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Reactions are coming in from all over now about the new Moonlight Covenant and I have yet to run across one that thinks it is a good thing.

This means More Moonlight Covenant problems in addition to the 10 I already laid out.

Moonlight still not acceptable in Fedora

Unsurprisingly, the new “covenant” doesn’t change Fedora’s stance that Moonlight is not permissible in Fedora.

One of the main reasons is a problem with the covenant that I didn’t pick up on initially, but several other people did. Call it Problem #11:

Problem 11: Novell Only, pt. 4

This one is a tricky: in the covenant Microsoft promises not to sue “End Users”; which are defined as so:

“End User” means an entity or individual that uses for its intended purpose a Moonlight Implementation obtained directly from Novell or through a Distributor. An entity or individual is not an End User when such entity or individual resells, licenses, supplies, distributes or otherwise makes available to third parties the Moonlight Implementation. For avoidance of doubt, an entity or individual cannot qualify both as an End User and a Distributor for use of the same copy of a Moonlight Implementation.

Read that closely now – Microsoft is careful to exclude “Distributors” from the covenant. And a Distributor is an entity or individual that makes available to third parties the Moonlight Implementation. You can’t be both. This means that distros like Fedora can’t distribute Moonlight under the protection of the covenant.

But, wait – there’s more! It means you yourself, as an individual, can not share a distro that has Moonlight! If you yourself, as an individual give your friend a CD with a distro that has Moonlight on it at your next LUG meeting, you are not covered.

Such tactics are perfectly in line with Microsoft and Novell’s twisted way of doing business: create an extra-license method of promising something to the “end user”, and then hope no one actually analyzes the deal.

Problem #12: Intended Use

Heh. Seems like everytime I re-read the covenant I find more problems.

Well “End Users” are defined as “an entity or individual that uses [Moonlight] for its intended purpose“. Hmm? What exactly is the “intended purpose” here?

This raises an interesting point: in the Free Software world (that Team Moonlight gleefully rejects), we have Freedom Zero: The Freedom to run the program, for any purpose. Nice thing to have, Freedom.

I don’t see that freedom to use for any purpose explictly laid out in the Open Source Definition (though I suppose you might  infer it by argument from one or more of the points there.)

It’s important that this is made clear, because if the Microsoft-Novell collaboration has shown us anything at all, it’s that they take the letter of the law much more seriously than the spirit.

So, here’s my question: Does “Open Source” mean you have the right to run the program for any purpose? And if so, how is this not yet another way that the Covenant is incompatible with “Open Source”?

Problem #13: Public and Private

The Covenant can be updated/discontinued according to the terms of the “New Moonlight Collaboration Agreement between Novell and Microsoft” but – as far as I can determine – this Collaboration Agreement is not publicly available.

I would be a bit uneasy relying on a public promise that refers to a private agreement.

The New is WORSE than the Old

I have to admit I am surprised that the new covenant is so bad. I expected a new covenant – even Miguel de Icaza hinted that the old one was less-than-ideal (scathing criticism from him as far as Microsoft is concerned) – but what I was expecting was basically the old covenant with a restriction or two removed!

Instead what we have is something that tries to look more “Open”, but is filled with Novell-Only anti-community language stronger than the previous version!

See No Evil, Hear No Evil

What I think we are seeing is this: Mono and Moonlight supporters are so willing to blindly support anything they think helpful while steadfastly refusing to entertain any criticism whatsoever, that there is becoming less of a need for Microsoft and Novell to maintain the facade that their relationship is “good for the Open Source community”.

Take for example Miguel de Icaza’s assertion that under the new Covenant “Novell is on the exact same footing as every other distributor, there are no exceptions made for Novell.” (He then goes on in the very next sentence: “…the only exception is that Novell has a seperate agreement for media codecs…”)

Yet, Novell has several exceptions in the Covenant:

• Only Novell can implement “minimal shell applications”
• Only “Novell-Provided Copies” can use the Media Pack
• Only “Conforming Runtimes developed by or on behalf of Novell” are covered
• Silverlight  Specifications are delivered to Novell
• Novell Distributions are explictly defined

…and so on, and so on.

Let’s play a counting game! In the Covenant and related definitions:

• Times ”Novell” is mentioned by name:  20
• Other Linux distributors mentioned by name: 0

To assert that Novell is “on the exact same footing” as anyone else seems difficult to support indeed.