The Novell/MS should really mean nothing to developers who respect intellectual property of Microsoft - Microsoft and Novell under the deal (and any Novell customer) are able to share each others respective intellectual property and allow external developers to extend and contribute to those projects.
People crying about the entire community not getting covered simply don't get it... You can be sued now and you could be sued before the deal if you infringe on someones intellectual property and in some cases, rightly so. Novell are not handing the keys out to anyones castles, as GPL'd and similarly licensed software will stay open and free - Novell can't give this away on their own terms. Also take in the fact that the deal is very much product differentiation for Novell - offering security in the knowledge that Microsoft will not come for their first born son any time soon. James On 11/7/06, [EMAIL PROTECTED] < [EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On Mon, Nov 06, 2006 at 10:50:57PM +1100, Ben wrote: > On 11/6/06, tuxta2 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >What do you people think? > >I would be very interested to hear some opinions. > > This comment seems to be realistic, except for the finishing off bit. > I think Microsoft has much more to gain by keeping Linux around and > selling IP licenses for it. > http://news.linux.com/comments.pl?sid=37578&cid=92628 > > Humour piece, apparently from 1995: > http://www.usd.edu/~bwjames/humor/ms/novel.html > > FSF article from April this year: > http://www.fsfeurope.org/projects/ms-vs-eu/article-20060421.en.html > > My thought on Microsoft's strategy: > embrace, extend, and emasculate or enslave. > > If software patents are widely recognised then Microsoft can force > Linux to be nothing more than a backyard hobby, or charge for it, all > while appearing not to be a monopoly, because after all, it's > reasonable to charge for > your IP, right? Am I missing something can't we just take the code from Novell and apply any patches to bring it up to where it is now and carry on from there, doesn't that give every one Novell's protection ? or something along those lines..... ps I am not a lawyer . > > FSF won't push the GPL issue, because if they do, Microsoft will > threaten litigation against other distros on patent grounds. The FSF > will be able to go ahead and most likely lose, or back off and cement > the validity of software patents. > > The only way Linux will last as an independant force in the long run > is to fight software patents. We need to make sure there is at least > one major market where the patents don't have force. If you have to > license Linux in the USA, but not in the EU, Microsoft will be > tortured by the USA corporations, so they won't push it until they've > made the EU think licensing is OK, which is why Novell is such a good > ally for them, as it's the strong in the EU. > > Ben > -- > SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ > Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFFT6TGkZz88chpJ2MRAqVoAJ46G3xXY5KS3fs4GVjhEm8WXwrdFQCgzjRU VpvvAox+WoWljoId1Fwib2g= =RYv8 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
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