2003: SCO vs the world

In 2003 SCO Group claimed a cluster of legal complaints about Unix and Linux source code:

What alleged IP violations SCO claimed? ¿What companies were involved?
SCO claimed that IBM had contributed part of SCO's Unix code to te codebase of the Linux Operating System. IBM would have done so without SCO's authorization, incurring on the violation of SCO's intellectual property.
    Moreover this, SCO sent letters to members of the Global 500 companies list to warn them about these claims, to prevent them from using Linux because of the liability that could mean for them.
It was, obviously, an attempt from SCO to stop increasing popularity of GNU/Linux Operating System.
    Apart from IBM and SCO, claims and counter-claims made by both sides escalated. IBM and Linux distributor Red Hat started legal action against SCO. Meanwhile, SCO sued other companies, asNovell, AutoZone and DaimlerChrysler.

How the SCO litigation was resolved? What was the final verdict?
A2) Litigation was not resolved once, with resulting final verdict following next timeline:
August 10, 2007: Judge ruled that Novell, not SCO, was the rightful owner of the copyrights covering the Unix Operating System.
September 27, 2007: Same judge administratively closed the case of SCO vs. IBM due to the fact that SCO went to bankrupt on September 14, 2007 [1].
August 24, 2009: US Court of Appeals reversed the portion of the August 10, 2007 district court summary judgment in SCO v. Novell. As a result, SCO was permitted to pursue its claim of ownership of the Unix copyrights at trial [2].
March 30, 2010: the jury returned a verdict in SCO v. Novell, finding again that Novell owns the copyrights [3].

Searching the Web, an "Open Letter" from Darl McBride, CEO of SCO, dated December 4, 2003, can be found. What does the letter argue about copyleft scheme and GPL license?
This Open Letter was written by SCO's CEO, Darl Mc Bride, on December 2004 [4].
On this letter, Darl Mc Bride alleged that GPL supposes a violation of the United States Constitution, and, in particular, to the Section 8 of Article One, that asserts that:

"Congress shall have Power ... to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."

    From SCO's CEO perspective, previous article lead in 1976 to the Copyright Act, in order to provide copy protection in technology products:

"This Constitutional declaration gave rise to our system of copyrights and patents. Congress has enacted several iterations of the Copyright Act. The foundation for current copy protection in technology products is grounded in the 1976 Copyright Act".

  In that same letter, he states, in a lax and vague justification, that GPL is against the United States Constitution, in particular against Section 8 of Article One, due to next reason:

"The software license adopted by the GPL is called "copy left" by its authors. This is because the GPL has the effect of requiring free and open access to Linux (and other) software code and prohibits any proprietary use thereof. As a result, the GPL is exactly opposite in its effect from the "copy right" laws adopted by the US Congress and the European Union."

Were GPL and free software licenses was threatened in any way? Why? (or why not?)
GPL is, despite its "Copy-Left" nature, a Copyright license. GPL license is, in fact, an individual contract to achieve copyright. Lawerence Lessig gives a justified description of why SCO's position is completely wrong: [5]

"The GNU GPL is a copyright license. It is the creation not of a government, but an individual. There is no way that an individual can violate the constitution merely by writing a contract. And the argument that he can reveals that the author has no understanding of the way constitutional law functions."

Moreover this, legal minds behind GPL, seemed in the meantime to be not concerned about SCO's claims.
Eben Moglen, who was charged with GPL enforcementa by FSF, asserted in February, 2004: [6]

"I believe the constitutionality attack on the GPL is not a tenable legal argument but is rather a public relations argument."

He also stated that, regarding Copyright laws, and the possibility for an author to waive copyrights:

"The existing copyright law is constitutional and our license, which fully observes all the requirements that the copyright law places upon it, is also presumptively constitutional."

To summarize, SCO claims were not correctly justified, so GPL and free software, from my perspective, were not threatened. In fact, GPL and free software authors and lawyers showed no worry about SCO's claims and, of course, had no problem to recognize it.

References:
[1] http://groklaw.net/article.php?story=2007092110013091
[2] http://www.groklaw.net/pdf/AppealRuling.pdf
[3] http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20100330152829622
[4] http://www.sco.com/copyright
[5] http://lessig.org/blog/2004/01/is_the_gnu_gpl_unconstitutiona.html
[6] http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/33121.html

Free Software vs. Software Patents

Traditionally, software patents have been considered harmful for free/open source software.
There are some causes of why software patents are harmful for FLOSS projects. Some of them are exposed below:

- The main reason: FLOSS projects are based, among other facts, on being "Open Source". Source code is provided, as they are based on the freedom for users to inspect and modify the code. This fact mades them more vulnerable to patented software detection compared to privative / close software.
- Besides this, software is basically, depending on the program complexity, on a great variety of other software components that are used together. Many of this commonly third party software that other components take advantage of could be patentable, and, for this reason, free software projects, due to its community based orientation, would make them non-viable, as they do not have same economic resources compared to the great software industry components.
- Another important reason against patents is the fact that they are normally tied to a tedious process based on a National Office that must issue them in response to an application. Meanwhile, copyright exists from the beginnng, and authors can select copyright terms with no further action. The fact that software is a very dynamic industry (even more dinamic if talking about FLOSS projects), make the idea of software patents to be completely against this dynamic character.

Different techniques and strategies that free software community have implemented (via FLOSS licenses and others) for defending against patents:
A) The main strategy against patents in FLOSS projects is including anti patent clauses.
Among the different FLOSS licenses, GPLv3, LGPLv3, MPL and Apache 2.0, for example, contain patent clauses with particular actions against patterns, including [1]:
- Grant of patent rights:
  1) GPLv3: Distribution of modified version grant explicit patent license for the whole program.
       GPLv3 contains a complete Section (Section 11) to clarify Patent royalty-free licensing:

 "Each contributor grants you a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free patent license under the contributor's essential patent claims, to make, use, sell, offer for sale, import and otherwise run, modify and propagate the contents of its contributor version.

  In the following three paragraphs, a “patent license” is any express agreement or commitment, however denominated, not to enforce a patent (such as an express permission to practice a patent or covenant not to sue for patent infringement). To “grant” such a patent license to a party means to make such an agreement or commitment not to enforce a patent against the party" [2]

  2) Apache License 2.0: Grant explicit patent license as well, but only for the changes made by a certain distributor.

- Retalliation: Meaning that the granted rights from anyone who initiates litigation shall be retracted.
An example of this kind of grant is contained in MPL 2.0:

  "If You initiate litigation against any entity by asserting a patent infringement claim (excluding declaratory judgment actions, counter-claims, and cross-claims) alleging that a Contributor Version directly or indirectly infringes any patent, then the rights granted to You by any and all Contributors for the Covered Software under Section 2.1 of this License shall terminate" [3]

To summarize, FLOSS licences can solve a small bunch of patent related problems in two terms:
1) By requiring that distributors of a software package give recipients a licence to use any necessary patents.
2) By making patent aggression less attractive, revoking patent rights that a litigator received through the FLOSS licence.

References:
[1] http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Patent_clauses_in_software_licences
[2] http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html
[3] http://www.mozilla.org/MPL/2.0

1998: Netscape announce release of its Navigator as Free Software

On 1998 Netscape announced its proposal to release one of the most important product on the Enterprise as Free Software.
Text of the announcement can be checked on next link:

http://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2008/01/22/january-22-1998-the-beginning-of-mozilla/

The announcement is a declaration of the next Netscape Communicator version (5.0) to be released as free software, by the end quarter of 1998. What expected Netscape with this action?

As Jim Barksdale affirms: "We can ignite the creative energies of the entire Net community and fuel unprecedented levels of innovation in the browser market." From his point of view, it has benefits for three parts involved, the Community, Netscape, as well as Netscape's customers: "Our customers can benefit from world-class technology advancements; the development community gains access to a whole new market opportunity; and Netscape’s core businesses benefit from the proliferation of the market-leading client software".

It is, somehow, a very aggressive movement, with a high consideration on the Community developers on the net, taking into account that distribution will be under one of the most popular license, the GPL. Next paragraph asserts:
"The company will handle free source distribution with a license which allows source code modification and redistribution and provides for free availability of source code versions, building on the heritage of the GNU Public License (GPL), familiar to developers on the Net."  

Behind this decision there is also the Enterprise reality in terms of business: "Netscape has successfully shifted its business over the past year toward enterprise software sales and to revenues from its Web site business, and away from standalone client revenues. In the third quarter of 1997, standalone client revenues represented approximately 18 percent of Netscape’s revenue, with the rest coming from enterprise software, services and the Web site.

Preliminary results for the fourth quarter of 1997, which Netscape announced January 5, show standalone client revenues decreased to approximately 13 percent in the fourth quarter. In the fourth quarter of 1996 by comparison, standalone client revenue represented approximately 45 percent of Netscape’s revenue."

So, in a period of two years, Netscape had changed its business toward the enterprise software sales, the services and its Web site, meanwhile, the business quota related to standalone users had decreased dramatically. For this reason, this movement also implies changing the strategy to try to consolidate the Trademark for standalone users, although it is cost-less, with a very different strategy compared to its competitors, mainly Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

 The time line from Netscape announcement to Firefox first public release was as follows:  

1998: the Mozilla project is created as Netscape released the browser suite source code. In a year, new community members had already contributed, either adding new functionality, or enhancing existing one.
The Mozilla project become bigger and Community members got involved and expanded the original mission, creating a variety of browsers, tools, and different projects.  

2002: Mozilla 1.0 was released, with many improvements to the browser, email client and other applications in the tool suite. The major issue was that nobody used it, as 90% of Internet users were browsing with Internet Explorer.
The somehow unknown Phoenix browser (later known as Firefox) was released from the Mozilla community with one specific goal: provide the better browsing experience to the widest possible set of people.  

2003: Mozilla project created Mozilla Foundation, for promoting openness, innovation and opportunity on the Internet, focusing on Firefox and Thunderbird to demonstrate it.  

2004: Firefox 1.0 is released. It became a big success, as in less than a year, it was downloaded over 100 million times. So, the Mozilla Foundation is a clear example that commercial companies can benefit by collaborating in open source projects.
Obviously, Netscape achieved its goal, as Community developed a very successful navigator from its source code.

References:  
Netscape moves to Free Software:
http://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2008/01/22/january-22-1998-the-beginning-of-mozilla/ 
History of the Mozilla Project:
http://www.mozilla.org/about/history.html

Free Software within 10 years

- How do you imagine free software in year 2022?
    IMHO, Free Software will have a stronger presence in Software Industry, if possible, than now.  Important nowadays Free Software Projects (Linux kernel, Apache Web Server, Firefox Navigator), will continue with a higher presence in the different Software Industry Markets, under the same name or after evolving to different projects, but with the same roots that made them to consolidate.
Android will be the main Operating System used, taking into account that no Personal Computer will exist (as we know them nowadays), as Mobile Platforms (that will be much than smartphones) will be used at home attached to docking stations.
    With Android as main Operating System, a bunch of free software applications will exist, in the same way as now there is a huge variety of them for the different Linux distributions.
Main IT device will be a very powerful Mobile Platform which will allow all user necessities. This small Mobile Platform will contain "home-peripherals" (Television included) for this platform to provide Multimedia-Home Services (Gaming, Video Conference, Films, etc.).
    Google's Operating System will be Market leader, and Google will invest even higher for the Operating System itself as well as applications to be Free Software.
So, in general, Google will hold up to 70-80 % of Operating System Market. In IT devices with Android as Operating System, 90 % of Software Applications will be Free Software and, around 10 %, will be proprietary software.
    Regarding Software production models, Free Software model is an evidence that, agile implementation methods are successful. Linux Kernel project is a good example. It can provide up to a pair of versions in a day, so it is based on small but constant incremental changes. In fact, it contains tens of millions of lines of code, but still continues producing versions without collapsing, so it necessary has to use a good software production model.
    Despite this, it has also produced enhancements on other related industries, such as Software Configuration Management tools, with the occurrence of GIT.
So, Free Software Projects are, somehow, pioneers on innovation related to software production. And, as their nature is to be projects with a big bunch of developers spread around the world, will continue to be successful along the time.

Please , Leave your comments about your view on Free Software within 10 years. !