Microsoft claims exemption from GPLv3

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By Steve Ragan Jul 6, 2007, 16:05 GMT

Microsoft has made an official comment on the third version of the GNU General Public License (GPL). The GPLv3 was released in its final form on June 29th. Microsoft’s Horacio Gutierrez said that the Redmond based company will not provide any updates or support for GPLv3 under the terms of the deal they signed last November with Novell to distribute certificates for the Linux distribution.“Microsoft is not a party to the GPLv3 license and none of its actions are to be misinterpreted as accepting status as a contracting party of GPLv3 or assuming any legal obligations under such license,” the statement form Gutierrez said.That is an interesting claim when you take the comments made by Free Software Foundation (FSF) founder Richard Stallman. Stallman said that developers should upgrade and use GPLv3 for their code. One of the main reasons why this should happen according to Stallman is that the new version of the GPL would grant broad patent lawsuit protection to users of open source software.“Microsoft made a few mistakes in the Novell-Microsoft deal, and GPLv3 is designed to turn them against Microsoft, extending that limited patent protection to the whole community. In order to take advantage of this, programs need to use GPLv3,” said Stallman. “Microsoft's lawyers are not stupid, and next time they may manage to avoid those mistakes. GPLv3 therefore says they don't get a “next time.” Releasing a program under GPL version 3 protects it from Microsoft's future attempts to make redistributors collect Microsoft royalties from the program's users.”Remember, the original plan for version three of the GPL was to block patent licensing deals, as Novel has with Microsoft. The FSF in its rationale guide explained why this was modified so the Novell deal will help developers who adopt version three of the GPL. The FSF called the reason tactical.“We believe we can do more to protect the community by allowing Novell to use software under GPL version 3 than by forbidding it to do so. This is because of paragraph 6 of section 11 (corresponding to paragraph 4 in Draft 3). It will apply, under the Microsoft-Novell deal; because of the coupons that Microsoft has acquired that essentially commit it to participate in the distribution of the Novell SLES GNU/Linux system.”Adding to that reasoning, the comments from Stallman pointed out that ironic as was that Microsoft tried to dispose of the coupons as quickly as possible, they were still caught by the new provisions in GPLv3. “Unfortunately for Microsoft, those coupons bear no expiration date, and paragraph 6 has no cut-off date. Through its ongoing distribution of coupons, Microsoft will have procured the distribution of GPLv3-covered programs as soon as they are included in Novell SLES distributions, thereby extending patent defenses to all downstream recipients of that software by operation of paragraph 6.”Addressing this issue, Gutierrez said, “While there have been some claims that Microsoft’s distribution of certificates for Novell support services, under our interoperability collaboration with Novell, constitutes acceptance of the GPLv3 license, we do not believe that such claims have a valid legal basis under contract, intellectual property, or any other law. In fact, we do not believe that Microsoft needs a license under GPL to carry out any aspect of its collaboration with Novell, including its distribution of support certificates, even if Novell chooses to distribute GPLv3 code in the future. Furthermore, Microsoft does not grant any implied or express patent rights under or as a result of GPLv3, and GPLv3 licensors have no authority to represent or bind Microsoft in any way.”In order to strip any doubt or legal debate on the issue, Microsoft pointed out that the Novell support certificates that they distribute will not entitle the recipient to receive “…from Novell, or any other party, any subscription for support and updates relating to any code licensed under GPLv3. We will closely study the situation and decide whether to expand the scope of the certificates in the future.”The statement from Microsoft makes it apparent that someone on the legal team is worried. Gorklaw points out that, “In other words, not to put too fine a point on it, GPLv3 worked,” when talking about the recent statement. If worry is not the issue, then someone somewhere has lost his or her mind. Maybe it was just a momentary lapse of reason. Why else would they start to back out of their distribution part of the Novell deal?The legal team at Microsoft should have expected that the FSF would put a stop to them undermining the nature of the GPL and Linux. The Microsoft worded and created support certificates were sent out with no expiration date. Because of this, the noose was quickly drawn around their necks by FSF. While current versions of SuSE Enterprise Linux cover GPLv2 once Novell adopts GPLv3, and they will, the lack of expiration on the support certificates means that customers are covered under GPLv3.The Free Software Foundation has not released any official comments on the issue. M&C has asked for comments and clarification on the points raised by Microsoft. As more information comes out from both sides, as well as other companies who distribute and operate on Linux, this story will be updated.

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KarlJul 7th, 2007 - 02:01:48

Microsoft doesn't have to be part of GLPv3, but the very fact that it has entered into agreements with some vendors to accepts/recognizes certain flavors of Linux, it's by design entrenched into GLPv3 and can't separate itself unless it does away with those agreements. Welcome GPL and bravo the brave, sincere, honest and hardworking, community.

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Dave in BROOKLYNJul 7th, 2007 - 11:53:02

A Bush-like 'signing statement'? Just what I would expect.

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BananaphoneJul 7th, 2007 - 12:22:51

I don't get it.
It sounds from this article as if FSF entered into a contract with Microsoft in bad faith, that FSF intentionally hoodwinked Microsoft by changing the scope and aim of the license. Is that really what happened?

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MikeJul 7th, 2007 - 14:12:25

Let's face it- Microsoft screwed up and now they're dancing as fast as they can to try and pretend it never happened. Microsoft IS bound by the GPL3 and there is no way out of it. They signed on, they agreed to the contract, and no one forced them to do that. Now they're trying to claim that somehow it miraculously doesn't apply to them. They tried to pull a fast one and got caught.

Mike
quicktrivia.com

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Chris PenguinJul 8th, 2007 - 18:55:54

Um, So what the us courts already proved in in court that Microsoft can do what ever it wants.I remember laughing as i was reading one of the Voles actual claims in court to a judge that they did not make hardware.... and there i sat with an old sound card with the MS copyright marks and all, yup a Microsoft product.The problem was, it was dated 1986 hmmmmm but we couldn't expect the US government to find theses products, but in their defense, they don't have nearly the budget that i had to find the part (sarcasm if u didn't notice) Anyways as it say on the US dollar 'in Corporations We Trust' do u really think the fair and unbiased US courts would actually rule against the Vole in favor of a Free Software?

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