[Kolab-devel] Z-push

[Bernhard Reiter]

On Friday 26 October 2007 14:05, Gunnar Wrobel wrote:
> there was one thing I was
> wondering about: Supposedly companies like Apple, Nokia, and others
> pay licensing fees to Microsoft in order to implement the protocol
> within their software.

There are two potential issues:
a) Closed specs. Often companies pay to get them 
   and sign additional clauses in the contracts.
b) Software-Patents. All commercial users of the technology 
might have to pay. 

> Now z-push is obviously GPL software and I believe Zarafa certainly
> knows what they are doing. But I'm still wondering how ActiveSync
> licensing works. Do companies have to pay fees if they want to
> implement it in the client and the server side of things is free?

If this is a), they could have used reverse engineering (in Europe) 
and be fine. They could use this, because it is for interoperability.

If this are software-patents, the situation might be more problematic.
Read more details at:
http://www.fsfeurope.org/projects/swpat/documents.en.html

> Or is this a Europe/US thing and one should avoid to implement this in
> the US without paying?

Patents are region specific, so a vendor would need a patent in Europe
to be really effective against "usage" in Europe. Europe does not 
have software patents "as such", but still patents have been granted
against the spirit of the EPA.

From the development perspective we can only try to fight software-patents
in general politically. 

Best,
Bernhard

-- 
Managing Director - Owner: www.intevation.net       (Free Software Company)
Germany Coordinator: fsfeurope.org. Coordinator: www.Kolab-Konsortium.com.
Intevation GmbH, Osnabrück, DE; Amtsgericht Osnabrück, HRB 18998
Geschäftsführer Frank Koormann, Bernhard Reiter, Dr. Jan-Oliver Wagner
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