A Quebec Superior court ruled that a provincial agency should have solicited other altenatives before spending 720,000 Canadian dollars (686,000 US) on Microsoft software.  This was required by the agency’s own rules, which required such a process for expenditures over Canadian 25,000 dollars.  The lawsuit was filed by Montreal-based Savoir Faire Linux.

Sponsored by Open Logic

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

11:00am Pacific / Noon Mountain / 1:00pm Central / 2:00pm Eastern / 7:00pm GMT
Duration: 1 hour
1.0 CLE General hours pending approval in CA and CO
Register for this webinar

Open source license compliance has emerged as a critical issue for businesses seeking to take advantage of the cost and technical benefits of open source software. Non-compliance can result in legal action, monetary damages, negative publicity, and compromised intellectual property.

In this webinar sponsored by OpenLogic and Greenberg Traurig, attorney Heather Meeker will discuss how to create an enterprise open source license compliance program that will help you guard against potential risks. Attendees will learn about best practices for complying with different types of open source licenses – including GPL, permissive, and Affero-type licenses – as well as how to maintain ongoing license compliance. Other topics to be covered in this webinar include:

In a recent blog on the Free Software Foundation’s web site, which describes itself as part of “a series of articles detailing threats Apple’s iPhone poses to free software and user freedom,” John Sullivan takes issue with Apple’s practices relating to iPhone app software.  Among the complaints are “Tivoization” and possible incompatibility with the GPL.

The blog generally lays down a gauntlet: “The Free Software Foundation will be treating this new proprietary platform as another threat to user and developer freedom, in the same way that we have worked to counter the threats posed by every other proprietary operating system, from Microsoft Windows in all its forms, to Apple’s OS X and other proprietary Unix variants.”

The “Tivoization” problem is explained as follows: “In order for any program to be installed on the iPhone, the program must be cryptographically signed. When a user attempts to install software on her iPhone, the iPhone’s…system checks to see if Apple considers the signature on the software to be valid. If there is no signature or if the signature is invalid, the iPhone will refuse to install the software. If the software has been modified in any way, the signature check will fail. The signature check is also tied to the user’s specific device, which means that she is not permitted to transfer or copy downloaded programs directly between iPhones, and any other copying is permitted or not permitted at Apple’s whim.”

Although the blog says that “Apple’s approach runs headlong into…the GPL’s copyleft approach…” it stops short of claiming the iPhone store delivery system violates GPL version 2; it does state that it violates version 3.  It states that the GPL v3 and Apple’s iPhone Developer Program License Agreement “are incompatible. Apple’s license says that to write and distribute software for the iPhone, developers have to agree that any freedom users should have to modify and share their software is secondary to the paramount requirement of observing and protecting Apple’s DRM system.”

If this is so, then GPLv3 is not an available licensing choice for iPhone apps.  But it’s unclear whether that will be a net benefit to free software.  The most likely result is that developers will use other licenses for their apps — a result far more likely than Apple changing its policies.  Given the generally slow adoption of GPLv3 since its release, it’s not clear that prohibiting iPhone app developers from using GPLv3 would be a win for FSF. 

Of course, the issue of whether it is best for mobile apps to be available only via official sources is a broader, more interesting, and more complicated one.  Mobile phone manufacturers want to control the content available for their phones to manage their brand (primarily by excluding offensive content), minimize security issues (primarily by excluding apps that promulgate violations of netiquette or the law), and improve user experience (primarily by excluding apps that don’t work).  But the price of a warm, comfortable user experience is accepting censorship.  In this sense, the larger issue is yet another example of the age-old debate between freedom and safety.

 

Interesting article in the Register about Yahoo!’s strategy in releasing cloud computing open source software.  My favorite line: “”We don’t bless the language, We bless the container.”

A jury returned a verdict in favor of defendants Red Hat and Novell in a patent infringement lawsuit filed in 2007 by a famour non-practicing entity, Acacia.  The patents at issue were found invalid.  Red Hat’s announcement appears here.

A lawsuit was filed against Sony based on Sony disabling the PlayStation 3’s ability to accommodate the Linux operating system.  IGN reports, “In March, Sony released firmware v3.21 that disabled the feature, disallowing users from installing the Linux operating system. The update was not mandatory; however those who chose not to download it were cut off from a number of other features, one of which included signing in to PlayStation Network.”  This is not an open source licensing case per se — it is based on consumer claims.

Phil Simon’s book The Next Wave of Technology: Opportunities in Chaos came out this week, and I have a chapter in it called “Open Source — The War that Both Sides Won.”  Topics include cloud computing, SaaS, business intelligence, open source software, enterprise risk management, enterprise search, service oriented architecture, and master data management. It’s available on Kindle, but the hardcover book looks pretty great! 

The White House released some of the code it uses to run whitehouse.gov, based on the Drupal content management system.

A jury verdict was handed up this week in the lawsuit about ownership in UNIX.  The verdict confirmed an issue that was previously decided in Novell’s favor as a motion for summary judgment, overturned on appeal, and remanded for trial.  In other words, the jury came up with the same result the judge did before the appeal.

In the dispute, SCO claimed it owned the rights to a version of UNIX under a deal signed in 1995.  The jury’s verdict confirmed that the copyrights to UNIX did not transfer to SCO in this transaction. 

The verdict is being hailed as a victory for open source because of its effect on another lawsuit — the notorious claims by SCO against IBM filed in the early 2000s.   As a consequence of the Novell verdict, SCO’s claims of copyright infringement against IBM are not tenable.  However, there remain other claims against IBM, including claims based on breach of contract.  Interestingly, the breach of contract claims were the original basis of SCO’s lawsuit, and the copyright claims were added later.

This result is not surprising, and is just another nail in the coffin on the claims of SCO, not to mention the company itself.  SCO filed for bankruptcy a few years ago.  That, too, is unsurprising — SCO’s lawsuits were the bold tactic of a failing company.  However, a few more legal puzzle pieces need to fall into place before the circus is over.  The true end will be dismissal of SCO’s case agaisnt IBM, which was stayed pending the disposition of SCO’s bankruptcy, which will in turn depend heavily on the result in the Novell suit.

Mozilla announced that it will begin an update and revision process for MPL.