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Original Post: Sys-Con and theri Sytematic Comdey of Errors Maureen O'Gara rides again
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Would it suprise you that Sys-con commits a gross set of errors in a recent analysis of an RMS speech in Japan? No not Sys-con, the same company that still to this day has not apologized to Groklaw's PJ for personal attacks in spring of 2005. Okay, lets debunk this MFer.
Richard Stallman, head of the Free Software Foundation (FSF), author of the General Public License (GPL) that defines the open source movement, and final arbiter of all things GPL, publicly declared in a speech he gave in Japan last week that the infamous Novell-Microsoft patent agreement doesn't violate the GPL.
1. RMS is the head of the Free Source community not OpenSource. In the second paragraph you in fact confirm that RMS is head of FSf, why not be brave and state he is not head of OpenSource movement but FreeSource movement? What are you scared of? A geek bearing GPL?
2. Now, lets go tot the RMS speech transcript that Sys-con fails to link to at the top of the article, I wonder why they fail to link to it at the top of the article? Can we all fucking guess why!
Here is the only mention of MS and Novell:
[Section: The Novell and Microsoft example]However, there's another way of using software patents to threaten the users which we have just seen an example of. That is, the Novell-Microsoft deal. What has happened is, Microsoft has not given Novell a patent licence, and thus, section 7 of GPL version 2 does not come into play. Instead, Microsoft offered a patent licence that is rather limited to Novell's customers alone.It turns out that perhaps it's a good thing that Microsoft did this now, because we discovered that the text we had written for GPL version 3 would not have blocked this, but it's not too late and we're going to make sure that when GPL version 3 really comes out it will block such deals. We were already concerned about possibilities like this, namely, the possibility that a distributor might receive a patent licence which did not explicitly impose limits on downstream recipients but simply failed to protect them.What if one company pays Microsoft for a patent licence where Microsoft says "Alright, we won't sue you, but we're just not making any promises about your customers if they redistribute it". We had already written a downstream shielding provision into GPL version 3 saying that if you convey the program, and you are benefitting from a patent licence that is not available, that does not extend to the downstream users, then you have to do something to shield them.This is, it turns out, inadequate in two ways. First of all, "shielding them" is vague. We're replacing that with a specific list of methods, and second, once again it assumes that the distributor has received a patent licence, so the Microsoft/Novell deal cunningly does not give Novell the patent licence, only Novell's customers.Well, now that we have seen this possibility, we're not going to have trouble drafting the language that will block it off. We're going to say not just that if you receive the patent licence, but if you have arranged any sort of patent licensing that is prejudicial among the downstream recipients, that that's not allowed. That you have to make sure that the downstream recipients fully get the freedoms that they're supposed to have. The precise words, we haven't figured out yet. That's what Eben Moglen is working on now.[Time: 2249 secs - end of part I]
Do you see any mention of RMS forgiving Novell in the above as in Sys-con lies:
A transcription of the speech just became available Wednesday on the Free Software Foundation Europe's web site and in it Stallman says, "Microsoft has not given Novell a patent license, and thus, section 7 of the GPL version 2 does not come into play. Instead, Microsoft offered a patent license that is rather limited to Novell's customers alone."
What happen to refusing to reprint Maureen O'Gara lies, SYS-CON? Same article on LinuxGram with Maureen O'Gatra as author. Now, Sys-con did you think we would not notice? If you are going to reprint her lack of journalism at least attribute it to her!
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