On 11/4/06, Nick Wiltshire <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
I agree with a lot of what is said here but this situation makes me more
nervous than SCO ever did (which it never really did)...
I think that this is the beginning of the patent wars that have been threatening to emerge, What stands the hair up on the back of my neck is that these same people do not seem to "get" Free/Open source software or they never would have engaged in a contract like this.
I am glad to see Eben Moglen weighing in on this issue. He is an intellectual power house. If Novell want to challenge his interpretation of the GPL with him they will have to be really pull a rabbit out of the hat.
On the good side I think that IBM has enough at stake to fight for FOS. From what I know, even MS is not anxious to take on IBM. IBM has the largest portfolio of patents.
Here's some history. In the Reagan era, the US patent office used to vet each patent before issuing it. Then Reagan cut the budget of the patent office and let the courts strike patents if they cannot be defended. IBM started gathering patents before this time period and from what I have gathered vets its patents internally when submitting a patent application. Given the culture at MS I'm not sure that MS would do the same. That means that for the most part the patents that IBM has will stand up in court better than the patents that MS owns.
_______________________________________________ clug-talk mailing list [email protected] http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca Mailing List Guidelines (http://clug.ca/ml_guidelines.php) **Please remove these lines when replying
