From: "Brian Berg" <bab@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: July 21, 2004 12:27:54 PM PDT
To: "Dewayne Hendricks" <dewayne@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Microsoft and open source: more info
Reply-To: "Brian Berg" <bab@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Dewayne,
Here's more info re: the "Campbell Memo". Brian
A 2-year-old internal HP email, the "Campbell Memo" was recently
disclosed, and asserts that "Microsoft will soon be launching a
patent-based legal offensive against Linux and other free software
projects."
One or more of the email's addressees may be familiar to members of
this list. HP has responded dismissively, but not with a denial.
The excerpt below is taken from the memo's full text, which is
available at:
http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=04/07/19/2315200
===================================================================
From: Campbell, Gary [mailto:gary.campbell@xxxxxx]
Sent: Monday, June 03, 2002 7:27 PM
To: Stallard, Scott J; CTO Office Directs; Chaffin, Janice; Denzel,
Nora; McDowell, Mary; Elias, Howard; Fink, Martin R; Becker, Rick
(ISS);
Beyers, Joe
Cc: Blackmore, Peter; Robison, Shane
Subject: Microsoft Patent Cross License - Open Source Software Impact
Microsoft Patent Cross License - Open Source Software Impact
Today we agreed on a new patent cross license with Microsoft that
protects HP in the short term, but it has significant impact on HP's
use of Open Source software in the long term.
More importantly, we now understand that Microsoft is about to launch
legal action against the industry for shipping Open Source software
that may force us out of using certain popular Open Source products.
We need to create a cross-HP staffed program to understand the
implication by product group and to provide the short term and long
term steerage. I'll hook up with Martin tomorrow and start planning
next steps for a cross-HP planning team.
Background:
HP is we believe, protected by our previous cross license for patents
filed by Microsoft up to June of 2001, to ship open source software
that violates Microsoft patents that was developed or shipped prior to
today. This means that we can freeze on today's open source
functionality and we are protected.
...
Microsoft's Intentions:
Microsoft could attack Open Source Software for patent infringements
against OEMs, Linux distributors, and least likely open source
developers. They are specifically upset about Samba, Apache and
Sendmail. We believe Samba is first, and they will attempt to prove it
isn't covered by prior patent cross as a so called "clone" product
carve out in the previous agreement.
...
Mutually Assured Destruction Clause:
But it probably doesn't matter, because the GPL license has a mutually
assured destruction clause in section 7, if anyone is sued over a
patent infringement, no one is licensed under the GPL to ship GPL-ed
products. This is probably what Microsoft intends to do.
Basically Microsoft is going to use the legal system to shut down open
source software, and for all of its cleverness, the GPL makes it
fairly easy unless a white knight steps in.
Best guess on the timing, this fall when they are finished settling
with DOJ and the states.
...
===================================================================
To follow up on the above exceprts, browsing the USPTO web site
reveals that Microsoft is the assignee on two patents filed after June
1, 2001, now issued, and on three patent applications filed on exactly
June 1, 2001, and still pending. The pending applications collectively
address distributed computing scenarios, in which several currently
topical technologies might be impacted, such as, "grid computing",
IBM's "autonomic computing", "web services", UDDI, DCOM, and CORBA.
The patent applications are:
1 20030110416 Methods and systems for creating and communicating with
computer processes
2 20020112058 Peer networking host framework and hosting API
3 20010051981 Methods and systems for discovering object-exchange
resources on a network