In the alliance between Microsoft and Novell, both companies' large patent portfolios have become
a major issue of concern among the free and open source community. The fear is that those patents
(in other words, the idea represented by code and not the code itself) could be used to claim a tax
on every piece of open source software that is freely distributed today.
To deal with the patent issue, the recently released GNU General Public License 3 (GPLv3) includes
wording that restricts anyone who delivers software covered under the GPL to exercise their patent
rights against those who use or redistribute that software. The hope of the Free Software Foundation
(
http://gplv3.fsf·org
) is that this will definitively answer the patent issues that might restrict
free redistribution of GPL code.
On another front in the patent wars, the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure
(
www·ffii·org
) is a group "dedicated to establishing a free market in information technology,
by the removal of barriers to competition." The FFII maintains an excellent FAQ page to answer
questions surrounding software patents and how they threaten innovation:
www·ffii·org/Frequently_Asked_Questions_about_software_patents
Other Potentially Litigious Issues
Particularly contentious legal issues surround audio and video software. In Red Hat Linux 8, Red
Hat, Inc. removed support for MP3 and DVD players because of questions about licensing associ-
ated with those music and movie formats. Red Hat's advice at the time was to download and install
the players yourself for personal use. Red Hat didn't want to distribute those players because com-
panies owning patents related to certain audio and video encoders might ask Red Hat to pay licens-
ing fees for distributing those players (see
www·redhat·com/advice/speaks_80mm.html
).
To deal with the issue of running proprietary codecs in Linux, Linux distributions such as Fedora,
Ubuntu, and others are offering tools to connect their users to sites where they can find legal
codecs to use with Linux. See Chapter 8 for information on getting legal software for playing pro-
prietary music, video, and other multimedia content.
Can Linux Really Run on Everything
from Handhelds to Supercomputers?
Linux is extraordinarily scalable and runs on everything from handhelds to supercomputers.
Features in the Linux 2.6 kernel have been particularly aimed at making the kernel easier to port
to embedded Linux systems, as well as large multiprocessor, enterprise-quality servers. Yellow Dog
Linux even offers a port of its Linux distribution that runs on Sony PlayStation 3 gaming consoles.
Will Microsoft Crush Linux?
As noted earlier, Microsoft has shifted its fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) rhetoric against using
Linux to FUD about using any Linux other than Novell's SUSE. Any Linux user or developer who
doesn't make an agreement with Microsoft to use Microsoft's as-yet-unnamed intellectual property
that is in Linux has, in the words of Microsoft President Steve Ballmer, "an undisclosed balance
sheet liability."
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Starting with Linux
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