our relationship with Microsoft. "Time will tell that this partnership will work well for our Linux, our customers, and all of Linux and open source."
-- Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
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