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freetds - Re: [freetds] TDS versions

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  • From: Craig Berry <craigberry AT mac.com>
  • To: FreeTDS Development Group <freetds AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [freetds] TDS versions
  • Date: Wed, 28 May 2008 13:29:29 -0700


On Wednesday, May 28, 2008, at 02:06PM, "James K. Lowden"
<jklowden AT freetds.org> wrote:
> I don't know if MCPP is compatible with LGPL (and GPL) or not. And
>I don't have the time, patience, or inclination to read, understand, and
>bind myself to 22 pages of legalese. I'm hanging my hat on the pledge.

The pledge is what I was referring to, specifically the part that says,

"If You engage in the commercial distribution or importation of software
derived from an open source project or if You make or use such software
outside the scope of creating such software code, You do not benefit from
this promise [i.e., the pledge] for such distribution or for these other
activities."

So if I contribute code I'm covered, but if my blender of the future wants
to embed FreeTDS in its firmware so it can retrieve the latest margarita
recipes from the mother ship, and if that future version of FreeTDS includes
anything covered by the patent, then my layman's reading is that the open
source pledge does nothing at all for me; instead I have to pay licensing
fees to Microsoft just as if I had obtained the implementation from them. I
had thought (correct me if I'm wrong) that the LGPL would allow such use with
some restrictions.

>> I'm no expert, and I haven't attempted to read the patent in full, but I
>> don't see any good news here.
>
>Best would be if the patent didn't exist. Even better would be if
>software patents didn't exist. Meanwhile, here we are.
>
>I have to say, Microsoft is weirdly schizophrenic wrt TDS specifically.
>First they practically deny its existence, then they patent extensions to
>it, then they promise not to pursue those patents against Open Source
>projects. I'm left to wonder: against whom could they be pursued? Which
>of Oracle, IBM, Sybase, et al. is about to implement TDS 7+, much less
>MARS? Who else has a TDS implementation besides Sybase, Microsoft,
>FreeTDS and jTDS?

The likes of Easysoft, Attunity, and such may depend on all the TDS happening
on the Windows side using Microsoft's ODBC driver, or they may have their own
TDS implementations, or they may have obtained commercial licenses (and code)
from Microsoft. Or they may use FreeTDS, couldn't they? If the latter, then
it appears to me that if they used a hypothetical future version that
supports anything covered by the new patent, then they would owe royalties to
Microsoft even though Microsoft had nothing to do with creating the
implementation.

Hopefully I'm simply wrong about all of this.




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