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Comment by fmota | Hacker News Reader

Allow me to be cynical but, if SOPA passes and breaks the Internet, these software companies would gain a lot. Especially Microsoft. Remember the "good old days" of Microsoft Everything? I hope you're as fond of them as these software companies seem to be.

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I hope Bill Gates with his philanthropy drive goes publicly against Microsoft company's support for censorship.

I envy your optimism.

Bill Gate's philanthropy is funded with Microsoft (and Berkshire-Hathaway) stock. They'd be fighting against themselves.

The paranoid security geek in me says "You know those Microsoft contributions to SAMBA lately? Could they go for a takedown order of the open source project on the allegation of copyright infringement now and make the SAMBA project fight to get their domain back?"

Is "You gave it to me!" no longer a valid defense as for why you have someone else's IP?

Yes it certainly is. And its so obvious that I bet the trial would take less than a year. But that's a year where Samba doesn't have a web page now.

No. If they contributed something, it's now under a free license.

Microsoft contributed the code under "GPLv2 or later", despite samba being under GPLv3.

GPLv2 does not contain the explicit patent grant that are part of why GPLv3 was created. And I very much doubt the courts will consider "or later" to include the patent grant.

The code in question seems very peripheral (something about using Firefox for configuration), and have received zero comments on the developers list. I would be very surprised if Microsoft had any other motivation for the release, than to make the engineer who worked on it happy.

However, it is probably not an accident that they choose the version of the GPL without a patent grant.

It would be interesting to see the implicit patent grant in v2 (remember - you can't grant all the liberties required in the license without granting use - and the right to grant it further down the chain - of any patents embodied in the code) tested in court.

Also, unless I'm very wrong, the terms "GPLv2 or later" means you can use the software under v3 if you prefer to use it that way. The only way to block the explicit patent grant (but stay will the implicit one) would be to license it under plain v2.

The cynic in me says that Microsoft's contributions are a subtle sabotage. Back in the day, Samba was incredibly easy to configure as a domain controller with full UNIX account sync. The latest Samba now requires the creation and maintenance of an actual Windows registry, a separate account system, etc.

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