Prominent legal counsel the Software Freedom Law Center said that the legal terms covering Microsoft's Open XML document formats pose a patent risk to free and open-source software developers.
The SFLC on Wednesday published a legal analysis of Microsoft's Open Specification Promise (OSP), a document written to give developers the green light to make open-source products based on specifications written by Microsoft.
The OSP is meant to allay concerns over violating Microsoft patents that relate to Open XML, Microsoft's document specifications that the company is trying to have certified as a standard at the ISO (International Organization for Standardization). For example, a company could create an open-source spreadsheet or server software that can handle Open XML documents.
Microsoft is awaiting the results of a crucial vote, expected by March 29, from representatives of national standards bodies.
But the SFLC said that the OSP is not to be trusted. It said that it did the legal analysis following the close of a recent Ballot Resolution Meeting held to resolve problems with the Open XML specification.
Specifically, the SFLC concluded that the patent protections only apply to current versions of the specifications; future versions could not be covered, it noted.
Also, software developers who write code based on a Microsoft-derived specification, such as Open XML, could be limited in how that code is used. "Any code that implements the specification may also do other things in other contexts, so in effect the OSP does not cover any actual code, only some uses of code," according to the analysis.
Finally, the SFLC said that OSP-covered specifications are not compatible with the General Public License (GPL), which covers thousands of free and open-source products.
Most open-source software advocates have opposed Microsoft's effort to standardize Open XML and the SFLC is no exception.
While not attempting to clarify the text of the OSP to indicate compatibility with the GPL or provide a safe harbor through its guidance materials, Microsoft wrongly blames the free software legal community for Microsoft's failure to present a promise that satisfies the requirements of the GPL. It is true that a broad audience of developers could implement the specifications, but they would be unable to be certain that implementations based on the latest versions of the specifications would be safe from attack. They would also be unable to distribute their code for any type of use, as is integral to the GPL and to all free software.As the final period for consideration of OOXML by ISO elapses, SFLC recommends against the establishment of OOXML as an international standard and cautions GPL implementers not to rely on the OSP.
A Microsoft representative was not immediately available for comment.
Update 5:30 p.m. PDT: A Microsoft representative pointed to previous statements on the intellectual property and Open XML. In a blog in January of this year, Jason Matusow, the company's director of corporate standards, said that there are no intellectual property issues with Open XML, dismissed claims that there are, and listed the steps Microsoft has taken to clear up any concerns regarding Open XML.Update 9:00 a.m. PDT, March 13: Gray Knowlton, group product manager for Microsoft Office, published a detailed rebuttal of the SFLC's analysis, saying that Open XML's terms are the same or more liberal than rival document standard OpenDocument (ODF), which is supported by Microsoft foes IBM and Sun Microsystems.
This is an unfortunate report, these all represent issues that have been raised in a campaign that includes innuendo and supposition, leaving out inconvenient information and language and ignoring the same, similar, or less attractive, language that exists for ODF.
The Software Freedom Law Center on Friday said it has filed a suit against Verizon Communications alleging that it has violated the terms of the General Public License, which governs the use of thousands of free and open-source software products.
The suit is the fourth that the SFLC has filed on behalf of two programmers who wrote BusyBox, a software utility package covered under the GPL. BusyBox is typically embedded in hardware devices that use the Linux open-source operating system.
The move reflects a more aggressive stance that the SFLC, which provides legal counsel to free and open-source developers, has taken this year.
Verizon distributes a wireless router made by Actiontec Electronics to customers of its Fios fiber-optic broadband service.
The router uses the BusyBox software, and under terms of the GPL, Verizon has to make the source code available to people who use the device, according to the SFLC suit (PDF).
The first suit alleging misuse of the BusyBox software, which the SFLC filed in September of this year, was settled quickly. The SFLC also sued Xterasys and High-Gain Antennas in November.
The Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) said it has filed suit against two companies for allegedly violating the General Public License, which covers usage of Linux and thousands of other free and open-source products.
The suits are the second and third time that the nonprofit foundation has filed suit, signaling a willingness to use the court system to enforce the GPL.
The plaintiffs are two programmers--Erik Andersen and Rob Landley--who wrote BusyBox, software covered by the GPL version 2 often used in conjunction with the Linux operating system in embedded devices.
The suit was filed against Xterasys and High-Gain Antennas; both companies manufacture wireless communications hardware.
The SFLC said it had contacted the two companies to notify them about the alleged violations but were forced to file suit because they received no response.
In October, it settled a similar case with Monsoon Multimedia filed on behalf of the same plaintiffs over use of the BusyBox software.
Under the terms of the GPL version 2, people who make additions to software covered by the GPL have to make the source code of that program available.
"We let companies do what they like with BusyBox on their hardware, and what we asked in return was that they let us reproduce what they've done with BusyBox on our hardware. That's the deal embodied in the GPL," said Rob Landley, in a statement.
Eben Moglen (left) tells it like it is.
(Credit: James Duncan Davidson)Once upon a time, the term "open source" was coined to save the free-software world from itself--or, rather, from the free-software zealots, as you can read on the Open Source Initiative's Web site.
Today, I can't help but feel that the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction, where we're so self-satisfied with the money we're making off open source that we have neglected the essential freedoms that make open-source profit possible.
The wake-up call about the necessary freedoms came from Eben Moglen at last week's O'Reilly Open Source Conference. Some, including software consultant Stephen Walli, don't like the way Eben said it. I wasn't in the room to hear Eben. At any rate, I'm not one for handwringing and am just glad it was said.
Why?
... Read moreUpdate: I updated this posting to correct my misunderstanding of an ambiguous point in the news release--the ar5k-based OpenBSD driver isn't proprietary.
The Software Freedom Law Center, which provides free legal advice to free and open-source software projects, has declared an open-source project to support Atheros Communications wireless network devices to be free of copyright infringement.
The group--which employs notable attorney and former Free Software Foundation counsel Eben Moglen--performed a confidential comparison of the OpenHAL project and the Atheros HAL software whose functions it attempts to duplicate, the center said Tuesday. The audit was a response to allegations of HAL copyright infringement, the center said.
"After performing the audit, SFLC concluded that OpenHAL does not infringe copyrights held by Atheros. As a result, OpenHAL development can now continue safely, unencumbered by legal uncertainty so long as the OpenHAL developers continue their work in isolation from Atheros' proprietary code," the center said in a statement.
OpenHAL was based initially on an open-source project called ar5k that was used in an Atheros driver for the the open-source OpenBSD variant of Unix, the center said. However, Atheros cards aren't supported in Linux with an open-source driver.
"We believe that this outcome will clear the way for eventual acceptance of a new wireless driver into the Linux kernel," said John Linville, who maintains wireless networking software in the Linux kernel, in the center's statement.
But this isn't the first time the center got involved in trying to clear the software. In November, Linville said in a 2006 mailing list posting that the center already made inquiries about the source of the ar5k software.
"The responses received provide a reasonable basis for SFLC to believe that the OpenBSD developers who worked on ar5k did not misappropriate code, and that the ar5k implementation is OpenBSD's original copyrighted work," Linville said in the message. "This announcement should serve to remove the cloud which has prevented progress towards an in-kernel driver for Atheros hardware," he added, overoptimistically as it turned out.
As Steven Vaughan-Nichols is reporting, the Software Freedom Law Center is offering a free day of open-source legal education from the best in the business. Let's put it this way: if you get any opportunity to hear Eben Moglen speak, you take it. Especially when admission to the event is free.
The Summit will have two parts: a closed session in the morning for a private meeting of some of the world's foremost FOSS attorneys, and an open session in the afternoon consisting of free legal presentations to the public.
... Read more
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