___/ On Fri 03 Nov 2006 14:26:15 GMT, [ Andreas Jaeger ] wrote : \___
Kevin Donnelly <kevin@xxxxxxxxxx> writes:
On Friday 03 November 2006 04:08, Carl-Daniel Hailfinger wrote:
I wouldn't call that selling the users down the river. Independent of
the fate of Novell the deal will stop worries about MS killing the open
source movement with patents.
Yes, though it's unclear from the press release whether the patent ceasefire
is in perpetuity, or merely for the duration of the Novell agreement (up to
2012, IIRC). I got the impression it was the latter, so there is the
difficulty that Microsoft could argue in any future legal assault
that one of
the leading distro makers explicitly accepted there were patent issues in
Linux. That's not so good.
This one is irrevocable - for ever,
Irrevocable or not, the following good essay sheds some light.
ovell-Microsoft: What They Aren't Telling You
,----[ Quote ]
| Today Novell and Microsoft announced a partnership in which Microsoft
| has made some unlikely-seeming promises regarding Linux. What aren't
| they telling you? First, you can be sure that Microsoft's not out to
| help a competitor. This announcement paves the way for Microsoft to
| implement significant control over commercial customer's use of Free
| Software. And it has significant negative implications for Open Source
| in general.
|
| There are two significant announcements. First, that Novell and Microsoft
| are entering into a patent cross-license, and second, that Microsoft
| is promising not to assert its patents against individual non-commercial
| developers. The bad part is that this sets Mirosoft up to assert its
| patents against all commercial Open Source users. There are also some
| little bonuses for Microsoft, like Novell will help Microsoft turn back
| the Open Document Format and substitute something Microsoft controls.
|
| [...]
|
| SCO's case is foundering, so here's Microsoft's next scheme to charge a
| royalty to users of Linux, and to make Novell into the next SCO. Groklaw,
| a widely-respected journal of technology law, probably said it best with
| their headline on this story: Novell Sells Out.
|
| This entire agreement hinges around software patenting - monopolies on
| ideas that are burying the software industry in litigation - rather
| than innovation. If we've learned one thing from the rapid rise of
| Open Source, it's that intellectual property protection - the thing
| that Open Source dispenses with - actually impedes innovation. And
| the Novell-Microsoft agremeent stands as an additional impediment.
`----
http://technocrat.net/d/2006/11/2/9945
After years of vigorously advocating SuSE, I begin to look elsewhere. Sorry...
Best wishes,
Roy
--
Roy S. Schestowitz, Ph.D. Candidate in Medical Biophysics
http://Schestowitz.com | GNU/Linux | PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
http://othellomaster.com - GPL'd 3-D Othello
http://iuron.com - proposing a non-profit search engine
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