Hey Will- I'm not "jumping up and down on IBM". I merely commented that it's a bit skewed to bring up the evil nature of patents and then discuss IBM/freedom glowingly when IBM owns and applies for more patents than almost anyone else in the world.
I guess we should separate patents and the Microsoft/Novell patent issue to be a little more clear. You said "Software patents are evil and Novel's endorsement of them is also evil." Is your issue with the evil nature of patents in general (which would include IBM and others) or *just* the Microsoft/Novell patent deal? Assuming the latter, yes, I agree that Novell's partnership does give a little weight to Microsoft in terms of IP ownership and possibly an ability to sue, but I don't think that Microsoft really needs Novell's help in this since they have the clout and the money. I can see that Microsoft wanted to have this little advantage in their pocket, but I also think that Microsoft wanted to also dip their toes a bit into the commercial OSS world via what is, essentially, a hand-shake and pat on the back between the two companies. As far as Novell being "persona non gratta [sic]", I don't think that really has any basis in reality. They seem to be doing as well now as before, and SuSE is still a very big play in the enterprise space. Really, it's either RHEL or SuSE if you are a big business. -- Dustin Puryear President and Sr. Consultant Puryear Information Technology, LLC 225-706-8414 x112 http://www.puryear-it.com Author, "Best Practices for Managing Linux and UNIX Servers" http://www.puryear-it.com/pubs/linux-unix-best-practices/ willhill wrote: > Non of that justifies cooperating with Microsoft in the way that Novel did. > Microsoft is a sworn enemy of software freedom. Their little deal with Novel > has no upside and lots of downsides. It creates the illusion of haves and > have nots within the free software world. It also creates a larger threat of > litigation about patents. You can jump up and down on IBM all you want, > the "revolt" against Novel was well deserved. That revolt, of course, is > another planned consequence of the deal. What better way to get rid of your > competitors than make them persona non gratta in their own market? > > _______________________________________________ > General mailing list > [email protected] > http://mail.brlug.net/mailman/listinfo/general_brlug.net > > -- > This message was scanned by ESVA and is believed to be clean. > Click here to report this message as spam. > http://esva.puryear-it.com/cgi-bin/learn-msg.cgi?id= > > _______________________________________________ General mailing list [email protected] http://mail.brlug.net/mailman/listinfo/general_brlug.net
