Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards

[Alexandre Dulaunoy]

http://www.advogato.org/article/453.html

Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards
Posted 4 Apr 2002 by atai (Journeyer)

In its continuous battle against the GPL, Microsoft is trying a new 
tactic, a combination of patent claims and licensing of technical 
standards. In the "Royalty-Free CIFS Technical Reference License 
Agreement", Microsoft defines the GNU GPL as an "IPR Impairing License" 
and requires companies not to distribute their implementations of the CIFS 
specification "in any manner that would subject such Company 
Implementation to the terms of an IPR Impairing License." This attack is 
clearly aimed at the successful GPLed CIFS implementation, Samba.

The license defines

1.4 "IPR Impairing License" shall mean the GNU General Public License, the 
GNU Lesser/Library General Public License, and any license that requires 
in any instance that other software distributed with software subject to 
such license (a) be disclosed and distributed in source code form; (b) be 
licensed for purposes of making derivative works; or (c) be 
redistributable at no charge.

and

1.6 "Necessary Claims" shall mean those claims of a patent or patent 
application, including without limitation, United States Patents Nos. 
5,265,261 and 5,437,013, which (a) are owned, controlled or sublicenseable 
by Microsoft without payment of a fee to an unaffiliated third party; and 
(b) are necessarily infringed by implementing the CIFS communication 
protocol as set forth in the Technical Reference, wherein a claim is 
necessarily infringed only when there are no technically reasonable 
alternatives to such infringement.

And it requires

3.3 IPR Impairing License Restrictions. For reasons, including without 
limitation, because (i) Company does not have the right to sublicense its 
rights to the Necessary Claims and (ii) Company's license rights hereunder 
to Microsoft's intellectual property are limited in scope, Company shall 
not distribute any Company Implementation in any manner that would subject 
such Company Implementation to the terms of an IPR Impairing License. 


-- 
Alexandre Dulaunoy		 http://www.foo.be/ AD993-RIPE			http://www.ael.be/
"People who fight may lose.  People who do not fight have already lost."
  - Bertolt Brecht


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