FSFE Newsletter

[Rui Miguel Silva Seabra]

On Mon, Jan 07, 2008 at 07:18:36PM +0000, Alex Hudson wrote:
> 
> On Mon, 2008-01-07 at 18:05 +0000, Rui Miguel Silva Seabra wrote:
> > Even if it's a one-time payment royalty, it's a royalty on software
> > patents which implies respecting them.
> > 
> > If this view from the result is incorrect, please tell me how it is so,
> > for this comes straight from Kroes's statements and Microsoft's
> > agreements.
> 
> I'm not sure that's correct - if the new foundation had paid money to
> Microsoft because of patents, surely there ought to be a patent license
> or similar to cover the developers? An NDA is just that - it's not a
> patent license, and it doesn't protect you from being sued over patents.
> 
> Indeed, the correct title of the agremeent is:
> 
> "Microsoft Work Group Server Protocol Program License Agreement (No
> Patents)"
> 
> - http://samba.org/samba/PFIF/PFIF_agreement.pdf

That's the: "if you don't want to license patents but to develop under
an NDA" agreement.

> The payment is for access to the documentation. Call it trade secrets,
> or whatever, it doesn't really matter - patents don't really seem to
> come into it.

Licensing patents doesn't come into it. It doesn't mean that there are
no patents involved (actually, the wording seems to sugest there are
patents involved -- not just those of "third parties").

> Personally, if the documentation is good and correct, I think €10k is a
> bit of a bargain - I bet it would have cost Microsoft a lot more than
> that to put together, and I bet a number of companies have paid a lot
> more than that to gain access to it.

You get to access, under very controlled conditions, some very hard to
read documentation which you will not be able to talk about with anyone.

Also be sure to read 5.5 (the Orwellian please erase your brain if you
have photographic memory):

	An Authorized Person’s memory will be considered to be unaided if
	such Authorized Person has not intentionally memorized the
	Confidential Information for the purpose of retaining and
	subsequently using or disclosing it.

Rui

-- 

Today is Pungenday, the 8th day of Chaos in the YOLD 3174
+ No matter how much you do, you never do enough -- unknown
+ Whatever you do will be insignificant,
| but it is very important that you do it -- Gandhi
+ So let's do it...?