Microsoft Gets Novell Docs Before OSS Community

flydpnkrtn sends in an InformationWeek article arising out of Novell's SEC filing yesterday, asking: "Is this just more Novell-bashing material? Or is this no big deal? And of course this type of thing runs contrary to the 'spirit of the GPL'..." "Under its controversial alliance with Novell, Microsoft is entitled to receive key technical documentation from the Linux distributor even if that documentation is not generally available to open source software developers, according to a Novell document."

Re:I don't see any problem with this.

[hxnwix]

From the article:

Under its controversial alliance with Novell, Microsoft is entitled to receive key technical documentation from the Linux distributor even if that documentation is not generally available to open source software developers

The problem here IS that Microsoft appears to be collaborating with Novel ... against us. One might infer that Microsoft wants to be involved with Novel's design and development efforts so that Novel will unwittingly infringe upon as many Microsoft patents as possible. They could do this, say, in the name of bolstering open source compatibility with Microsoft products.

But who really knows what objective Microsoft insidiously pursues. Perhaps this situation bizarre but benign. Well, scratch that. They've already abused the relationship to demand protection money from Linux users.