Anonymous Monkey: I’m not sure you did, except perhaps in PR. If as PZB notes in another post, Novell still honestly believes in OIN and MAD, Novell could have coupled this with donations of more patents and money to OIN. They could have attempted to spin this as crying uncle to a patent blackmailer or a monopolist. It still isn’t too late for them to do either of those, really, and it would probably (in my mind) get rid of most of the damage. But yeah, letting Microsoft spin this as ‘normalizing’ their relationship with Linux smells like co-option bought with hush money, and not understandable capitulation to a patent-wielding monopolist.

Further, I don’t see many people approaching this realistically. Microsoft has been given undue ability to shift the focus of patents and open source to ‘users that may get sued’ – sure SCO did it, and we know who was funding that now.

Think of this. You go to a Ford dealership and buy a Taurus. Now that car is popular in the States – millions sold probably. That car probably has 2,000+ parts all of which are likely covered by one or multiple patents.

Let’s say MSFT owns a patent on software that affects the Anti-Lock Breaking System (ABS). Would MSFT sue the car buyers? Would car buyers be expected to check every part and patents that may be covering them? That’s insane?

So why do we let the FUD/thought of being sued by MSFT apply to Linux USERS? If Microsoft has a problem with SUSE or RHEL, Microsoft will sue Red Hat or Novell – not the users. And they left that option open in this agreement.

So why again does this help or change anything?

Tons of money will change hands and patents will be lauded as economic miracles.

And this relies upon everyone pretending that no patents are actually being violated.

So, what would happen if someone created a combination between Google Maps and Google Code Search, that enabled the public to collaboratively itemise each and every single instance of a patent violation within all published source code?

All the godfathers would say they were tacitly licensed uses, and only proto-violations.

Everyone outside the protection of a godfather would enjoy a sword of Damocles (unless they paid for some ‘insurance’).

If that situation persisted for very long you’d polarise developers and users into ‘unprotected’ nebulous/anonymous entities on one hand, and ‘protected’ discrete/concrete entities on the other. And proprietary corporations thus reclaim their cash cows.

Alternatively, a lot of companies migrate to the UK – until it adopts software patents…

Dan: The answer to that is probably another long post; one I was trying to incorporate into this post (whose original title was ‘defection’) but had to nuke for lack of time. I’ll try to answer tomorrow morning, I promise.

Only software engineers and those in this industry know the great farce that is software patenting, and that obviously includes MS and its ilk and all in bed with GNU/Linux – and all the businesses that are their customers.

If you can’t choose between Suse and RH, but MS has offered an implicit amnesty to Suse, then the cloud of doom, the implicit threat that existed to all has now cleared to blue sky above Suse. It might make it seem like RH has suddenly got darker…

Of course, what has actually happened is simply that MS has realised that GPLv3 is approaching and it has to move fast to capture at least one GPLv2-only distro before it’s too late. I suspect it realises that this will immediately put the pressure on for Linux and distros to quickly migrate to GPLv3 (ditching any Novell code of course).

GPLv3 migration isn’t much of a defense after the horse has bolted though.

The only remaining strategy is to call the bluff. Declare every possible patent that every piece of source code violates. Either patents are upheld and the entire Internet infrastructure is switched off or patents are abolished.

I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.