Shuttleworth a 'financial refugee' from SA
 

Just posting this as a matter of interest. It only is obliquely relevant to the technical issues. Still, I feel the community should take note as I think it is rather unfair to S.

http://www.moneyweb.co.za/moneyweb-s...g-reserve-bank

Why is it unfair to Shuttleworth?

He is a dual citizen of UK/SA, has moved his money out of SA, lives in and works in the UK. Not just the UK, but the isle of man (its where canonical is based for tax reasons, a well known tax haven). Near enough to being UK only, and the basing of canoncial in the isle of man does show a reluctance to pay 'normal' taxes IMO. Its only being done because he wants more of 'his' money back (R250m+ from what I've seen)-

http://news.howzit.msn.com/article.a...ntid=255755989

The vast majority of us cant possibly get money back from the government. The only reason why Shuttleworth has a chance of getting some back is because of the vast amount of money he has. One rule for the rich, another for the poor.....

I think he's an agent. His other mission is to hijack the FLOSS movement.

Moderator Response
 

Moved: This thread is more suitable in <General> and has been moved accordingly to help your thread/question get the exposure it deserves.

Much appreciated, thank you!

I'm always surprised that people will get indignant about companies like Amazon practicing tax avoidance but they ignore Canonical. They may be registered in the IOM, but their offices are in London, yet they don't pay British corporation tax. How much would they pay? We can't tell, because the accounts are unpublished.

As for Shuttleworth's personal situation, why shouldn't a government tax the super-rich when they decide to bolt to a tax haven?

I´ll still give my reasons, when I have a free moment, why I think Shuttleworth has a worthy cause. BTW the one reason is that I am writing this on a pc running on an Ubuntu OS.

What surprises me is that he enjoys so little support. Is Unity really THAT difficult to swallow?:confused:

So, you are saying that what he is doing is a good thing ?

I think this quote is the most accurate:
So you are with him because he decided to make the Ubuntu distro ?

I think he should be thoroughly investigated for financial crimes after this.

He has poured more of his own money into open source than anyone else. The beneficiaries of his money are us Ubuntu users (probably the entire Linux community). Canonical is not doing well financially the last time I looked. In fact I very much doubt whether the open source philosophy can be turned into a financial success. So, to a large extent he is doing welfare work in the software/internet world. A much worthier cause than pouring R250 million into pres Zuma´s personal home.

But these are peripheral issues.

Canonical is a for profit organization, don't forget that. Ubuntu tries its best to emulate popular OSs so that it can get users while ignoring critical principles of *nix.

You mean like Red Hat does?

He is pouring his money into a for profit organization that he build without a reasonable business model. This is far from being welfare and doesn't magically put him over the law.

I have read that S pours scorn on the geeks in favour of the more ignorant. It is a different market and I would think that the geeks can look after themselves. Is it so wrong to try and bring low cost (but sophisticated) computing to the people? Are the *nix principles really so sacrosanct? Perhaps one should not forget Shuttleworth´s African roots (his earlier leanings were strongly towards the ANC)- the masses of uneducated people without a hope in hell of ever affording even a Windows game.

As regards Canonical being a for profit organisation (I assume the correctness of that statement), surely one cannot begrudge him an attempt to turn a profit - especially if the overall goal is the alleviation of ignorance. It is his money after all. He also attempted to challenge Microsoft - I see he thinks that Bug 1 has been solved! A strong financial basis would be the only way of doing that. Perhaps in fact, one can argue that what is wrong with Ubuntu is a lack of good developers because the finances to do that are lacking.

I've got nothing but support for anyone who manages to dodge taxes. Given the choice, the freedom, I'm sure that a lot of people wouldn't be so eager to pay taxes, either.

What are "critical principles of *nix"?

It is not so much the *NIX principles, it is how he works (or better: does not work) with the open source community, those people that built his OS in the first place, treating them in a way that is not acceptable for those people. Canonical had shot itself in both feet at the same time with their recent actions, it will not take long until they fall flat to the ground because of that.

Mark Shuttleworth is anything but a saint.

Well, is Red Hat really so successful? Not where I live (SA). Here the only alternative to Windows most people have ever heard of is Ubuntu (not least because of the name). It would be interesting to know what penetration Red Hat has in Africa. My own awareness of a world beyond Microsoft only emerged with the free Ubuntu cd a pc dealer gave me (Not a Red Hat one).

As to your second paragraph, I tend to agree that he is attempting a very difficult thing (to run a profitable business on an open source basis). For that reason one should perhaps condone forays into what the hard core Linux enthusiast would view with horror. After all, from what I gather, there is money to be made even in Linux land on the server business. So it is not as if the original Linux community completely eschewed a penny here or there.

Up to this point S has obeyed the law (and paid the levies). I don´t think that one can say that that points to a perception on his part that he is above the law. His main gripe is that the levy is rather arbitrary (it was imposed two years after he emigrated and dropped just after he had finally transferred his assets out of SA).

They are the market leader in Enterprise Linux distributions, with more than a Billion $ (US) total revenue. I would think a very solid example that it is possible to make money with open source software (which other people also do, look at Novell, Digia, ...).

Red Hat, in contrary to Canonical, does all its developments together with the community, all under open source licenses and sponsors quite a bunch of projects with developers and money. They don't develop software secretly behind closed doors, like Canonical, they don't have to spread FUD over projects they don't want to use, like Canonical, they don't make developers to sign a CLA when they want to work on their projects, like Canonical. They are a true open source business. Unlike Canonical.

Clearly you have knowledge of his style. Such behaviour seems rather unacceptable. Don´t think for a moment that I worship him. It took him a while to see through the ANC. He alienated a lot of people for various reasons even here - his dating across the colour line being one of them. In SA then (and even now) it was not that acceptable. It is not only whites which often object to that. Yes, we have some baggage.

Very interesting.

Well, Ubuntu is much more like Window$ than like Linux. User and root privileges are very vague, common security practices are not present, there are plenty of annoying pop-ups, lots of bloat and programs that crash, lots of obfuscation what is going on under the hood, and now they have Amazon integrated search in the desktop search.

As for critical principles of *nix, well it's everything that makes Linux different from other OSs (including Window$, Mac, Ubuntu). A focus on security, stability, on programs that do one job very well, on ease of configuration and customizability, on transparency as opposed to obfuscation.

So basically, all of this make it right for him to tear down South African legislation so he can smuggle the rest of his money out of the country ? Two rights don't right a wrong, and he is definitely not benefiting the South African people by doing this.

I see a couple of issues here.

The discussion has moved from a money issue to a personal issue. Seriously did we need to know he dated across "racial lines"? I mean who gives a hoot who he dated and if they were green or from another planet. I do not see the relevance.
The discussion has moved from a legal rights issue to a business model issue. How did that happen? Maybe because people just can't get past the idea that he was successful and made plenty of money before he ventured into Ubuntu.
The discussion has been manipulated by individuals with a gripe. This gripe, as always, kinda take these discussions off topic and surprise surprise it is always the same people doing it.

So in keeping with the off topicness of this thread here's my 2 Drachmas (or 2 Shekels if you would prefer).

The comparisons between SA the IOM and the UK are not valid. The IOM is not and never has been (as far as I am aware) nor ever will be part of the UK. It is a British Crown Dependancy but it is not within the UK.

SA has its own system which its citizens have a perfect right to adhere to or to fight against. SA has a long history of this and the nation still bears the scars of this history. If Shuttleworth has made money while living abroad then I personally feel he has a right to do with it as he sees fit and the government of SA shouldn't interfer with it after the fact. If their laws are like the IOM then so be it but if they are not then chasing him for money that the law does not allow them to chase if for or changing the law retrospectively is wrong. However the money he made while living in SA should, in my very humble opinion, be subject to the laws of SA the exact same way that every other SA citizen's money is subject to those laws. I, unlike many, don't dislike the guy because he now uses a tax haven. Tax havens are around for a reason and that reason is because people like Shuttleworth are around to use them. Good luck to anyone with enough smarts to be able to make enough money to use one. Also many people don't realise that the IOM taxes income made not just in the IOM but anywhere in the world. If you use the IOM as a base (which Shuttleworth does) you pay tax on everything you earn regardless of where you earn it from. People who live there or base their business' there know and understand this. To a certain extent the British Government does the same thing, I know British teachers who work their holidays teaching in other countries and Britain takes taxes from those earnings. If you are part of the system you abide by the rules of the system. If you don't like those rules you challenge them just like Shuttleworth is doing.

As much as I dislike Ubuntu and Canonical I have to give credit where it is due and admit that without it the Linux world would probably still be in the same state it was in 2003 with regards to its user base. Canonical and Ubuntu brought Linux to the masses. Companies like RedHat did not, distros like Debian and Slackware did not but Ubuntu did. The problem with Canonical/Ubuntu and by extention Shuttleworth is their business model with Linux is not in any way shape or form open and free. Many good people who volunteered their time worked in the Ubuntu system helping Ubuntu/Canonical get to where it is and made their feelings known when Ubuntu/Canonical started losing its way. Some have stayed, many have left, only time will tell if Ubuntu/Canonical will change its methods. I seriously doubt it and that is my problem with the system that Shuttleworth has created.

Well actually this thread has moved from shuttle's/canonical ltd's tax situation to discussing why 'buntu and canonical ltd are worse than red hat, why their contributions are less and why their business model is all wrong, etc, etc...

(I have to agree fully with TobiSGD with regard to shuttle/canonical/buntu however... and lets not forget who it was that called red hat "proprietary"...)

This is the guy who used an "african" "humanity" type marketing scheme to market his repackaged Debian, yet he resents paying his fair share of taxes to his home country...

A serial tax dodger plain and simple. He left ZA for tax reasons, moved to UK and set up an operation on the isle of man for tax reasons... I doubt any country's tax laws would be lenient enough for this man.

Now despite exploiting a tax haven and being a multi-billionaire, he wants the 10% tax levy, on the close to R4.5 billion in assets he transferred out of the country back in 08/09, to be paid back... and is prepared to fsck with the ZA constitution to do it... but of course it's all in the interests of his fellow south africans...

Agreed.

I only described his business model and his contributions (or lack of them) to the OSS world as an answer to the claim that Shuttleworth would be some kind of open source charity.

We don't know that. Before Ubuntu was created companies like Suse (it was them who attracted me enough to buy a package of Suse Linux Professional back in the time) and Mandrake (later Mandriva) had exactly that as an aim, make Linux on the desktop a worthy comparison for the "average user". Who knows what would have happened if Ubuntu didn't appear, with a billionaire as sponsor and his humanitarian claims ([Ubuntu] is named after the Southern African philosophy of ubuntu, which can be translated as "humanity towards others" or "the belief in a universal bond of sharing that connects all humanity". Source: Wikipedia).

We can see where his humanity ends, when it comes to his money. Of course he should be allowed to use tax havens, as most rich people do. But he shouldn't be allowed to take down a constitution of a country for any amount of money.

Gees. This has turned into a hornet´s nest and I thought the issues were pretty straightforward and clear.

My main gripe was the 'financial refugee' term applied to S. He has done nothing illegal and it is an exaggeration to claim that his case will bring the country/constitution (whatever) down. Surely it is not too much to ask that guidelines be published and used when determining a R250 million penalty, that parliament should have a hand in its determination and that the Reserve Bank should be directly approachable (rather than having to do it through a bank which has very little interest in putting your views across). In addition in the SA legal system the very fact that a litigant is white puts him at a disadvantage. Race permeates everything. So, I doubt whether there is much need to worry about him succeeding in this case. At the most it amounts to a futile attempt to highlight a crooked system.

I also felt that more good would flow from allowing him to spend the R250 million himself. Admittedly I am a free marketeer and this might not appeal to those begging to be enslaved by governments. Still, there might be something to be said for keeping governments small and efficient.

As it is, he moved the last of his assets legally out of the country in 2010.

The reference to his former black date is general knowledge and was part of my suggestion that perhaps he is not everywhere seen as a saint - unlike Mandela, I guess.

I have too little knowledge of other Linux systems to contest the allegations that Ubuntu is foreign to the general Linux concept. Assuming that it is, I wonder whether it cannot be seen as an advance on that concept. At least HUD seems a good idea. I can understand that there are some negative feelings about S taking a open source OS and turning it into a financial quest. However, he would not be entitled to close that system - surely? Furthermore, the open source philosophy seems to run the risk that developers may well find that their efforts are hijacked by others for commercial gain. Surely any participation in an open source venture entails that risk and it seems rather futile to complain when the obvious happens?

I think more information is needed on why exactly he wants to do this, and what the implications would be. If he no longer has any money there, then why would he do it. I suppose we'll have to wait and see.

It is not that Ubuntu would be really foreign to Linux concepts (after all Linux is what you make from it) and also not that Ubuntu does not advance the Linux desktop (some people like the Unity desktop, things like Jockey make it easier for the "average user" to install drivers, etc.). It is more like he treats the open source environment, especially in the last years (Ubuntu 10.04 seems to be a breakpoint, where Ubuntu's aim changed from "We make Linux for humans" to "We want to be the next Apple") what bothers people. If you want to inform yourself about that read up about the Mir/Wayland controversy, Canonical's Contributor License Agreement (which in fact enables Canonical to close down their projects at any given time), Canonical's attempt to leech the money from the Rythmbox music player, ... .
There are really plenty of points.

Also read this.

There is a long history of Canonical not being nice witht eh rest of the OSS community. Their license aggreement is atrocious in that if you sign it with any of your works, regardless of the GPL or any other OSS license, you lose all your rights to your own work and give all the rights to Canonical. It is clear that everything to do with Canonical is about money and not about sharing.

Wait a minute, the skies have not fallen in ;)

I know why you did it, I was just pointing out how easy it was for this topic to go off topic so to speak. I actually agree with you.

Please don't quote wikipedia to me when you could have used something more authoritive. Suse may have attracted you and Mandrake may have had that as an aim (I still have Mandrake disks with kernel 2.2) but seriously as a desktop they were behind Windows and it wasn't until Ubuntu with all its "just works" philosophy that many people (like me) moved to Linux.

If that consitution is not fair or reasonable why shouldn't he? Seriously who else would have they means to do so? Certainly not someone living in Soweto.

Nothing is straight forward or clear when there are agendas to push.

So after 50 years the tables have turned and now some people are unhappy?

It may be general knowledge in SA, or indeed throughout the universe, but what is the relevance to that in this instance? You are going to have an extremely difficult time convincing me there is any.

Read the link I provided before, also understand Canonical's license agreement.

I have no agendas to push (if that is what is implied) except my own interest in mainly the legal aspects of the matter - and an irrational desire to share it. OK, I guess I should have posted on a legal website.

I cannot see why previous injustice (50 years...) should justify present injustice. In addition that was not what the regime change was billed as. Anyway, probably the wrong place for that argument as well.

I´ll have a look at the licence agreement. At this stage it is not clear to me what the problem is as any open source stuff stays open source whether you add to it or change it.

As for the dating comment: I can assure you that there are people who will not touch Ubuntu as a result of that - even the term Ubuntu is really an ex post facto label applied to something which never existed except in the minds of a few academics. Ok, admittedly this also is not the place for marketing/anthropology niceties either - which (btw, IMHO) is something the Linux community could exchange ideas about.

I never suggested you had an agenda although some of your statements lead me to believe if you could you would.

In a post colonial world past injustices are always remembered and used as a means to justify "positive discriminiation".

Have fun reading it, I stopped when it basically said any work I do that I agree to let Canonical use becomes theirs.

You can assure me of anything you want until the cows come home or the sky turns red and caves in, I still don't see and never will see the relevance of that comment as it was when it was made. Adding bits and pieces after the fact says to me you are dribbling bits of a story out to continue this line of discussion.

If you want to discuss anthropology start a new thread and I'll join in, I think a few others may as well, but do me a favour and keep the discussion relevant.

The contributor´s agreement does seem to say that. I have not checked all the variations (yet).


http://www.canonical.com/contributors/faq

Read the actual agreement, not the FAQ.

2 current versions, both have the relevant sections.

http://www.canonical.com/sites/defau...-CLA-ANY-I.pdf
http://www.canonical.com/sites/defau...-CLA-ANY-E.pdf

Section 2.1(b)-

Translation- Canoncial (non-exclusively) 'owns' your cotruibutions and do with them as they wish. If that wasnt clear enough-

Canonical can even take your contributed code, close it up and sell it to anyone they want.

Have you actually seen canoncials financial figures, or is this just based on media reports/rumours?

In 2009 Shuttleworth said that canoncial was 'creeping toward $30 million' and '$30 million a year is self-sustaining revenue'

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/11/bu...caDZpkRHVoybBA

I havent seen Shuttleworth or anyone else from canonical for that matter say anything about canonicals financial status since then. With the banshee furor, the 'donation page' and the deals with amazon, I would guess that canonical is well into the black now.

If Shuttleworth wants to make a for profit and its not making a profit, that is his problem.....and its not 'welfare' at all.

But it really doesnt matter on this subject. But I'm out of time to post any more, I'll try to get that done later.

For someone who appears to be extremely interested in legal issues I have to wonder why you only looked at the FAQ. You can't seriously think for a moment that a FAQ is a legally binding document. Read Cascades post below your last one to see what the legal documents say.

While you are at it go and take a look at Ubuntu Forums and see if you can find any threads on their license agreement where people, like myself, argued against it. You probably wont now considering a couple of years ago, just as I stopped posting partially because of this exact issue, they decided to "archive" (read clean up and hide from general view) alot of the forums that the "authorities of UF" felt were of no use to the general Ubuntu using public.

There are links from the FAQ to the contract. I did glance at those and I still think that their contracts do not really go beyond the GNU GPL. The problem seems to be that contributors get upset if someone else makes money out of their work - which they otherwise are prepared to let go off for free.

The philosophy of the initial open source drive (as manifested by the GNU documentation) does not appear to frown on charging for distributing work. So, again, contributors go into this with open eyes.

I can appreciate the anger and the solution would appear to lie in channeling back to the contributor a % of the income (if generated). It seems that a practical way of doing this would be the major problem.

What I also suspect is that this problem probably affects a very small percentage of people using for example Ubuntu. How many Ubuntu contributors would there be (as opposed to users)? My suspicion is that a very large percentage of those using open source stuff is unable to change the programs (meaningfully) or to contribute software on the required level. In other words, it should be possible to solve this problem on a developer level by negotiations with the individuals concerned. Perhaps an open source trade union is called for developers/code crunchers.

The agreements themselves confirm that the copyright is retained by the creator and that Canonical is mainly licensed to distribute the contribution.

The creator is free to exploit his contribution as he seems fit regardless of what Canonical does (my interpretation).


When patent rights are also involved

In other words this is merely to ensure than when Canonical distributes the contribution, such distribution is not endangered by patent rights remaining in the creator.

What is a bit fuzzy (for me) is the following in the Outbound license terms:

What this seems to do is to ensure that when the contribution is incorporated into a project, the contribution is licensed under the license terms prevailing at the time when the contribution is submitted - but don´t quote me. In other words, if the overall project is licensed under open source conditions, the contribution will also be licensed under those conditions.

Copyright (and patent) law is a pretty esoteric legal area. What complicate matters further here is the fact that the contract provides it is to be interpreted by English Law. Only an English legal practitioner will be able to say with a measure of confidence what the position is at the tight spots.

As regards Canonical´s financial position, I only know that some years ago it was said that they are running at a loss. I suspect that one must assume that since about 2004 Shuttleworth has been pouring money into a loss making entity (almost 10 years now). So, if he is turning a profit, good for him. I cannot see how anyone can begrudge him that. Despite assurances that Red Hat shows that Open source can be run profitably, it seems to me a rather precarious venture where the core of your efforts has to be financed by sidelines. Not that distribution for profit is not allowed by the general philosophy:

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html#header

Profit is also a problem here. Surely those involved (including Shuttleworth) are entitled to reasonable salaries and returns on their investments? Then you have expansion which must be financed. What is an indecent profit in this case? 5 cents above breaking even?

I also wonder if he (Shuttleworth) happens to be the only shareholder. Neither here not there. Does anyone know?

Have you missed the part cascade9 posted already in #32?In other words "we can take your code at any time into one of our new projects and close it down. Or we just relicense an existing project to a closed license."
That is in direct opposition to the GPL. You may keep the copyright to your code, but you totally loose control about its license in Canonical's projects.

It seems to me that in open source distributions you lose control anyway. Your work can be copied, amended, changed, charged for etc. In fact, it is of the essence of the philosophy that you cannot prevent that. Or am I missing something?

What I do think is objectionable is that they take away your moral rights (which includes your right to have your name associated with the software -assuming that the term embraces what SA law does).

Yes, you are missing something. If code is contributed under the GPL license to a project without a Canonical style CLA the code has to be GPL licensed forever. Only the copyright holder can change the license, the project you contributed to can't. In their own projects Canonical can change the license at any time, regardless what you as the copyright holder of the code think of it. They actually can say: "Hey, your code is good, but you know what? We will use it in three of our other projects, but we don't care about you licensing it under GPL, those projects will be closed source and there is nothing you can do about it!"
That is exactly the scenario the GPL tries to prevent.
GPL with Canonical's CLA is nothing but a BSD license in disguise, but a BSD license that only is valid for Canonical. A nice thing for them, but without any ethics. At least they would have been honest if they would have used a BSD or MIT style license from the beginning, but honesty is something I would not expect from Canonical or Shuttleworth (oh, and not having the GPL lable on their projects would have pushed away many of their contributors). For me and many others Shuttleworth and Canonical have lost any credibility.

For Canonical to use those contributions in a GPL license, they need those consents...and once they have used them in a GPL license, the cat is out of the bag.

It seems to me that is why this clause which I quoted before, is important, as it ties them to the license at the stage the contribution is submitted:


I´ll admit that there are loopholes here for it may well be that at the stage of the contribution the license has not been determined yet.

The CLA explicitly permits Canonical to relicense the code, so there is no cat in the bag from the beginning. It doesn't matter which license the code had initially when they can just relicense it. They can do it, because the contributor, the copyright holder, has explicitly given Canonical the license to do it, otherwise he is not allowed to contribute to their projects.

Their right to relicense is conditional upon the project having been issued under the initial license first.


The question of course is what the initial license is and to what extent they can deviate from a proposed license in respect of a new start-up. Opting for a different license after having indicated that it would be a GPL might afford relief under the rules governing misrepresentation.

Regardless of what they do, the contributor would retain his rights to market the software himself in whatever form. Is this not an important consideration? I suspect that their thinking is that value is added to the overall product as a result of the Canonical input (and the mix of various contributions). Consequently (I suspect) the argument is that if there is money to be made, they are entitled to it.

The following comments are made as a matter of interest (well, new and interesting to me - a newbie).

Although the GNU GPL model allows money to me made from distribution there is this prohibition:


So, my suggestion previously that one could perhaps negotiate for a portion of income (if realised) would run counter to this as long as we are talking open source.

On similar lines in the same model agreement

That simply means 'canonical will release the software/code under whatever licence is being used at that time for that type of submission'.

It never states that the licence will be GPL, or any other open source licence.

The writer of any subbmitted code remains legally owned by them. Some or all of that code can be used on different projects. Because of the way that the GPL is worded, they can not take the project as a whole and 'market' that. It remains GPLed or under canonical control to do with as they wish.

Canonical only needs/wants the contributors agreement signed for Canonical in-house projects which they then have 100% control over. If they were just interested in being able to sell a closed version, they could have used a BSD style licence or dual BSD/GPL. If they had of taken a BSD licence, they would haev to put up the copyright notice, which sort of gives away that the software or some code is originally from an open source project.

It would be 'neater', 'cleaner' and more attractive to closed source software supliers (or hardware suppliers who want software to go with the hardware) to avoid having to post up a BSD style copyright notice.

That is why Red Hat does not charge for downloading or trying Red Hat OSes. There is a charge for 'support', which is one way Red Hat makes its money (other ways include training, and integration services).

Hardly. Red Hat is a giant in the open source linux world. If Canonical died tomorrow, there would be little or zero impact to linux as a whole. If Red Hat died tomorrow, the linux kernel and connected projects would at the very least slow right down.

If that was the case legally, Red Hat is entitled to a huge amount of any possible cacnonical revenue.

Most linux kernel development is done by Red Hat, and they are a major player in a huge number of other projects.

There is IMO (I am not a lawyer) no way you could negotiate for a portion of income. See section 2.1(b).

Because its a private company we have no idea who owns how much of canonical. For all we know, GW Bush is now a 45% owner of canonical. :D

Well, Shuttleworth said thye were running at a loss. I believe that they were for a while......but who knows? We cant check, the isle of man is a 'tax haven' for more reasons than just the taxation rate.

This has very little to do with the court case that this thread was originally about. I dont see any legal reason why the existance or profitablility of canonical should have any impact on the court case.

True. I switched off my own 'agenda' and went with the flow of comments. Very little of the thread deals with the main issue.:D

A question for the more legal minded: In theory could canonical sue you for patent infringement if you later attempted to redistribute your own code under a copyleft licence - after they had released it under a proprietary one and acquired a suitable patent???

I would guess that the clue to the answer lies in 'non-exclusive...patent license' In other words, you would retain the patent rights (as with copyright) and your rights would at least be co-extensive with theirs.

Seems fair enough to me-

http://www.fin24.com/Economy/Shuttle...trols-20130610
http://www.enca.com/south-africa/shu...hange-controls

I dont know enough about South African law to be able to know for sure (I doubt anyone could know that for sure anyway). However, from the limited amount I do know about SA I believe that even if the case doesnt 'bring the country/constitution (whatever) down' it could cause major issues and more lawsuits.

Appeal to the Constitutional Court?
 

http://praag.org/?p=7428

That did not take long (as expected). Some measure of success in cutting down some arbitrary powers.

Not over yet.

http://www.moneyweb.co.za/moneyweb-m...t-of-his-r250m