Novell's press release on partnership with Microsoft

Posted Nov 3, 2006 3:57 UTC (Fri) by bojan (subscriber, #14302)
In reply to: Novell's press release on partnership with Microsoft by bojan
Parent article: Novell's press release on partnership with Microsoft

Here is official interpretation:

> "We've made two promises under this agreement," said Brad Smith, senior vice president, general counsel, corporate secretary, legal and corporate affairs for Microsoft. "One is a promise that we won't assert our patents against individual open-source developers. These are individuals that are contributing code, not creating it as part of their job, but acting in an individual non-commercial way. The second is for developers who are getting paid to create code that Novell then takes and inputs into its distribution that is then covered within the open-source agreement between us."

That's from:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2050692,00.asp

So, I guess that means that folks from Ubuntu, Mandriva, Red Hat etc. are not safe. How's that in line with the GPL (JoeBuck's point: http://lwn.net/Articles/207413/), I don't know.

Novell could be out of the Linux business

Posted Nov 3, 2006 6:03 UTC (Fri) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link] (4 responses)

The instant Microsoft takes action against Red Hat for distributing anything Novell also distributes, and Novell claims its customers are immune, all the Linux kernel contributors who work for Red Hat will simply announce that Novell's license to copy, modify, and distribute Linux is terminated under clause 7 of the GPL.

So Novell is no safer than Red Hat.

Novell could be out of the Linux business

Posted Nov 3, 2006 6:50 UTC (Fri) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link] (1 responses)

Yes, that would appear to be the case under clause 7. It would seem that Novell actually purchased a lemon.

Novell could be out of the Linux business

Posted Nov 3, 2006 11:37 UTC (Fri) by pdsdst (subscriber, #19395) [Link]

Novell probably did not have much choice at this point. The US patent mess is getting worse every minute and with a whole basket of lemons and insufficient funds this is probably the best deal Novell could make for their stockholders. After all, Apple is doing fine after yielding to their old enemy. I also think that large companies are too dependant on Linux by now for MS (or Oracle) to try to kill it off by destroying Novell, Red Hat and Canonical in one fell swoop without seriously hurting their own bottom line (and making it politically impossible for the EU to let them of the hook). MS as a company may act stupidly sometimes but I do not think they are seriously considering using their patents against Red Hat in the next few years (at least not until software patents are enacted in the EU). Friendly competition is usually much more rewarding for all involved and MS is still making a lot of money.

Novell could be out of the Linux business

Posted Nov 3, 2006 19:57 UTC (Fri) by madscientist (subscriber, #16861) [Link]

Probably, but we don't even have to wonder about the kernel, with its fragmented copyright ownership situation (yes, I know that any single owner has standing).

As much as RMS gets flak for pointing it out, a Linux distribution contains a significant amount of GNU code, and most if it is absolutely critical infrastructure (can you say "C runtime"? I knew you could!) Due to their copyright assignment policy, the Free Software Foundation almost certainly holds the copyright to more of any standard Linux distribution than any other single person or company, by any metric.

You can bet that the FSF and Eben Moglen will be keeping an extremely sharp eye on this and be ready to file legal paperwork the instant it's warranted.

Novell could be out of the Linux business

Posted Nov 4, 2006 21:13 UTC (Sat) by donkyhotay (guest, #41493) [Link]

I think this is the beginning of an attempt to "kill" linux. Sure they have the clause it won't affect "non-commercial linux" but if they can kill off the big commercial companies then they can easily prevent small commercial linux companies from ever starting. Without SOME commercial incentive linux dies. Think about it, lots of people help with linux but linux needs the companies to move at the rate it does. Think about it, if red-hat suddenly died then fedora would slow up. Same thing for all the other major distro's (debian, ubuntu, suse, etc.) people run on their systems. It wouldn't COMPLETELY die (people at home would work on it) but it would be a serious blow to linux development. But I don't think taking out home linux use is microsofts goal. They dominate the home market already. I believe M$ is looking long-term which requires expansion. With their control of the personal computer market the only place big for them to go is onto the servers (which are mostly unix/linux). The servers also generally run the commercial versions. So they aim to wipe out the commercial linux companies. Their customers are forced to run SOMETHING on their servers and they're going to want tech-support that non-commercial options can't provide. This leaves as the only option (surprise) microsoft enterprise! Then after controlling both the servers and the home computers they can work on grinding out macOS. After that they would leave us few devoted NON-COMMERCIAL linux developers around in order to say to the world "we're not a monopoly! Look at those linux developers!" Of course the second any linux developer actually attempts to earn some money with linux then they would declare them commercial and stamp them out. Now novell of course is the one in danger but if they can pull this off then it'll be easier the next time. What worries me more is they might be attempting to work their copyrights into the GPL so that they are in direct conflict with each other. Then it goes to court to determine if microsofts copyright is stronger then the GPL. I can just imaging getting 12 random people that hear about "copyright infringement" (everyone knows copyright infringement is bad) and then hear about "violating the GPL" (GPL? what the @#$% is a GPL?) combined with all the money microsoft can pour into it and the next thing you know the GPL is overturned.