Open Source Giants Resort to Name Calling

Jonathan Schwartz, President and COO of Sun Microsystems, posted the following scathing plea entitled,“To the open-source community,” in his weblog:

“Please do not listen to the bizarro numbskull anti-Sun conspiracy theorists. They were lunatics then, they are lunatics now, they will always be lunatics. We love the open source community, we spawned from it. We'll protect that community, that innovation, and our place in it, with all our heart and energy.”

Michael Teimann, Vice President of Open Source Affairs for Redhat responds:

You also say that you'll protect our community, our innovation, with all your heart and energy. What's that worth? Would you promise that any open source developer can use any of your patents in open source code without fear of a lawsuit from you? Would you create a fund to defend open source developers against the predatory practice of other patent holders? Would you put your financial muscle (what's left of it) and lobbying credibility (still good, I acknowledge) behind fighting software patents--something our community universally hates because it threatens our ability to innovate? And if you won't, why not? Because you love Microsoft more?

What is all this about?

Sun Microsystems, and Redhat are the two of a few major players in the open-source software market. Open-source software is software whose source code is freely available for others to modify. It is developed and licensed under the General Public License, which insulates users from patent liability for operating, copying, or altering the code. Linux, Mozzilla, and Apache are some widely used open source programs. The open source community is comprised of widely dispursed software programmers and developers who access the code and submit improvements. Some companies dealing in open source, such as IBM, have substantial patent portfolios but have offered safe harbors to open-source programmers, promising not to bring infringement suits against open source programmers. IBM holds up to 60 patents that Linux may infringe. Hewlet Packard and Intel also host several open-source software projects.

Open source supporters claim this non-proprietary method of developing and distributing software is about more than profiting through the sale of software. It’s a social movement about “choice, innovation and freedom. Not dominance or dependence," according to Sun Microsystems Jonathan Schwartz. But, Schwartz and Teimanns recent exchange doesn’t sound like an agreement on shared values. Sun recently declared a full marketing offensive against Redhat in an effort to capture the financial services operating systems market. Sun will offer a 50% discount to any customer switching from Redhat Linux. "We are targeting Redhat specifically," said Schwartz at the New York event, outlining the company's next-generation software, server and storage assault designed to slow the spread of Linux. "Linux isn't so free anymore; it's $1,000 per CPU and customers are frustrated by Linux support."

On the other hand, Sun may be in bed with the long time open source rival, Microsoft. In April, Sun and Microsoft came to a landmark settlement in an anti-trust and patent infringement action. Under the terms of the settlement, Microsoft will pay sun 2 billion dollars in damages, 700 Million for anti-trust violations, and 900 million for patent infringement. The companies agreed to pay royalties for future uses of one another’s technologies, and Microsoft paid 350 million upfront to Sun. Under the terms of the settlement, Microsoft has agreed not to sue Sun for past patent infringing activities, and has agreed to license technologies necessary to achieve greater interoperability between Sun and Microsoft systems. The one caveat that wrangles open source is that under the terms of the settlement, Microsoft has reserved the right to sue users and developers of Openoffice.org who install the technology after April 1st, 2004 even if they are authorized licensees of Sun. Openoffice.org was developed by open source, and is a freely downloadable portion of Suns commercially sold Staroffice. Commentators have criticized Sun for allowing Microsoft to claim a proprietary stake in Openoffice, while at the same time bargaining for the immunity of Staroffice. The result may be that litigation-averse users will chose the proprietary Openoffice to complement the commercial Staroffice.