There are strong reasons to think it won’t fade. Specifically, there is no commercial benefit to Novell if it fades, and very strong commercial benefit to Novell if it doesn’t fade. So why would it? If they are serious about fulfilling their fiduciary duty to their shareholders, Novell’s advertising will strongly feature their patent guarantees- and by implication note that businesses who use RH and Oracle Linuxes are patent violators. I’m not sure what the practical impact of this would be- possibly nothing. But I think Bruce has it mostly right in his post- the impact is likely very large, at least politically if not on the community.

As for the noncommercial developers, they may need to realize that with the current patent regime in the US and some other countries as well. They are probably infringing some obscure patent anyway. Nothing has changed for them as well. The only way the could and can be sure is a change in law, and right now the best thing they can do is still avoid reading any patents and just do your thing.

You fight FUD with facts, not with some of the comments I’ve seen online recently. I was especially disappointed at the tone of the articles on Groklaw, who are usually very good at fighting fud with fact.

I’m glad to see you keep a cool head and just pose a couple of questions with your opinion on what you think the answer is. If you are wrong people can tell you, as they can when you are right. I really like your comments and your style. it’s why I read your blog and will continue to do so. Whith the whole lawschool thing it can only get better :)

Just don’t all Cry Havoc and let slip the dogs of war ;) before all the facts are out.
(The military order Havoc! was a signal given to the English military forces in the Middle Ages to direct the soldiery (in Shakespeare’s parlance ‘the dogs of war’) to pillage and chaos.)

They look to be written by lawyers, but should answer lots of the questions.

Elroy: “So in the end this just means that for the developers covered by the agreement life is simpler, for all others life is the same.” Well, yes and no. That’s exactly what they are going to say to make sure they aren’t bothered by GPL problems. But it’s not just the same for everyone else. For the commercial players, they’ll be getting questions all the time about this, and why their code isn’t covered. For the non-commercial contributors, they’ll have to think twice about going to work for anyone except Novell. It creates another layer of fear and uncertainty that wasn’t there before. Anything concrete? No. But definitely changes things for those people.

If I understand this correctly I dont see any problem with the GPL per se. Novell has to grant a patent license for the GPL software anyway, but that does not mean they cant sue for use of their patents in non gpl software. Vice versa Microsoft has to grant a patent license if they release GPL software, otherwise they have no such obligation. And losing right to use GPL software when they do sue is not likely to deter microsoft, since they use the gpl for what?

So in the end this just means that for the developers covered by the agreement life is simpler, for all others life is the same.

As for software development by novell and others in the community. I don’t quite see Novell replacing much of the Linux infrastructure with proprietary components because of this. As a commercial vendor on the linux market they are still dwarved by Red Hat and community wise they’re openSuSe isn’t blessed with the largest number of contributers either. Meaning that Novelll needs said community and needs being part of it. Alienating from it will only move it back to where it was pre linux. And we all know how well they were doing there, even though back then I’d pick Netware over Windows servers anyday the market acted differently.

The only part worrying me a bit is the part affecting ODF, but we’ll see how that plays out. The rest is more Novell covering its legal behinds and getting some cooperation for interoperabilty in the works. I fully expect the fruits of that to show up in GPL software.

“even if it does establish precedent that they owe MS royalties on Linux.”

Would you care to expand on this? I am interested

======
You probably have a thousand versions of this question already but just in case:

The press release/open letter makes mention of patent “coverage” for
(among other things) Samba and OpenOffice.org

It mentions that the protection is for “customers” and “individual,
non-commercial open source developers”

However the above mentioned software is distributed under the GPL and
LGPL respectively.

These licenses make it quite clear (in the Preamble and GPL section 7
and LGPL section 11) that any patent licensing must be for “everyone”
not a limited subset of people as described by the two groups above.

Has Novell done the right thing in terms of the plain meaning of the (L)GPL?

The wording in the press releases, FAQs and letter seem very specific
and don’t seem to indicate that they have. If anything they seem to be
weaseling (I tried to find a less pejorative word, honest!) around
clear intent of the GPL by considering a “promis[e] not to assert” a
patent as something different to a license to use one?

Thanks for your time (and all the software you have had a hand in that
I use every day).
======

The patent bit is the only bit I don’t get. All the other stuff may or may not make sense but it is their choice to make. But I don’t see how the patent stuff can work with the (L)GPL software they specifically named. If the agreement allows them to use the patent covered software and that allowance isn’t extended to everyone I don’t see how they can continue to distribute the software.