Novell Goes Public with Microsoft Linux Deal 133
InfoWorldMike writes "On the back of defending the agreement this week, Novell did as promised and published details of its landmark November 2006 Linux partnership agreements with Microsoft. Linux advocates are expected to scour the documents for signs of how the agreement may affect Linux and whether anything in it will put Microsoft or Novell in potential violation of the upcoming version 3 of the GNU General Public license (GPL). The GPL is used in licensing many components of the Linux operating system. Open-source advocate Bruce Perens said he would be looking to see exactly what Novell was given through the deal and whether there is any requirement for the Linux vendor to defend Microsoft's patent claims. 'What I'm actually looking for is, to what extent was there a violation of faith?' he said."
Actual Patent Agreement (Score:5, Informative)
I am no lawyer (but I do read contracts from time to time, as a 'hobby'), but this is really an odd 'covenant'. The agreement appears to not state what products are actually covered by the patent covenant, in bizarre ways. For example, "Clone Products" are not covered, "Clone Products" being presumably things like Mono and OpenOffice (as they duplicate Microsoft APIs and products); yet all such products already designed at time of signing are exempt, i.e., they are covered. Yet, the following projects are not subject to the exemption: "Wine, OpenXchange, StarOffice and OpenOffice", i.e., they are not covered. So OpenOffice appears to not be covered.
Likewise Samba would presumably be a "Clone Product", and not covered as well, except by the exemption due to its existing at time of signing. Yet this might not cover additional functionality added later. It just isn't clear.
No actual products are named aside from the quote above, and even they are not stated as being covered or not (just not exempted by a particular subsection). So, reading this, I can't tell whether Novell customers are in fact covered or not, in any way. The assumption was always that the agreement did protect them from patent lawsuits. But that assumption may have been wrong.
Is the contract specifically designed to not mention any products, effectively letting it be ambiguous and perhaps of no legal use - that is, only effective for PR purposes?
Re:Actual Patent Agreement (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Actual Patent Agreement (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Actual Patent Agreement (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Actual Patent Agreement (Score:5, Informative)
Really? Care to give a citation for that claim? Some features of Xenix were merged into SVR4 around 1990, but that's hardly 20 years ago, and I don't recall any mention of royalties being paid to Microsoft for using SVR4 source code. Anyway, Xenix would have required Microsoft to strike some sort of licensing deal with AT&T in the first place, as they owned the source code that Xenix was based on. I'm not sure what point SCO (old-SCO that is) ended their relationship with MicroSoft, but that may have predated the merging of Xenix features into AT&T's codebase anyway.
SCO did have to pay Microsoft (Score:2)
SCO got their freedom in a lawsuit a few years back. As I recall, there was a settlement. Microsoft sold/lost the shares and SCO stopped shipping the Xenix crap.
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I guess you never heard of Xenix [wikipedia.org]?
Re:Actual Patent Agreement (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Actual Patent Agreement (Score:5, Insightful)
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Don't do that. Implying things means nothing, and making it so people presume something is true without it being true is the name of the game.
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(Just don't tell Linus, it'd be awkward.)
Re:Actual Patent Agreement (Score:5, Interesting)
Remember also that Novell's Netware tools are still supported: network storage is a big market. And this deal left Microsoft and Novell with a big patent club to be able to use against mutual competitors, without either being restrained by the other company.
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Following the links from the article I ended up here [infoworld.com] which does explicitly state that Microsoft and Novell will collaborate to improve interoperability between Microsoft Office and OpenOffice, also between Microsoft Active Directory and Novell eDirectory.
Unfortunately all the links in that article to the SEC filings are 404s.
Mono is not Visual Studio (Score:5, Interesting)
Did you know that C#, Visual BASIC.Net, etc Microsoft gave the EMCA the rights to allow the standards for those languages to be given out to open source software?
Not only is there Mono, but also DotGNU that does a version of those languages.
They are not clones, but they are trying to make the languages available for multiple platforms. They also make Dotnet available for multiple platforms, because C# and Visual BASIC.net use Dotnet as part of their standard framework.
The reasons why they aren't clones is because you cannot take Visual Studio code and compile it on Mono and DotGNU unless you modify the code and tweak it. That is because Mono and DotGNU are written from scratch and not actual ports of Visual Studio.
OpenOffice.Org is not a clone of MS-Office either. It was written from scratch. The only thing it has in common with MS-Office is the MS-Office format files it can save as and read, and possible some primitive VBA support.
Mono and DotGNU are open source "alternatives" to Visual Studio, not clones.
OpenOffice.Org is an open source "alternative" to MS-Office.
Linux is an open source "alternative" to MS-Windows.
Tux is an open source "alternative" to Mickey Mouse.
Linus Torvalds is an open source "alternative" to Bill Gates
None of them are clones of the other.
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Momo does not just implement
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Next time, read the whole article [mono-project.com] before you quote things out of context. Mono does not even use the Microsoft source code for Winforms, but instead "Mono's Windows.Forms implementation translates the native system events such as X11 into Win32 WM_ messages and dispatches them using the WndProc mechanism. This allows applications that depend on overriding WndProc to get some feat
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I had enough with his personal attack fans last time, not getting into details.
Follow the money (Score:2)
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Novell gains revenue with the support contract OEM from Microsoft, Microsoft retains customer loyalty (and a cut of the support contract) and is able to sell "total solution
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The damage is done. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:The damage is done. (Score:5, Interesting)
The damage is done alright, but it is Novell that has taken a hit to their credibility. Everyone already knew RMS was a bit of a zealot, for better or worse, this won't change that. It has however ruffled the feathers of quite a few in the FLOSS community, and it could very well cause Novell to lose supporters in favor of Redhat, IBM or even Canonical. Whatever criticism you have about RMS it is hard to deny that helping Microsoft spread their FUD and trying to get a competitive advantage by splitting the OSS community is far worse than anything Stallman has ever done.
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Unless, of course, what he does is to split the OSS community.
You rightly called this deal FUD. It will go away with time. RMS won't, so it would be far better for us all if we could keep him just to THIS side of insanely divisive, and this deal isn't going to help that any.
Re:The damage is done. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The damage is done. (Score:4, Insightful)
For example: No matter what program I run, I'd like the "Open file" dialog to look the same. No matter what I'm trying to print, I'd like the "Print" dialog to be the same. When I'm trying to find out why my video doesn't play, it'd be great to have one video backend. It finally looks like everything is starting to standardize on ALSA for sound. Linux is the epitome of "The great thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from!". It's getting better, but still could use a lot of work.
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No they're not.
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This might be true, but the effectiveness of Stallman's fearmongering, coupled with the perception that Microsoft's recent behaviour reinforces it, and aided as always by the aggressive suppression of dissent engaged in by Stallman's followers, means that currently anyway, the cultic half of the abovementioned alliance is predominating.
We can hope that the pendulum eventually swings back, and things resume some vague semblance of genui
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You guys are nuts. I ask you, what evil has RMS done to the Free Software community?! Starting it in the first place? Seeing into the future of the software industry and writing the GPL to protect the community (1991) or doing it again in 2006-07? Ever ask yourself *why* he does what he does? I'll give you a hint. It's to keep Free Software Free.
parent: "Unless, of course, what he does is to split the OSS community"
RMS didn't split the OSS communit
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Open source software, including examples such as BSD, was around before Free Software, but without any ideological opposition to its use in proprietary software. Whether or not Stallman's ideological stance is more productive than the one taken by open source developers before him, and those who didn't join the Free Software movement, is an open question, and depends on the goals.
If the goal is the best software, t
Re:The damage is done. (Score:5, Interesting)
He's got foibles like anyone else. Your idiotic claim about him and Gates just shows you are talking out of your ass.
We've been conditioned (Score:2)
My theory is that most people who think he is overly radical, that he "starts throwing his toys out of the pram because someone said "Linux" instead of "GNU/Linux" get their info from the
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There's nothing to split. FOSS is just a marketplace of different products and licenses, just like any commercial marketplace. RMS has no control over what licenses people use. If FOSS developers don't like the GPLv3, they won't be adopting it. I predict, however, that the GPLv3 will be a big success because many FOSS developers will want its requirements applied to their code.
RMS won't, so it would be far better for us all if we could keep
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Same as how Cardinal Ratzinger has absolutely no control over what anybody does or believes...Right?
What a shitty example. (Score:2)
In many Catholic countries people turn a blind eye to the "teachings of the church" and use contraception and have abortions.
Just in Mexico City there are around 8000 abortions every year, it being a very Catholic country.
In Spain gay marriage was legalized last year, another country not being fazed by Mr Benedict the Pope.
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Do us a favour; come up with something new. For one thing, the shill argument is getting extremely old, and for another, the people who use it would be lucky if 1% of the time that it had been used, it had actually been acc
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Come on, use your head. The accusation of "shill" doesn't mean that I seriously believe you are one, it is simply shorthand for expressing that you are behaving as if you were one: it's people like you who hurt open source, not people like Stallman.
Expressing critical or dissenting opinions about Richard Stallman
You're not "expressing critical or dissenting opinions", you're throwing mud at someone who has done more for open source than you will in your entire lif
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Exactly my point. He ends up creating a scenario where his word, his ideology, is law. If you don't like it, your only alternative ultimately ends up becoming hardly using a computer at all. If that isn't raw authoritarianism, I'm not sure what is.
You've just proven my point, and you've done it very openly, for all to see. I either think and behave in exactl
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Stallman isn't creating a "scenario", he is creating software. Furthermore, he doesn't pick the licenses for software he doesn't write, the authors of that software do.
If you don't like it, your only alternative ultimately ends up becoming hardly using a computer at all.
Yes, if you're opposed to people giving you software with source code for free, you indeed have to stop using a computer at all. It is indeed terrible.
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You need to take a course of logic mate. (Score:2)
Nobody demanded that you stop using computers, the other poster suggested that you stop being such an hypocrate by moudbathing the hand that has fed your software needs. That is not totalitarianism, that is common sense and requesting basic good manners.
Yep, you are a thankless paranoid. (Score:2)
But your position is quite stalinist (or chose your dictator here, be free to do so, at least other people respect your right to express yourself).
Stallman is a very important voiced that needs to be heard, if anything he has been consistent and is inmovable principles have allowed software for all to thrive.
This would have been impossible with BSD licensing, where everybody would have run away with the goodies of others and then would h
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Win, Win, Win
Authored by: givemelibertyor on Saturday, May 26 2007 @ 09:23 AM EDT
-----There are, I have absolutely no doubt, several other advantageous
reasons for this deal that I don't come close to. But looking at all this, you
can't help feel that Bill and Steve are still laughing their socks off.-----
Another might be to try to poison NOVL as an acquisition target for IBM or
Google. NOVL has some networking assets that would be quite valuable tactically
and strategically for an
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I used to like Novell, and considered them ethical. That was from around 1980 to a few months ago. Since then I've been in "don't commit" status. Now, actually seeing the agreement, and reading people's interpretations of various pieces (did you know that several of the terms are defined in a web page on a domain that doe
Re:The damage is done. (Score:5, Insightful)
Richard has been prophetic about this: his concerns at the Novell/Microsoft deal, and about software patents in general, were exposed as completely correct when Microsoft started its recent claims of hundreds of patent violations without naming a single patent.
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The problem is that most people do not want to face the fact that the powerful forever keep trying to buy laws that undermine democracy such as the DMCA. Thus, most people are in no position to understand RMS's warnings.
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Yep. The problem with him dealing with people directly is that he's never had any real ability himself to hide what he is. The tremendous value inherent in the mouthpiece strategy is that said mouthpieces can be people who know how to sound infinitely more diplomatic, sane, and reasonable than Stallman hi
Trolls and shills on Slashdot (Score:2)
Hold on. I was with you until this point. A _mouthpiece_ for Stallman? I am sure this would be news to him. Can you name this person or is this just as nonsensical as the rest of your post?
Anyone who has not seen the following link on what Novell's partner Microsoft inspires should see:
http://www.inlumineconsulting.com:8080/ [inlumineconsulting.com]
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"Monstrous?" Who the hell modded this scurrilous piece of character assassination Insightful? The only thing that prevents it from being outright libelous is that it consists of nothing but empty venting.
I've seen Stallman speak in
You are really deluded. (Score:2)
Or both.
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damage to who? (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, this agreement shows that Stallman's behavior is completely reasonable. It's you who is "batshit" because you still just don't get the kinds of dirty tricks companies like Microsoft are trying.
with his credibility already stretched and the tensions already rife within the
This is a course in business ethics (Score:3, Insightful)
In the new dawn emerging from the FOSS revolution we are finally getting what we really need to move technology forward: light. These back room deals for contingent permission to use intangible ideas and leverage market share will not stand the light of day. All deals are eventually exposed. This leads to some business ethics lessons that should have been the standard all along:
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No; what we've really been getting is cultic bullying and intimidation, and the sorts of methods of social reform customarily employed by the Amish.
Microsoft on the one hand make legally questionable back room deals. On the other, Perens gets on a soap box and threatens Novell with the dire things that will happen to them if they don't get back with the Stallmanite program. We als
How did such a troll get good karma? (Score:2)
I've been watching RMS and Bruce Perens for more than 20 years. I don't always agree with them, though they have contributed far more to the cause than I. RMS in particular can get carried away with enthusiasm.
Having considered the issues myself however, it is my belief that they had considered these issues with what I would consider mathematical rigor long before I was even interested in them. You could see that I sometimes disagree with them about important issues if you were a contributor here, since
Who is modding this drivel insightful? (Score:2)
No protection what-so-ever (Score:5, Insightful)
Pay the Danegeld, never be rid of the Dane (Score:5, Interesting)
I wrote here at the time that the point of a secret covenant was for the companies to be able to sell the same peace more than once.
PHBs need to understand they can't buy peace -- Not ever. They have to take it by choosing to be Free and Open.
Novell's contributions to the OIN need to be reassessed now because the value of the patents they contributed may have been wiped out by this agreement. How many other OIN partners have worked a deal like this or outright licensed away their patents? Is the Open Invention Network a complete sham?
Novell took money from Microsoft. Microsoft always gets something valuable in return. I continue to believe the "something of value" was a pledge for Novell programmers to leverage MS IP in their products so that when this deal expired their customers would be hooked into paying MS licensing fees for products that run in Linux. It's the only way Microsoft encouraging deployment of Linux makes sense from a Microsoft point of view.
It certainly will be easier to do with Novell offshoring most of their development. High profile evacuations in their onshore development teams show an important trend. The FOSS developers who create great work because they have both skill and a passion for the "free as in liberty" aspect of open source software have fled. Offshore they can hire coders who are interested in personal liberty from the oppressed economic conditions of their community and are less concerned with the Freedom of others who fare better than them at a minimum. It's not a formula for good code. Passion adds considerable quality to the output - perhaps quality that cannot be had any other way. A software system is not a microwave oven.
Novell desperately needed that money from Microsoft because delays in their financial reporting caused by an audit of options grants allowed their major creditor to call loans that would have seriously impacted their operation. Somebody needs to have a close look at how this squeeze play was engineered. Its timing is suspicious in the extreme. It would not surprise me if both the investigation that triggered the audits and the creditor were both suspiciously motivated. All FOSS companies need to have a close look at their exposure to being leveraged in this way.
It is my hope and belief that Novell regrets their dance with the devil and they're trying to escape his fee. We will see if they can do it. In any case it should be more clear to all that dancing with the devil is a dangerous game.
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If you really think that peace exists within the FOSS development community, maybe you should spend some time reading about the recent internal conflicts that have been plaguing both the Debian and Gentoo projects.
What you're not seeing is that whether free or proprietary, in *any* human social environment there will always be authoritarian megalomaniacs who crave power over others, and who also cr
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OpenSuSE may mean that Novell is already facing a quiet insurrection. It also may not. (I'm not a SUSE user, so I haven't been following them. But even if it doesn't mean that now, it co
Your comment + a way out for Novell (Score:2)
Passion can be scary -- anyone who's stood at an altar to be married can tell you that. Passion is a powerful motivator for a lot of things, including innovative problem solving. Yes, passionate people who care about their work can engage in strident discussion. Should it rise to the necessary
Bravo, bravo, bravo! (Score:2)
You took us for the ride. I fell for it initially.
Pat yourself in the back, wonderful performance.
wow... (Score:3, Funny)
Finally a summary that contains a very much needed and comprehensive definition of the GPL. That's something every geek's been dreaming about since Slashdot was born!
Fair is Fair (Score:2, Interesting)
Microsoft is free to use GPL'd code, provided they follow those (GPL, LGPL) agreements.
OTOH, if **any** company doesn't follow the agreement - GET THEM!
Too many of them - http://gpl-violations.org/ [gpl-violations.org]
Linksys being the most famous: http://lwn.net/Articles/51570/ [lwn.net]
Personally, I'd love to see Microsoft found guilty of violating the GPL/LGPL, but I know how hard they work to ensure that doesn't happen - at least a few
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Re:Fair is Fair (Score:5, Informative)
Microsoft product names listed in the agreement (Score:4, Insightful)
No right to distribute (Score:5, Interesting)
Microsoft hereby covenants not to assert Microsoft Patents against each Non-Compensated Individual Hobbyist Developer (also referred to as "You") for Your personal creation of an originally authored work ("Original Work") and personal use of Your Original Work. This pledge is personal to You and does not apply to the use of Your Original Work by others or to the distribution of Your Original Work by You or others. A "Non-Compensated Individual Hobbyist Developer" is an individual software developer (i.e., a person and not any corporation, partnership or other legal entity), including a developer of open source software, who receives no monetary payment or any other forms of consideration that can be valued monetarily for their creation of their Original Works. The fact that You may be employed as a software developer by, and receive a salary from, a corporation, partnership or other legal entity, does not disqualify You from treatment as a "Non-Compensated Individual Hobbyist Developer" under this pledge, provided Your activities related to the creation of Your Original Work are performed during Your free time and outside the scope of Your employment. The Microsoft Patents subject to this pledge are all patents issued world-wide to the extent they are owned or controlled by Microsoft or its majority owned subsidiaries. For additional information on obtaining rights under Microsoft patents to contribute Your Original Work to an open source project, please see Microsoft's Patent Pledge for Hobbyist Contributors.
I like Suse. I've used it for years. I use OpenSuse and hope it will keep itself clear of that but I'm looking for alternatives. Ubuntu has a chance but anything that puts GNOME first is crap. I don't like Mono or the rest of Miguel's M$ fan-boyism. I don't want M$ crap in my life and haven't had it there for years.
Re:No right to distribute (Score:4, Informative)
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Perhaps PCLinuxOS [pclinuxos.com] might be to your liking, it's KDE-centric and generally receives very good reviews. I use it as my main OS myself, and I've always been very happy with it. It's definitely the
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Bully for you! You manage to lead a pure and Justified existence, unsullied by any contamination of anything from Microsoft.
Unfortunately, if you hadn't noted from your Edenic paradise of FLOSS perfection, a large of PCs (whether work or home, Server or Desktop) run Windows.
This begs a question - how to encourage people and companies to migrate from Windows to GNU/Linux? This just d
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Unfortunately, if you hadn't noted from your Edenic paradise of FLOSS perfection, a large of PCs (whether work or home, Server or Desktop) run Windows.
You can't be free from M$ if you use their stuff. It's not Windows the OS, it's M$ the organization. There are many other organizations which I can work to empower. I don't feel like undermining my own liberties by empowering the organizations that will take them away.
This begs a question - how to encourage people and companies to migrate from Windows to GNU/Linux? This just doesn't mean providing desktop environments (Gnome/KDE) but also a way to migrate applications (a big concern for business).
Java is not a problem, but the Microsoft languages (C#.NET and VB.NET) are.
Have you heard of porting? There is nothing in the .NET world that can't be solved by other (free) technologies (especially with the GPLing of Java). It's not about running stuff on Linux, it's about not being beholden to an oligarch.
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One should always be looking at alternatives, whether one's current choice is $foo Linux, OS X, Windows, OS/2, Solaris, or any other operating system out there. What provides the best solution for you today may not be what provides the best solution for your organization a year from now. I just compared the latest Zimb
Microsoft will buy Novell (Score:1)
Another Unintelligible EULA (Score:2)
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No acknolwedgement of Infringement (Score:5, Insightful)
3.4 No Acknowledgement of Infringement. Nothing in this Agreement shall imply, or be construed as an admission or acknowledgement by a Party, that any Patents of the other Party are infringed, valid or enforceable.
Which will hopefully finally put an end to all the nonsense conspiracy theories [boycottnovell.com] that "Novell admitted that Linux infringes patents" etc., even though Novell have constantly re-iterated [novell.com] that such a claim was ridiculous. As I've said several times before, blaming Novell for Microsoft's recent claims is just completely unfounded, and in fact there's nothing new or particularly recent about it; Microsoft have always been flooding the market with falsities about Linux's infringement on their patents.
Hopefully the published results will provide the community with a general better understanding [opensuse.org] of the deal, so that at least if they disagree/hate it, they do it for real reasons (which seems to be rare).
A real reason for shunning Novell (Score:1)
Why not acknowledge a real reason then, namely, that the patent agreement "innovated" a way to turn free software into effectively nonfree software? Moreover, it tries to do this by subverting the most widespread free software license. So serious is this problem that it forced the GPL3 to be delayed just
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This is completely baseless. I'm interesting in hearing the way in which you think this is a valid statement though.
> Moreover, it tries to do this by subverting the most widespread free software license
We can argue for eons on what the "spirit" or what the "meaning" of an unspoken licence's rule is, but this is completely pointless; if you want to play the legal game, then you have to play by the rules: only
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The basis is that Microsoft gives Novell's customers a patent license which is conditional on their not exercising many of the rights that the GPL gives them. This is unacceptable.
>>So serious is this problem that it forced the GPL3 to be delayed just in order to have language to ban this practice. The publication of a licence was delayed..
>I'm sorry but this is simply emotive la
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Which freedoms cannot be exercised? Could you expand a little more?
>Yes, Novell contributes to free software, but what good is 10x the contribution if software freedom is threatened and watered down by the sponsor of such contributors?
Statements like this often make me cringe I'm afraid. The last time it was mentioned
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>Which freedoms cannot be exercised? Could you expand a little more?
Any freedoms that they receive that depend on the patent protection cannot be exercised. E.g., the customer cannot _redistribute_ the software with the same degree of patent protection that they themselves were granted; on the other hand, anyone not c
Oh please, don't be ridiculous. (Score:2)
Basically they are abrogating for themselves a role that nobody bestowed into them with the work of the whole community.
I have no idea if the contrived contracts both companies signed allow for this to be done legally (there have been noises from people better informed than myself abot the deal actually contravening the GPL from both sides of this disgraceful agreement) but I am as
Conspiracy Theory? (Score:2)
I wouldn't call that a "conspiracy theory" because it was Microsoft who perpetuated that claim. Yes, they went to the media and used it to whip up all this FUD, like the 235 patents bit. And with the rest of us unable to read the agreement...
Anyhow, I figured that was just Microsoft sta
Re:Conspiracy Theory? (Score:4, Insightful)
Then what they did? (Score:2)
They agreed not to sue the pants of each other, but Novell knew there was nothing to be sued for. So actually that would imply they took advantage of MS weak position, and all this using as a tool software that they only distribute and for which they have no moral standing to use in such manner.
We can spin it in many different ways, the one above amuses me the most, the reality is that no matter what, Novell come in no way looking good.
We knew who MS are. We learned who Novell is. No
Considering Softare Patents are acts fo fraud .... (Score:2)
See: http://threeseas.net/abstraction_physics.html [threeseas.net] re: what is universally considered NOT patentable.
Landmark? (Score:1, Troll)
Partnership? Toady, more like it.
Did as promised? Spin doctoring, more like it.
Partnership agreements? Pact, more like it.
What Perens Is Looking For (Score:2)
Naturally in any legal document you can spin the thing any way you want - despite or perhaps because of the supposedly rigorous legal language - so I'm sure he'll come up with something to let him get more play in
...for which Novell receives revenue. (Score:2)
So where does free software fall in this statement. Does Novell receive revenue for all the FLOSS it distributes? Sounds like BOHICA time to me.
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Re:Faith? Get the fuck out. (Score:4, Interesting)
There, fixed that for you.
Sadly, the answer is probably no.
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MS - Linux
Its time to put an end to these childish rivalries and Machiavellian plots. I think a good start would be for Dice-K to go over and personally meet each of the Yankees TODAY, and tell them how much he appreciates their skills and looks forward to seeing them in June at Fenway.
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