Jerry, > It is curious that only Red Hat and Novell > are the plaintiffs. Why not FSF (GNOME), of X.ORG, or TrollTech (KDE > and QT). > I think you meant that Red Hat and Novell are the defendants, not the plaintiffs, in this suit. Having a few defendants at one time is a normal thing. You only have to prove the patent against one or two. If the patent is upheld against Red Hat and Novell, then they can go after other companies, and those companies will probably simply settle out of court. It is simply less expensive to have the court case this way.
The real issue is that most typical patent settlements would adversely affect the way that free software works and is distributed. This is similar to the recent Alcatel/Lucent suit against Microsoft. Now that Alcatel/Lucent has won against Microsoft, there is nothing to stop Alacatel/Lucent to now go after others using mp3 (such as Intel, etc., etc.) http://www.betanews.com/article/AlcatelLucent_Victory_in_MP3_Dispute_Signals_Trouble_for_Digital_Audio/1172184439 md _______________________________________________ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
