Lineo is hardly a disinterested party to the issue of protecting IP when deploying Linux. Admittedly, neither is Microsoft or WIND, although WIND had every intention of working deeply with Linux until they hit a legal brick wall.
In an open Q&A forum at WIND’s Analyst Day conference, I asked Marla Stark, WIND’s IP lawyer, straight out if there is a potential legal problem for companies working with Linux. Her answer was “yes”. She thinks most companies that work with Linux just aren’t aware of the potential legal tangles that lurk within the GPL framework. Nevertheless, she claims they are very real and may be dangerous to companys’ IP.
Let’s understand something. I believe the potential problem with IP only arises when you start to tweak the Linux source, thereby joining your IP at the hip with Linux. If all you do is execute isolated applications sitting on top of Linux, I don’t think there would be a problem. This means servers and desktops for the most part should be able to run Linux without GPL posing any problem for the applications running on top. It is when you embed Linux and start to intertwine your IP with Linux that GPL becomes a virus that can follow the connected path to put a claim on your IP. For example, the problem might arise if you used Linux to develop a network storage appliance with an integral proprietary caching algorithm.
Whether or not you or Lineo believe GPL is something to be concerned about, the issue cannot for long escape legal scrutiny within companies. IP legal opinion is absolute within most companies, a relection of IP often being the most important company asset. If Marla’s and Microsoft legal team’s reading of GPL gives any indication of what many other lawyers will conclude, then the issue is real, irrespective of what Lineo wants us to believe. Assuming the issue is real, WIND’s purchase of BSD Unix provides a ready means for companies to finesse the problem.
Even Lineo says, ‘We
wholeheartedly agree with Microsoft that
no company "at the end of the day would
throw all of its intellectual property into
the open-source category." To do so
would be a completely broken,
unprofitable business model that could
not survive over the long term.
Exactly, where does Lineo draw the line between GPL and IP, and why in the world would any company knowingly test such a fuzzy line unnecessarily? When awakened to the issue, I would expect most company lawyers to insist on the BSD Unix replacement just on the outside chance of a problem developing with IP.
Allen |
