OpenSUSE's Brockmeier caught out over Moglen claim

Sam Varghese
Thursday, 17 December 2009 01:36

Opinion and Analysis

OpenSUSE community manager Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier has been caught out spreading misinformation about the patent deal that Microsoft signed with his employer, Novell, a little over three years ago.


During a recent tour of Europe, Brockmeier gave an interview to eWeek Europe to spruik his company's position and what he claimed it had gained from the patent licensing deal over the three years since it was signed.

He was quoted by Peter Judge of eWeek as saying: "Even Eben Moglen [Columbia law professor and founder of the Software Freedom Law Center] approved of the deal and said it was compliant with the GPLv2 licence agreement."

Such a claim is surprising considering that Moglen is well-known as a co-author of the GPLv3 which introduced a clause that would prevent such deals from happening in the future.

Contacted by iTWire, Moglen said he was surprised by the claim. "I *did* say the deal didn't violate GPLv2 section 7," he said.

This, however, is not surprising as many people knew that, legally, the GPLv2 did not prohibit the deal. However, many people at the time felt that it did violate the spirit of the licence. Prominent free software developer Jeremy Allison quit Novell in disgust over the deal.

Moglen, who is highly respected both for his academic scholarship and his contributions to free software, was surprised that he had been painted as someone who had approved of the deal.

"I *disapproved* of the deal, quite firmly; there is some rather popular video of me on the web explaining why, in relation to Microsoft's annual 'Be Very Afraid' tours," he said.

His disapproval of the deal, along with Free Software Foundation head Richard Stallman's similar concern, "led to a provision in section 11 of GPLv3 designed to prevent such deals from being possible in future, for software licensed under GPLv3.

"This one of the reasons that FSF and SFLC consider GPLv3 to be a better license than GPLv2," Moglen added.

In the run-up to the release of the GPLv3 in 2007, Stallman told iTWire that the changes from GPLv2 were primarily "to block deals like the Novell-Microsoft deal from every side, in every case."

Brockmeier has been around free and open source software a long time, as a writer and editor, before he took up the post of community manager sometime in 2008. This makes his claims all the more surprising.

While some who read the article have contested these claims in comments at the end of the piece, Brockmeier has offered no comment.