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Linux Pipeline Newsletter www.LinuxPipeline.com Tuesday, March 1, 2005 In This Issue: - Firefox Rolls First Bug-Fix Release - Linux Distributor Mandrakesoft Acquires Conectiva - New Brower Stats Show Fresh Firefox Gains - More News... - Getting FUD Up? Get The Facts - Sneak Preview: StarOffice 8 Gets Its Close-Up - Rob Enderle: Man With A Death Wish - More Picks... Join InformationWeek for a FREE, on-demand TechWebCast on Lower Your Costs and Reduce Your Application Hosting and Management Headaches. Lower your costs, and easily keep- up with the latest fixes, patches, and regulatory updates by hosting your ERP applications. Register and view today: http://www.techweb.com/today/erp100604 ----------------------------------------- Editor's Note: No Rest At This OASIS Linux Pipeline columnist and hate mail connoisseur Rob Enderle probably added a few new gems to his collection two weeks ago, when he described the rush to adopt Firefox as lemming-like behavior. Pity the poor creatures for making such ideal rhetorical fodder: This week, there's another group I intend to berate for its lemming-like mentality. OASIS is one of the world's most prominent IT standards bodies; it's a major source of e-business and Web services standards with a high-profile membership roster. Yet OASIS is also responsible for a boneheaded decision to allow the standards it ratifies to include patented technologies, if the patents' owners agree to license their intellectual property under "reasonable and non-discriminatory" terms. What's known as RAND licensing is fine for commercial software developers; it allows them to pay the same royalties as their competitors and to manage their royalty costs in a predictable way. Without the RAND licensing model, many commercial products wouldn't exist, and those that do would find it impossible to create reliable financial forecasts or pricing. Yet a patent licensed under RAND terms is just as deadly to an open-source project as any other patent license involving royalty payments. The GPL and its kin--examples of the most common open-source licensing model--by definition violate the financial and legal restrictions any royalty-bearing patent imposes. Microsoft is attempting to use this fact to undermine a European Union anti-trust ruling, and it's a sure bet that other companies with axes to grind would love to follow suit. A number of bigwigs in the open-source community, including Lawrence Rosen, Bruce Perens, and Richard Stallman, released an open letter last week urging developers to boycott future OASIS standards that don't play well with free software projects and asking members to shun working groups dedicated to such standards. The open-source community fought and won a similar battle in the W3C to approve only royalty-free patents, and the letter's authors want OASIS to take the same approach. OASIS was, of course, unhappy with the letter. In an interview published on various CNET news sites, Patrick Gannon, the group's CEO, stated that of the 20 current OASIS standards using RAND licensing, none of them actually demanded royalties. This amounts to defending a bad policy by pointing out that no one has exploited it yet--and if Gannon wants to bet how long this outbreak of saintly behavior lasts, he's welcome to give me a call. Gannon and his colleagues may wonder why a bunch of open-source bigwigs are flogging them for a patent policy that represents standard procedure for many standards groups. The IEEE, ISO, and IETF, among others, allow patents using RAND licensing, and no one is calling the Geek Police on any of them. OASIS is on the spot mostly because it picked a bad time to promote a policy that's good mostly for sucking up to members with fat wallets and thick patent portfolios. Rosen and company are also feeling strong now that they have the W3C to advertise as an example of common sense and fairness. In addition, after watching Microsoft's antics in Europe, open-source supporters are rightfully wary of a patent policy that relies upon the kindness of large corporations whose shareholders deal in cold cash, not warm fuzzies. There's one more, very important reason to make an example of OASIS. The current draft of a proposed European Union e-government framework requires technology based on open standards--and royalty-generating patents don't make the cut. It's a reasonable position for the EU, given the public uproar that helped to kill a proposal to legitimize software patents that would have turned Europe's IT industry into the world's largest profit-free zone. But this sort of anti-patent stand is still controversial, thanks mostly to furious lobbying by the Business Software Alliance--a group apparently dedicated to reading Bill Gates' mind so he doesn't have to strain himself barking orders over the phone. The BSA is also, in this case, doing a fine lemming imitation: Its European offensive in favor of RAND-laced standards relies heavily on the argument that if most other standards bodies adopt a stupid idea, it suddenly isn't stupid any more. So far, the W3C is the only standards group to buck this trend, and the last thing the BSA or its backers want to see is either the EU or OASIS taking the same anti-patent stand. As I've said before, software patents represent a massive legal and financial threat to the open-source development model and the firms that rely upon it. The companies that support software patents need, more than anything else, to maintain the illusion that patents are a legitimate, necessary, and appropriate tool for protecting intellectual property. By defending a lousy policy with facile excuses, OASIS is helping to perpetuate the illusion, and it deserves every bit of the heat it's taking for its trouble.
Matthew McKenzie
Don't let future editions of Linux Pipeline Newsletter go missing. Take a moment to add the newsletter's address to your anti-spam whitelist: linuxed@techwire.com If you're not sure how to do that, ask your administrator or ISP. Or check your anti-spam utility's documentation. Thanks. Top Linux News Firefox Rolls First Bug-Fix Release More than 25 million downloads later, the open-source browser pulls over for a tune-up: version 1.0.1, including non-critical security fixes and dozens of minor performance tweaks.
Linux Distributor Mandrakesoft Acquires Conectiva
New Brower Stats Show Fresh Firefox Gains
IBM Bets PHP Is Open Source's Next Big Thing
Report: Servers Dishing Out Solid Revenue Growth
IBM Exec To Partners: Get Rich With Linux
Prior Mozilla, Firefox Releases Open To Attack
IBM Ups Open-Source Endowment With New Releases
Thunderbird, Mozilla Updates Next In Line
BEA Embraces WebLogic-Eclipse Integration
Novell Earns More From Windows Than Linux -- This Time Editor's Picks Getting FUD Up? Get The Facts For every geek who thinks open-source is the cat's pajamas, there are probably five corporate bureaucrats who eat Microsoft FUD for breakfast. Those are tough odds, especially when these people are often armed with the same fraudulent facts and sock-puppet research Microsoft promulgates in its "Get the Facts" campaign.
Sneak Preview: StarOffice 8 Gets Its Close-Up
Rob Enderle: Man With A Death Wish
The Spyzilla Project? (Or, A Modest Proposal...)
Survey: Does Your Salary Stack Up?
An Update A Day Keeps Hackers Away
IBM Rivals Warming To Eclipse
Firefox, Microsoft, And More: Mozilla Chair Mitch Kapor
Xen Gets Real--With A Little Help From Big Friends
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