CIFS: curious information funneled sometimes

Шум боя, удары меча.
Мальчик (указывает на небо). Мама, мама! Он перевернулся вверх ногами. Кто-то бьет его так, что искры летят!
Все. Тссс!
Гремят трубы. Выходят Генрих и бургомистр.
Бургомистр. Слушайте приказ. Во избежание эпидемии глазных болезней, и только поэтому, на небо смотреть воспрещается. Что происходит на небе, вы узнаете из коммюнике, которое по мере надобности будет выпускать личный секретарь господина дракона.
1-й горожанин. Вот это правильно.
2-й горожанин. Давно пора.
Мальчик. Мама, а почему вредно смотреть, как его бьют?
Все. Тссс!

I have decided to leave Novell.

This has been a very difficult decision, but one I feel I have no choice but to make.

As many of you will guess, this is due to the Microsoft/Novell patent agreement, which I believe is a mistake and will be damaging to Novell's success in the future. But my main issue with this deal is I believe that even if it does not violate the letter of the licence it violates the intent of the GPL licence the Samba code is released under, which is to treat all recipients of the code equally.

In case anyone might think I gave up too easily, here is a copy of a letter I recently sent to management on this matter.

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I know you don't want to hear this, I know *nobody* wants to hear this but I'll not be able to live with this if I don't say it publicly at least once.

Whilst the Microsoft patent agreement is in place there is *nothing* we can do to fix community relations. And I really mean nothing.

We can pledge patents all we wish, we can talk to the press and "community leaders", we can do all the right things w.r.t. all our other interactions, but we will still be known as GPL violators and that's the end of it.

For people who will point out to me we don't "technically" violate the GPLv2 here's an argument I recently made on the mailing lists.

"Do you think that if we'd have found what we legally considered a clever way around the Microsoft EULA so we didn't have to pay for Microsoft licenses and had decided to ship, oh let's say, "Exchange Server" under this "legal hack" that Microsoft would be silent about it - or we should act aggr[i]eved when they change the EULA to stop us doing this?"

The Microsoft patent agreement has put us outside the community, and there is no positive aspect to that fact, and no way to make it so. Until the patent provision is revoked, we are pariahs.

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Unfortunately the time I am willing to wait for this agreement to be changed to remedy the GPL violation has passed, and so I must say goodbye.

SuSE Linux is technically one of the most advanced Linux distributions, and I am proud to have been a small part of the Team that helped create it. Working at Novell has been a great deal of fun for me, and I will miss many of the great people I have worked with here.

Jeremy Allison.

“Unfortunately, embedded in Microsoft's recent endorsement of Linux are claims regarding customers’ needing protection from patent attack. Those claims are baseless. In fact, there have been no patent suits against Linux. While patent disputes are not unheard of between and among software developers and distributors, they are almost always resolved between these commercial entities – not by dragging in end-user customers. Isn’t the real issue the fact that Microsoft is making such a threat against its own customers?

"We aren't sure what Microsoft's intentions here are, but IBM has long asserted that we don't see the need for this coverage," Handy said. "To our knowledge, there has never been a patent suit against Linux, and it is our view that legal claims, if they exist, should be settled without involving end-user customers."

NEW YORK, November 20 (newratings.com) - Analyst J Maynard of Credit Suisse downgrades Novell Inc (NOVL.NAS) from "neutral" to "underperform." The target price has been reduced from $8 to $6.

In a research note published this morning, the analyst mentions that the company’s share price has appreciated significantly in the recent past, following the Linux patent deal with Microsoft. Although the deal includes a net payment of approximately $308 million by Microsoft, the analyst views this as a one-time event. The transaction would negatively impact the company’s position in the open source community, Credit Suisse says.

"Microsoft and Novell have agreed to disagree on whether certain open source offerings infringe Microsoft patents and whether certain Microsoft offerings infringe Novell patents. The agreement between our two companies puts in place a workable solution for customers for these issues, without requiring an agreement between our two companies on infringement.

"Both of our companies are fully committed to moving forward with all of the important work under these agreements. The agreements will advance interoperability between Windows and Linux and put in place a new intellectual property bridge between proprietary and open source software. Customers and participants throughout our industry will clearly benefit from these results.

"We at Microsoft respect Novell's point of view on the patent issue, even while we respectfully take a different view. Novell is absolutely right in stating that it did not admit or acknowledge any patent problems as part of entering into the patent collaboration agreement. At Microsoft we undertook our own analysis of our patent portfolio and concluded that it was necessary and important to create a patent covenant for customers of these products. We are gratified that such a solution is now in place."

Microsoft Corporation
November 20, 2006

I have to tell you that the issues with getting this covenant right are incredibly complex and there are real concerns on all sides. Our design goal is to get language in place that allows individual developers to keep developing. We are not interested in providing carte blanche clearance on patents to any commercial activity - that is a separate discussion to be had on a per-instance basis. As you comment, please keep in mind that we are talking about individuals, not .orgs, not .com, not non-profits, not...well, not anyone other than individual non-commercial coders.

Как и было согласованно с Еврокомиссией, Microsoft предоставила обновленную версию технической документации 19 июля 2006 года, рассчитывая на выполнение требований решения Еврокомиссии от марта 2004 года (см. IP/04/382), в котором от Microsoft требуется раскрытие полной и аккуратной документации по программным интерфейсам. Эта информация должна позволить серверам рабочих групп других производителей достичь полное взаимодействие с ПК и серверами под управлением Windows.

С 19 июля 2006 года Комиссия проверяла полноту и точность предоставленной технической документации, чтобы определить были ли устранены ранее найденые ошибки и неточности. Комиссия также работала с Microsoft над необходимыми изменениями в документации с помощью доверенного наблюдателя профессора Нейла Барретта, который был выбран для контроля выполнения Microsoft-ом мартовского решения и был советником Комиссии по этому вопросу (см. MEMO/06/119).

На сегодняшний день Комиссия не получила полную документацию, касающуюся всех протоколов, описание которых необходимо для полного удовлетворения решения Комиссии от марта 2004 года. Информация, полученная от Microsoft до сих пор, частично оформлена в виде спецификаций, которые можно предоставить потенциальным лицензиатам для тестирования. Комиссия ожидает, что оставшиеся пропуски и недоработки в технической документации будут устранены до 23 ноября с тем, чтобы в конце ноября полный набор технической документации предоставить на тестирование потенциальным лицензиатам.

Комиссия решит, находится или нет представленная техническая документация в полном соответствии с требованиями мартовского решения, приняв во внимание комментарии потенциальных лицензиатов и советы доверенного наблюдателя о том, насколько полезна техническая документация.

Комиссия помнит, что решением от марта 2004 года Microsoft было предписано предоставить соответствующее полное и аккуратное описание интерфейсов в течение четырех месяцев с момента принятия решения (то есть, в июле 2004). Microsoft последовательно установила и провалила ряд крайних сроков по предоставлению полных и аккуратных спецификаций, последним из которых было 19 июля 2006 года.

12 июля 2006 года Европейская комиссия наложила штраф в размере 280.5 миллионов евро на Microsoft за продолжающееся несоблюдение некоторых обязательств, возложенных на нее решением Комиссии от марта 2004 года (см. IP/06/979). Комиссия также решила 12 июля 2006 года, что если Microsoft продолжит неисполнение мартовского решения, то ежедневный штраф будет увеличен с двух миллионов евро до трех миллионов евро, начиная с 31 июля 2006 года.

In short, the pledge applies precariously to developers who work in a vacuum: those who write original software in their spare time, receive no payment for it, and do not distribute it to anyone under the GNU GPL. It's worse than useless, as this empty promise can create a false sense of security. Don't be confused by the illusion of a truce; developers are no safer from Microsoft patents now than they were before. Instead, Microsoft has used this patent pledge to indicate that, in their view, the only good Free Software developer is an isolated, uncompensated, unimportant Free Software developer.

I've been giving some thought about the implications of the recent Microsoft Novell deal, and while I'm not going to go into a long diatribe about how I do not agree that I need Microsoft permission via Novell to use Samba or much of any free software, I will say this to my open source developer friends at Novell:

The Google Engineering Staff and Open Source teams are hiring.