Microsoft and Sun have a very suspect legal settlement going on possibly relating to openoffice.org customers. More info here, here, and here. Update: Looks like this isn’t quite the controversy everyone thought. Newforge has an update.
Sun to Help Microsoft Sue OpenOffice.org Users?
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Adam Scheinberg
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If MS is allowed to sue OOo users, not to mention actually winning….I would officially lose faith in mans ability to reason. Period.
The have exempted Sun for the next 10 years, they would be stupid to include OO.o in that exemption. Many open source projects blatently rip off closed projects. There is a great deal of “we thought of that too” in the software industry.
If OO.o wants to simply feature copy another product they should not be exempt from legal action for doing so.
They have not crossed the line yet, but MS has not said they did either. If at some point they do cross the line between making another editor and ripping off office, MS is in a position where they are able to do something about it.
I am for open source but I hate it when people leach of others R&D and call it freedom, more like theft.
The headline is FUD. This is more about Sun not wanting to be liable for what any random OO.o contributor might sneak into the source tree.
Essentially MS and Sun have agreed that if someone drops some code that infringes on MS IP in OO.o then that person, not Sun is responsible.
You may not like the sound of it — or even the consequences if someone does get sued — but I wouldn’t be surprised if Sun is very pleased to know that they won’t get sued by MS for the next 10 years. If that means throwing some OSS coder to the wolves, so be it.
Considering how much money Sun has poured into OO.o so far, and how much of a vested interest they have in keeping a non-MS office suite avaible for Solaris/JDS how could anyone really think that Sun is going to “help MS sue OpenOffice.org users”?
This happens every day in the business world. The community reaction is pure, unadulterated FUD.
Seriously bad PR for SUN.
So StarOffice is exempt….so all the opensource contributions made to OpenOffice can be included in StarOffice and SUN has nothing to worry about.
They did it. They got around the GPL!
Hmmm… OpenSolaris. Sun going to try it again?
>>I am for open source but I hate it when people leach of others R&D and call it freedom, more like theft<<
And I am for closed source, but I hate it when companies leach off of other companies R&D and call it innovation. Kind of what MS did to Apple with Windows, when Billy G saw the Mac. Or What MS did to Netscape with Internet Explorer.
In other words:
Pot: Hey, Kettle!
Kettle: What?
Pot: You’re Black!
“If OO.o wants to simply feature copy another product they should not be exempt from legal action for doing so. ”
“I am for open source but I hate it when people leach of others R&D and call it freedom, more like theft.”
I call FUD.
I wasn’t going to respond because I wasn’t sure you had any idea what you were talking about, but I thought I would dispell the lunacy for the rest of the folks.
If there was no “feature copy” as you call it, we would not have any of the following in diverse systems:
1. back button in browsers
2. right moust click
3. “save as” features
4. Monitors
5. mice
6. computers.
The point is that you cannot patent and idea (whether you can legally is irrelevant for now….the patent system is broken and we all know it). You can, however, patent a particular implementation. Now, a clean room design resulting in the same functionality is perfectly acceptable. Perfectly.
this article is pure FUD. MS will NEVER sue OO.o
this will turn into a real jihad if MS even tries to sue OO.o
just post controversial articles to increase hits ?
This article made it sound like they were talking about OpenOffice.org, but the legal stuff said Open Office. What a relief.
<End stupid sarcasm>
I really don’t think this is a big thing. The way I see it is that Sun is not responsible for any infringing code in OpenOffice.org. It doesn’t give Microsoft the rights to it. In many ways, it makes it much more difficult for Microsoft to exercise its intellectual property against it since they have to go customer to customer to customer to customer. Before, Microsoft would just have had to sue Sun to cause damage or the closing of the project. Now it seems like the project is completely in the clear and all they can do is go around to users and get them if there is an infringement.
This might just be some legal thing that is very common that we never see because we’re not lawyers. I think I’m going to play it cool (haha, me cool) until it’s clear that this is a problem.
>>Considering how much money Sun has poured into OO.o so far
Um you mean poured into StarOffice? They opensourced parts of StarOffice and got back free code from the OSS developers, Novell, etc.
>>and how much of a vested interest they have in keeping a non-MS office suite avaible for Solaris/JDS how could anyone really think that Sun is going to “help MS sue OpenOffice.org”
Like I said before, StarOffice. StarOffice is exempt and even better now the only “safe” alternative to MS Office is a SUN product. More money for SUN and now they don’t have to worry about losing potential customers to OOo.
Very convenient.
And I am for closed source, but I hate it when companies leach off of other companies R&D and call it innovation. Kind of what MS did to Apple with Windows, when Billy G saw the Mac. Or What MS did to Netscape with Internet Explorer.
Or what Apple did to BeOS with OS X. Or what <insert app name> did to <insert app name>.
Come on people, copying eachother off is normal in any industry, so also the software industry.
Deal with it allright!
>>In many ways, it makes it much more difficult for Microsoft to exercise its intellectual property against it since they have to go customer to customer to customer to customer.
Are Novell, Red Hat, etc big enough? Any distributor of OpenOffice is liable.
Way to go SUN, drag us all down with you.
Every contributor from outside of Sun should take a serious look at revoking Sun’s right to use their contributions. They should also issue an ultimatum to Sun: provide OpenOffice.org full protection on par with StarOffice or we quite now.
Personally this is enough to make me wonder why the hell we keep bothering with Java. It’s time that Sun crashed and burned for the kind of two-bit shadiness that has come to epitomize its corporate practices. They seem to be the cross between a computer geek, an enron accountant and a gangster in their worldview.
This is just more incentive for me to learn Cocoa and wxWidgets or Qt. The only reason I still use Java is that I’ve been too lazy to get really deep into a toolkit other than Swing. Now, it’s time to buy some books on Qt and Mac GUI design with Cocoa.
The best thing that could be done for OSS would be for the KDE team to officially make KDE 4.0 a “universal framework” so that KDE’s core libraries can be run on Windows, Linux and OS X so that KOffice could gain a lot of exposure now.
Dude, get a grip. Read carefully – I was copying what the original commenter said. Then I embellished.
“If OO.o wants to simply feature copy another product they should not be exempt from legal action for doing so.”
I expect Corel’s suit against Microsoft Word to follow shortly, then – it’s an obvious ripoff of Wordperfect…
I feel that those companies hold the key, just if they knew how to use it. I’m not sure how to shape the future, but I have an idea.
Honestly, do they like open source or not? They are playing both sides of field at the same time! Are they trying to make Java Desktop the only legal linux distro or what? Talk about biting the hand that feeds you . . .
Fork OpenOffice.org.
That way you don’t have to worry about Sun stealing your copyrighted work. And maybe we can make some real progress to remove any parts that might have legal problems. And create native versions, etc.
OO.o is cool and all, but I don’t trust Sun. Besides, you got to admit the name OpenOffice.org is kinda lame. OOo or OO.o sounds stooopid. How does that reflect on the quality of the software. Marketting plays a huge role in the adoption of software. What’s in the name…
OK now I’m more than pi**ed. I just converted four years of data to Open office and now I’m going to be told that it’s going to be illegal to contribute or to use Open Office? Is this what I’m reading here? Is Microsoft trying to shut down Office Clones and working hard to shut linux down? If so that’s a monopoly of the worse kind.
Most of the comments I’ve read so far seem to imply that people haven’t taken a good look at the legal agreement that was posted as part of the article. So far as I can tell, this particular part of the agreement is only a good deal for Microsoft, as it effectifely allows them to sue Sun and licensees of OpenOffice. From the first quoted paragraph:
Accordingly, Microsoft shall not be foreclosed by this Agreement from seeking damages from Authorized Licensees of Open Office for copies of Open Office made or acquired prior to the Effective Date of this Agreement. Nor shall Microsoft be foreclosed from seeking any damages from Sun, its Affiliates, Authorized Licensees or any third party for any copies of Open Office made or deployed by a User after the Effective Date.
Notice that it expicitly reserves the right to seek damages from Sun, its affiliates, and everyone else. It’s obviously unlikely that MS will actually sue Sun since the entire pretext of the agreement was to end costly legal battles over intellectual property issues, but I would suspect that Sun has a similar clause elsewhere in their agreement for Java-like technologies. I’d bet Sun would like the right to persue claims against Microsoft and companies that deploy .NET technologies should this agreement unravel at a later date. (I suspect, but do not know for sure, that parts of .NET probably infringe upon patents Sun holds for Java).
Also, notice that in the second paragraph, that Microsoft is required to reimburse Sun for damages they suffer as a result of litigation undertaken by Microsoft:
In the event that Microsoft elects to sue or otherwise seek recovery from an Authorized Licensee of Open Office for copies thereof that were made and deployed by a User prior to the Effective Date of this Agreement (“Deployed Copies”), upon request, Microsoft agrees to promptly reimburse Sun for any reimbursable Damages. Sun shall promptly notify Microsoft of any Claim, shall provide Microsoft with the opportunity to take control over and responsibility for the defense and/or settlement of such Claim, and shall reasonably cooperate with Microsoft in litigating the defense of such Claim, including in all discovery and trial preparation efforts.
I believe that this clause has been misinterpreted. In particular, this relates to claims for reimbursable damages as a result of litigation undertaken by Microsoft against Sun, affililates, etc, etc. and requires that Sun cooperate with any effort to settle the claim for reimbursable damages. If Sun refuses to cooperate, then Microsoft has no reasonable obligation to pay reimbursable damages, since there would be little basis for assessment of such damages without Sun’s cooperation. This isn’t a statment against OpenOffice, so much as it is a requirement that Sun cooperate with Microsoft if they intend to seek financial redress for losses related to any litigation that Microsoft might initiate.
This seems to be a codification of what was already true: Sun cannot shield OpenOffice users/licensees from litigation by a third party.
This, of course, isn’t the case for StarOffice, which is why concerned companies would pay to license it from Sun in the first place.
(The following is my own personal opinion and may not necessarily reflect the opinions or views of my employer)
As a follow-up to my previous comment, there is also nothing that expicitly requires that Sun participate with Microsoft in a lawsuit:
Microsoft will not have any obligation to reimburse Reimbursable Damages unless Sun abides by the foregoing requirements. Microsoft shall also be relieved of its obligation to reimburse Reimbursable Damages if Sun breaches any warranty in Section VII.4.
Rather, this states that Sun may not seek any reimbursement from Microsoft in the face of an adverse judment which might not be in its favor, should it fail to cooperate with Microsoft in such legal action.
So, if Sun reasonably believes that a lawsuit undertaken by Microsoft is sufficiently frivolous they’re still free to refuse to cooperate with Microsoft. However, in that situation they may not seek any reimbursable damages as a result of the outcome of the lawsuit. It’s worth noting, though, that if Microsoft were unsuccessful in the hypothetical litigation that Sun chose not to participate in, that there would be no reimbursable damages for Sun to claim. (Since the judgment must be adverse to Sun).
If I had to guess, I would suspect that it would be quite unlikely that Sun would participate in any frivolous lawsuits against OpenOffice, especially since there is no explicit requirement that they do so.
(Again, the following is my own personal opinion and may not necessarily reflect the opinions or views of my employer)
SUN is losing business to Open Sourced Operating Systems. Think hard, who’s side would you be on?
A) Rival taking your business.
B) Rival offering money.
This is just business as usual, of course. While it does make SUN look bad, in the immediate future, it will probably also keeping them afloat until they can get their act together.
Just my thoughts.
“I expect Corel’s suit against Microsoft Word to follow shortly, then – it’s an obvious ripoff of Wordperfect…”
Did Word Perfect appear before Lotus Symphony? as i know lotus symphony was out in 1987. if symphony came out before coral word perfect then it wud be…
coral sues MS, Lotus sues Coral lol
Every contributor from outside of Sun should take a serious look at revoking Sun’s right to use their contributions. They should also issue an ultimatum to Sun: provide OpenOffice.org full protection on par with StarOffice or we quite now.
You can’t do that. You’ll have to fork OO.org and what you’ve already contributed stays.
http://www.openoffice.org/FAQs/faq-licensing.html#usinglicenses
While it does make SUN look bad, in the immediate future, it will probably also keeping them afloat until they can get their act together.
I hope you remember that
1) it was Sun that open sourced StarOffice
2) it is Sun that hires tons of Gnome developers
3) it is Sun that pays most of the Gnome usability studies
4) it is sun that actually does business with Linux by selling servers & services & support for Redhat & Suse distributions.
Sun does alot of business with Open source. Most of the zealots seem to be studends or otherwise people who have no idea of real business life. I work as Software designer and we use lots of Sun’s Fire servers. They happily offer us Linux, support it, and recommend Star/Openoffice.
If you dont know what you are talking about, just… shut up. “Report abuse” or not, I gave my points why I am right and you are wrong.
Just another lame attempt by the media to create another unsubstantiated sensation and make Sun look bad. The headline and phrasing of it is pure FUD (OSnews takes the cake here by blowing it way out of proportion).
“The headline is FUD”
Its indeed sensational. By just saying in the title the agreement between Sun and Microsoft included that OO.o was not part of the agreement you get a much more objective, less sensational title which ain’t so speculative. Its like saying: “GNOME 2.8 to raise market share?” while actually GNOME 2.8 just got released. Nothing wrong with a (good) opinion or column but this article is neither. Its supposed to be news, and in relation to that the headline is seriously flawed. (Yes, its all too common to see headlines like this in sensational newspapers but that doesn’t justify the existence.)
I’m really looking forward to read the actual documents. I’m wondering wether it only includes OO.o or also StarOffice. Another interesting part could be that, if someone wrote a particular FOSS application and copyrights it to Sun, they’re invulnerable to patent attacks. Right? Oh i’m not sure its purely a hypothetic point.
@ Thom: The horror! We agree! ;^)
Out of a miriad of strories that came out on this subject only a few presented the facts as they are abstaining from sensationalism. eWeek is probably a better example:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1646498,00.asp
Nice one for the MS FUD team! They might have had to pay off Sun but now they get to make them look bad to the croud they are desperately trying to hook up with. As an added bonus they get to spread doubt and scare away potential users from OO.o (didn’t you hear you might get sued ?)
It’s a dirty game and they sure know how to play it.
From the paragraph “IV. PROVISIONS RELATING TO OPEN OFFICE” http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/709519/000119312504155723/de…
“Notwithstanding the other provisions of this Agreement, with respect solely to the product developed by Sun and generally known as Open Office”
Star Office is also developed by Sun, but is known as Star Office. However, OO.o is largely based on that. I’m seriously wondering if this would include Star Office or not… but IANAL.
Here’s the Groklaw thread btw. There’s some interesting comments IMO
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20040914044516763
Its a dirty game, but look who Sun chooses to play with. Making deals with the devil might not make you a devil worshipper, but it certainly doesn’t make you a good Christian.
I’m not a Christian and I don’t believe in the Devil. I believe in the GNU philosophy and the FOSS model of software development, support and distribution. I honestly believe this is the best deal a commercial organization can provide their customers. And I’m not convinced Sun agrees with me.
If they did they would recognize that its less important to compete by calling IBM names than to create new, open and stable products. Then compete by marketing their technology, lighting their path and showing us they really know what they are doing. I know Sun knows what they are doing. This is why I continue to constructively criticize their actions when I disagree them. Because for some of us this is not a game. This is our career, our business and our future.
What is the probability of MS suing OOo ya think? They patented that ridiculous XML Schema stuff. Now they can sue OOo for implementing a compatible file reader/writer. Get ready. You think MS is going to just sit back while OOo and Linux takes over the emerging markets and Europe? Don’t hold your breath. Welcome to the new era.
“I hope you remember that
1) it was Sun that open sourced StarOffice
2) it is Sun that hires tons of Gnome developers
3) it is Sun that pays most of the Gnome usability studies
4) it is sun that actually does business with Linux by selling servers & services & support for Redhat & Suse distributions. ”
Have you ever heard the proverb, “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.”
“Most of the zealots seem to be studends or otherwise people who have no idea of real business life.”
‘studends’?
“If you dont know what you are talking about, just… shut up. “Report abuse” or not, I gave my points why I am right and you are wrong. ”
Oh wise one, thank you for your enlightenment. I’ll shut up now.
“If MS is allowed to sue OOo users, not to mention actually winning….I would officially lose faith in mans ability to reason. Period.”
Wait until you see what MS does to Gnome and/or KDE if they continue to pursue this “looks like Windows” routine…
Period.
Koffice doesn’t look like or act like OpenOffice,but now shares the same file format, which provides a clean migration path for everyone’s data, should we ever need to cross that bridge. Koffice has made huge advances in the last year and will be very solid once QT 4.0 comes out as it will improve its onscreen font kernering and a host of other features.
It is imperative that we keep a two-track approach to the Office suite. Putting all of our eggs in one basket is indeed dangerous. So I encourage all Free Software hackers and documentation writers to give the Koffice developers/commmunity a hand,so that we can have a good office suite that isn’t related to Sun’s Staroffice.
I mentioned before how Koffice doesn’t look like Microsoft office because my guess is that Microsoft would use some sort of user-interface behavioral pattern patent to attack OO.org. Either that or the file protocol filters is what Microsoft will use as ammunition.
Here’s to hoping that this doesn’t come to pass.
Wait until you see what MS does to Gnome and/or KDE if they continue to pursue this “looks like Windows” routine…
Period.
—
interfaces cannot be copyrighted. the whole thing has already been tossed out by MS vs Apple lawsuit. MS cannot argue both ways. stop spreading FUD.
besides Gnome now looks more like classic macs than Windows.
I wonder how soon will RedHat take OOo out its distros.
They seems to take out everything which can be patent-encumbered (basically, everything can be), and with each take off its distros become more and more crappy.
No wonder that SuSE is gaining…
“interfaces cannot be copyrighted. the whole thing has already been tossed out by MS vs Apple lawsuit. MS cannot argue both ways. stop spreading FUD.
besides Gnome now looks more like classic macs than Windows”
Function certainly can be copyrighted. MS has it both ways on a regular basis….. So could you with 50 billion in the bank. No FUD to it.
Call me stupid, but IIRC, if a patented feature were added to OO.org, hypothetically speaking, it wouldn’t really matter as Microsoft and SUN Microsystems have a mutual agreement with each other regarding intellectual property, which probably goes onto the mono thing, if they offered mono as well, they *could* (if they wanted) claimed to be the only ones able to ship a third party implementation of Mono without fear of patent claims being made against them.
it wouldn’t really matter as Microsoft and SUN Microsystems have a mutual agreement with each other regarding intellectual property
Yeah, and the point is that it is now clear OpenOffice is the only application excluded from that mutual agreement. Mono has nothing to do with it. Sun doesn’t even develop Mono.
From: Christian Einfeldt <*mail snipped*>
Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2004 13:58:13 -0700
Content-Type: text/plain;
charset=”iso-8859-1″
Subject: [discuss] Sun – Microsoft settlement agreement and OpenOffice.org
On Wednesday 15 September 2004 06:31, Chad Smith wrote:
> John W. Kennedy wrote:
> > There is no “binding agreement” being made on OOo, no matter
> > how it’s spelled. Indeed, all these provisions say is that the
> > agreement between Sun and Microsoft /doesn’t/ apply to OOo.
>
> Exactly. Which is why I don’t understand anyone getting upset
> about this at all. The whole point of those paragraphs was to
> say “none of this has anything to do with Open Office” (Or OOo or
> OpenOffice.org or OpenOffice or whatever…) MS can sue OOo, Sun
> can sue OOo – but that was true six months ago or 2 years ago (if
> OOo existed 2 years ago). This agreement is between Sun and MS –
> it does not involve OpenOffice.org in any way, shape, or form….
>
> There’s no fire here. Move along people – nothing to see here,
> folks – move along….
+1
This quote is from Groklaw:
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20040914044516763
“I think the OpenOffice exception is simply legal recognition that
Sun has no
direct control over OpenOffice, and therefore cannot take direct
responsibility
over its contents. In other words, if Joe Bob Programmer adds code
which
violates MS Patents, Sun has no ability to control him, and
therefore Sun’s
Legal Department does not want to make any promises. (I’m not even
sure the
extent to which Sun *could* be sued regarding OpenOffice, because
of the very
reason that OpenOffice is largely out of their control.)”
“StarOffice, which is based on OpenOffice (XML file formats and
all, from what I
understand), but which IS controlled directly by Sun, does NOT
appear to be
excepted. Since the two projects are largely the same, this is
enough for me to
be comfortable.”
As an attorney, I can tell you that I would be unlikely to allow the
inclusion of a clause in a settlement agreement if I felt that my
client was likely to be harmed by that clause.
By permitting the famous Open Office clause in that agreement the
Sun attorneys did nothing more than give ice in the winter to
Alaskans.
In exchange for that ice, the Sun attorneys clarified that Microsoft
will not attempt to impute the acts of OOo actors to Sun. Meaning,
that Microsoft would have a hard time now bringing a cause of
action against Sun for anything that Chad or Louis or I (etc) would
say or do in regard to OOo. IMHO.
http://www.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=discuss&msgNo=42076