| Microsoft-sponsored study: developers don't want GPLv3 |
May 23, 2007
Another day, another Microsoft-sponsored study finding -- shock! -- the results they wanted. This time, the study, by Harvard Business School professor Alan MacCormack, in collaboration with Keystone Strategy, is entitled "A Developers Bill of Rights: What Open Source Developers Want in a Software License."
This study appeared a week after Microsoft started rattling its patent sabers at Linux and open source. As part of Microsoft's latest anti-Linux activity, the company also opened an assault on GPLv3 (General Public License, version 3).
The latest GNU GPLv3 draft includes patent language that will make it much harder for Microsoft to make patent deals, such as the November 2006 Microsoft and Novell partnership.
In addition, open-source friendly lawyers such as Richard Fontana, counsel for the SFLC (Software Freedom Law Center), have claimed that, as written, the Microsoft/Novell patent partnership has made Microsoft a Linux distributor and therefore bound by the GPL.
SFLC Chairman Eben Moglen goes even farther. In an online seminar, Moglen said that the Microsoft/Novell agreement will run afoul of the GPLv3's "dancing with wolves
provision" (PDF link). The short version of Moglen's position is that as soon as a customer gets a copy of SLES (SUSE Linux Enterprise Server) via a Microsoft SLES certificate, Microsoft becomes subject to the GPLv3 and all of its potential patent claims on Linux become null and void.
Even if you don't buy the SFLC's legal logic, you can certainly see why Microsoft would want developers to stay far, far away from it.
In an interview with eWEEK's Peter Galli, MacCormack said, "While many of the developers surveyed cited displeasure with the patent element of the Novell-Microsoft deal, the use of digital rights management to restrict the use of modified open-source software, or the enforcement of software patents, they did not believe it was the place of the GPLv3 or other licenses to prevent such deals or resolve such issues."
I do wonder: if it's not the place of an intellectual property license to deal with patent issues, then what is?
Early drafts of the GPLv3 have certainly met resistance from some open-source developers. Linux founder Linus Torvalds, for example, preferred the earlier GPLv2, which didn't deal with patents. Other members of the core Linux kernel team went even further and said that the GPLv3 could lead to the "Balkanization of the entire Open Source Universe."
Since then, however, the latest GPLv3 draft has arrived. Of this version, Torvalds said, "Whether it's actually a better license than the GPLv2, I'm still a bit skeptical, but at least it's now 'I'm skeptical' rather than 'Hell no!'"
The final version of the GPLv3 is due to come on in early summer. While Torvalds may change his mind about it, you can be sure Microsoft will be opposing it every step of the way.
-- Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
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