The Internet went all abuzz last week when a report by Todd Bishop of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer posited that Microsoft was keeping open its legal options against licensees of OpenOffice.org. Commonly known as OpenOffice, the software is a freely downloadable open source productivity suite that constitutes a significant portion of Sun’s commercially offered StarOffice. It also exemplifies the threat that the open-source movement poses to Microsoft.
OpenOffice: A legal Trojan horse–but for whom?
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Eugenia Loli
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See these two articles:
Sender ID Dead for Now and SUN-MS Agreement RE Open Office
Tuesday, September 14 2004 @ 04:45 AM EDT
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20040914044516763
and
Sun denies report it is ‘selling out’ OpenOffice
http://software.newsforge.com/print.pl?sid=04/09/15/213216
It created a lot of interesting discussion on the OpenOffice.org email lists.
But since Software Patents are not a particularly sane form of “Intellectual Property Rights” protection, because they cover the kitchen sink and the family cat as well as “whatever it is the poem was about”, I don’t feel under any sort of threat. Software Patents are Monty-Pythonesque forms of corporate corruption, and the only reason people don’t laugh as they should, is because the Legal Eagles – or Vultures – interest in their pound of flesh, is not as funny as the gibberings and ravings of some (King Lear-esque) CEO on the blasted heath of his company’s former fortunes.
1. Obviously MS would keep all of their “options open”.
2. MS does own a ton of patents.
3. Some will eventually be enforced; and found to be valid.
4. Sun isn’t in a situation to “deal” with MS on any level.
5. Guessing what is going to happen a few years down the road is a complete waste of everyones time and nearly as much bandwidth as it takes to feed it.
Maybe it’s time for KDE based Distros to look at setting the Office standard with KOffice and Gnome Office for Gnome based Distros. They are faster, better integrated, and work very well IMHO.
Umm, why?
1) there really aren’t any legal troubles right now for OO. This latest thing was just stirred up because people took notice that Microsoft and Sun’s agreement exempted anything against OO
2) the KDE/Gnome offerings are anywhere on par with OpenoOffice
yeah great, so what are we to do with the plethora of OO.o users on windows? what about OO.o users on the Mac? you want Koffice on those systems? help ranger rick out on his kOffice port to QT Mac and get one going in windows.
The same is said about OpenOffice when compared to MS Office. I can’t speak for Gnome Office, but KOffice does everything I need it to do, and has export filters for OpenOffice. As for the Mac, I’m sure it can be ported over, isn’t the Safari Browser based of the KDE Browser?
Though Im not surprised by Microsoft’s role, Im very dissapointed by SUN. Very! What a stab in the back, just to save its own @ss, SUN just screwed the whole open-source community!!!!
SHAME ON YOU SUN! SHAME ON YOU!!
In reality, as the article states, I don’t see Microsoft suing end users, it would be a very bad and stupid PR move. But rather it serving as a warning, a threat, to Linux distros.
What’s going to happen is the open-source will over come this, either by removing the thornes from OpenOffice, or switching to a better alternative.
All in all, we will get through this and anything else Microsoft dishes, and eventually Microsoft with SUN be eating our dust!!!
** In a world without walls and fences, who needs Windows and Gates?! **
I tend to think that this whole thing is FUD. Not on purpose, but the result. I can understand why the sun/ms deal wouldn’t include openoffice.org. The deal is for several years(10?) and since what goes into oo.o is out of Sun’s hands, if something which was patented(and legit,it could happen) by Microsoft was in openoffice, it wouldn’t be covered in the agreement. However, this would allow for Sun to continue to use openoffice.org as a base for Star Office, without having patent problems of their own. The whole thing seems reasonable to me.
I don’t understand what is all the buzz. The legal situation of OOo hasn’t changed at all, it is the same after and before the MS-SUN agreement.
Sun hasn’t given a crap about the open source community in a long while. The only reason why they released some of StarOffice (now known as OpenOffice) is to deliberately trojan the project if you want my honest opinion. Sun, Apple & Microsoft now realise that their reign, as software providers is coming to an end, and that open source software is a much more efficient, accurate and better way of developing software. These big players don’t like that because they don’t want to adapt to the new rules because it means ‘less’ money for them (my heart really bleeds, NOT). I wouldn’t touch a Sun product if you paid me.
Dave W Pastern
Sun hasn’t given a crap about the open source community in a long while.
If you’re a member of the open source community, let this be a lesson to you – don’t ever trust a closed-source company with a profit motive. You’ll get screwed everytime
OO.o formats are open standard, right? So if there does end up being a problem, we’ll at least have the files we work on in a standard file.
If you are a member of the closed source community (Sun), let this be a lesson to you. Don’t ever waste your time giving code you paid developers to create to the open source community. All they will do is whine.
“Would Microsoft sue OpenOffice licensees? Microsoft hasn’t said yes, but it hasn’t said no, either. Most experts consider such legal action unlikely. Some believe it would be a PR disaster for Microsoft to start bullying the open-source community. Others believe that it could draw the attention of trustbusters. Egger believes it’s not in Microsoft’s business interests.”
“Although suing users or distributors of OpenOffice and upsetting the European Union might not be in Microsoft’s business interests, some of Redmond’s actions on other fronts create reasonable doubts about the company’s intentions when it comes to intellectual property and open source. The last seven days have been telling.”
“Bishop’s report in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer states that “Microsoft declined to say whether it is contemplating any patent-related litigation against OpenOffice licensees, or on what grounds it would base any suit of that sort.”
All this leads up to tatics to impose fear on the community. This would be a political nighmare for mircosoft to sue a community of users. They are using just enough leverage to force bussiness’ from using alternative office suites.
SUN carries a clever strategy, first with releasing StarOffice to the OSS community, and now with the MS agreement.
StarOffice was in a dead end. So, they give it away to the community, and as a result, they have excellent programmers for free. And now, they get protected from litigation with the agreement with Microsoft. They can include the OOo improvements in the next StarOffice releases without fear. Excellent.
For the home users, they can use OOo as until now. Business and organizations, the ones who pays, might opt to buy a litigation-free office package. MS is confident that customers will buy their package, as usual. SUN hopes to get some customers, being MS option so expensive.
RedHat cannot go only with OOo for their enterprise product. Maybe pay license to SUN and include StarOffice?
Yes, I think the agreement is FUD, so business and organizations buy licensed products.
All too true.
The only thing in OOO that Microsoft can probably go after is the Office Import/Export filters. Obviously that is part of Microsofts IP.
IMHO if M$ can sue OO with patents it is also can sue KOffice, Gnome Office, Siag Office, and others.
Legal pressure: IMHO without Office import/export the open or commercial alternatives of M$Office are practically unuseable, because the word doc and the excel xls formats de facto standards.
Afaik, you can’t patent file formats so that’s not really in question as a result of the deal. And if MS _could_ do something like that, then they’d have nipped competition for office in the bud…right?
I Don’t Mind the mess between Sun and the Gate!
Will continue using OO.
Dont think MS will come and sue end users!
Will they?
That is what this story is. What Sun has done is to cover its back, and they got 2bn from MS so you should expect this. This means nothing for OOo
I sure hope so.
Microsoft has been issued a patent for the double click. There is a whole lot more that microsoft can do to affect project. Has anyone been given a patent for the “save” button?
“Much ado about nothing”
Not true. MS is flexing their legal muscle, by doing so, it will slow down the adoption of Open Source Software. The mere threat of leagal action can persuade risk averse business from adopting any open source plans. What good is an operating system without a functional productivity/office suite? It is of no use as a desktop replacement in business’.
Are there any other Office Suites that can compete with MS Office or OO.o? Sorry, not in my opinion.
So correct, so correct!
The funny thing is that the stupid public statements they’re making now…about how they will still support the opensource community… and how they still believe in the struggle crap…
That really gets me mad! These guys are really disgusting, they screwed us over, but we shouldnt take it personal….get a life…SUN…get a life
** In a world without walls and fences, who needs Windows and Gates?! **
Can the community that is now developping OpenOffice come up with a new licence? It would be the same except for 1 new line that excludes Sun from using the improvements made by the community. That would teach them a lesson. That way, they’d be on their own with their StarOffice and their nice deal with MS.
they also have a patent on using the tab key in a browser.
The next revolution will not be blogged as the people rise up and take back their keystrokes.
Sun has a trump card that could be played if M$ tries sueing oo users — they can sell a minimal/non-support version of Sun Office for $1.00 or something. That should remove the lawsuit threat, and the software is essentially the same except with Sun’s name on it. Some may question whether Sun would do it, since they stand to gain something by selling more expensive licenses. While this may be the case, I think there’s been enough bad blood between Sun & MS to make them do it if need be, and they seem at least somewhat sensitive to user wrath. Besides, they can still sell versions with full support, which is most likely where they make their money anyway on Sun Office. Increasing the number of users just increases the likelyhood of more customers paying for support.
“If you are a member of the closed source community (Sun), let this be a lesson to you. Don’t ever waste your time giving code you paid developers to create to the open source community. All they will do is whine.”
Huh? Sun didn’t develop StarOffice, they bought it for a pittance from a software author in Germany and called it Sun StarOffice 5. They did nothing with it, and StarOffice only improved AFTER they released the source code and derived StarOffice 6 from OpenOffice.org 1.0.
In my opinion, OpenOffice.org should have a fork created to remove all StarOffice code yet keep the same useability and compatibility.
“The only thing in OOO that Microsoft can probably go after is the Office Import/Export filters. Obviously that is part of Microsofts IP. ”
No, *obviously, you do not have a clue, that is the only thing that is obvious from this sort of very dangerous statements.
Don’t speak of that which you clearly do not understand. Interoperability is protected by copyright law as is reversed engineering.
How do you think that Microsoft Office was able to import Wordperfect documents in the early days?
Have a patent on Ctrl-Alt-Del? How can any MS product function without that? LOL
Anonymous: If you are a member of the closed source community (Sun), let this be a lesson to you. Don’t ever waste your time giving code you paid developers to create to the open source community. All they will do is whine.
HagerR15: Sun didn’t develop StarOffice, they bought it for a pittance from a software author in Germany and called it Sun StarOffice 5. They did nothing with it, and StarOffice only improved AFTER they released the source code and derived StarOffice 6 from OpenOffice.org 1.0.
Not too much of a difference really, either way it was their intellectual property and they gave it to the community. All this “whining” about Sun (historically and today) basicly amounts to one thing, “You don’t do everything we tell you to do, so we’re pissed.”
I mean seriously here, a lot of people say Sun is no friend of OSS, but since when do friends see eye-to-eye on every issue? Since when does a friend (Sun) always do what they are told to do by their friend (OSS community)? And sometimes friends can be friends with people who are not friends with the rest of their friends (Microsoft). (Also note that members of a community don’t always see eye-to-eye on every issue, etc. either.)
The way I see it, Sun may or may not be planning to betray the OSS community, but as far as I’m concerned the OSS community wasn’t and isn’t looking for “friends” anyway.
Deletomn, I completely agree with you. I just didn’t like the way Anonymous made it sound as though Sun put in so much time, money and effort into StarOffice and now should regret giving the code to the open source community.
To me this is a non-issue. Sun was wise to protect itself. I may not like it, but they’ve got more to protect than software ideology. And if Microsoft decides to kill OpenOffice.org through the legal system, there will always be something to fill in the void. WordPerfect Office 12 for Linux, anyone?
I have said this before and will say it again now.
The open source community needs to start patenting everything that we feel we did first and I mean everything. Then release these under a license that is basically a free to open source and those that release their patens to free to open source. All others must negate a use cost.
Doing this will place many proprietary software venders in a bind unless they are willing to trade the use of their patens for those that are in the Open Source Pool. Further filing all these patens will cause many cross claims as well. This will greatly increase the cost and difficulty of enforcement of patens in general. This will therefore make using patens to block software development an unreliable and dangerous action, in that it could well backfire. As a proprietary software provider, not only could you lose a case because a cross paten claim proves to be more valid than your own – but you may find that you have stepped on patens that belong to people in the OS movement. The OS movement has proven that when attacked it is far worse than stirring up a hornets nest.
Fork OO, replace the StarOffice code and then license it to screw Sun. Probably end up with a better product removing the StarOffice code anyway as it was bloody clunky and resource intensive.
Life goes on and MS can not sue the planet.
Interoperability cannot be protected by copyright law. That would simply mean monopoly.
Oh and just try chasing all the developers around the world.
good idea, but personaly – software patents should be given the boot. If we must have software patents, the the best case scenario is a *maximum* term of 5 years. The IT and software industry moves exceptionally quick and five years is an eternity. Generally speaking most 5 year old code is well and truly dead and has been replaced by newer functional code.
Copyrights should be given the boot as well, reduced to a maximum of 25 years, period. No ifs, no buts, no maybes. The only reason that copyright was extended in the US was to keep safe a ‘national icon’ – Mickey Mouse. It really shows how fickle the US politicians and corporations are.
Dave W Pastern
I don’t see any big conspiracy here. I see shrewd business.
As the article indicated, Sun probably didn’t have anything to trade to Microsoft to indemnify OpenOffice users. Nor, since OpenOffice itself doesn’t bring in direct revenue to Sun, is it in Sun’s interest for millions to use OpenOffice rather than StarOffice.
Meanwhile of course Sun gets the development effort free on OpenOffice. Good for them.
Microsoft – I’m just betting – likes the situation just as it is. I don’t think they really want to sue anyone, but they like the chilling factor of the uncertainty. In a way it’s the best of all worlds for them. Preserving the uncertainty stops widespread adoptation by business, while not entailing the PR disaster of actually suing OO.org users. Keeps any potential rise (if it’s even likely or possible that desktop Linux is or will be a threat) of desktop Linux in corporations at a sluggish, or stagnant, pace. I think until issues about free software and the law are resolved, the smart companies will cynically exploit the uncertainty, and they will reap cash rewards for it.
Win win win for Sun and Microsoft all around. I don’t think anyone wants this forced to a head. I’m not sure if legal issues regarding open source or free software, being forced to a head, will be beneficial or positive for users of that software, at least here in the United States. I sincerely hope that Europe continues a more progressive stance in this regard, and applaud governments which do so.
As for Sun, I couldn’t ever think of them as, oh, philanthropists to the open source world. If supporting open source or free software makes them money, they’ll support it. If not, they’ll withdraw it in a heartbeat.
Though Solaris for Intel was not free or open source in the past, many people remember the “educational” licensing some years ago when you could get it essentially for free. Someone decided this was losing them money and ended it, and they just reintroduced it, I assume, for business reasons as well. I’m guessing they wanted some new enthusiasm for Solaris to arise out of the free software world, since, most students and the like were probably growing up with Linux or one of the BSDs, imperilling some of the future enthusiasm for Solaris. These students will go on to work for companies and probably have some say in the platforms they use. The point is, ultimately, this is about dollars, as it always has been.
This singular act, to me, seems to suggest that, as always, it’s about cash, and an increasingly short term view of business, especially with Sun’s problems. At the end of the day, it’s all about attracting investors, and anything which does that is likely to become a business practice. I’ve never believed that IBM, Novell, Sun, or other companies really care about free or open source software the way the free software world does, where it goes beyond the practical. (For most people it does – the emotional response to the SCO suit suggests it does. It does for me anyway).
It’s years beyond the point where this makes me angry. I just accept it as I accept the changing of night to day. It’s a fact of life. Corporations are about money.