On Tue, 7 Nov 2006, Magnus Boman wrote:

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On Wed, Nov 8, 2006 at 1:39 PM, in message <20061108023901.GA20665@suse.de>, Stefan Dirsch wrote: On Tue, Nov 07, 2006 at 06:51:31PM - 0700, Boyd Lynn Gerber wrote: Hello,

At a Novell conference today the advised reading this and if any question post them via the links on the page.

http://www.novell.com/linux/microsoft/faq_opensource.html

Thanks. At least a beginning. Unfortunately the feedback feature is broken at the moment. :- (

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Not all the required information was filled in. Please fill in the following fields: email ---

Of course I filled the email field with a valid email address.

You should know better. Employees are not allowed to ask questions :-)

The link is broken for everyone. People in suse-linux-e and suseot are talking about having the exact same problem. -- Boyd Gerber ZENEZ 1042 East Fort Union #135, Midvale Utah 84047 --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On Wednesday 08 November 2006 08:49, Patrick Shanahan wrote:

* JB [11-08-06 00:23]:

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Sounds like a lot of BS as usual from companies with too much money and no ethics. I'm glad I happened to have my hip waders on when I read the site.

yes, they (the hip waders) appear to completely contain your ears.

<shrug> I'll just sit back and watch as you gullibles take it from behind and the Linux community as a whole is ripped to shreds one distro at a time by M$. My 'ears' may be covered, but your eyes are blindered it seems. -- Calling an illegal alien an 'undocumented worker', is like calling a home intruder an 'unwanted houseguest'. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

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At a Novell conference today the advised reading this and if any question post them via the links on the page.

Covers things pretty well. QA4 is particularly important: "Novell is committed to protecting, preserving and promoting freedom for free and open source software."

Let archive.org archive it. Then if they don't keep the promise, cite them. -`J' -- --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

I can still cite Ballmer calling the GPL "cancer" and Gates calling Linux "communism". :-) :-)

So what? The Windows EULA is despotism.

I said it before and I'll repeat: Novell should have liaised with Red Hat, the friend;

UnitedLinux failed, remember? [Maybe they got too close to Redhat ;-)]

not liaise with the enemy to combat the friend. Too bad companies are run by MBA's and not engineers who perceive a mantra properly. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Market hole! -`J' -- --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Janne Karhunen writes:

On Wednesday 08 November 2006 03:51, Boyd Lynn Gerber wrote:

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At a Novell conference today the advised reading this and if any question post them via the links on the page.

http://www.novell.com/linux/microsoft/faq_opensource.html

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Q1. How is this agreement compatible with Novell's obligations under Section 7 of the GPL? Our agreement with Microsoft is focused on our customers, and does not include a patent license or covenant not to sue from Microsoft to Novell (or, for that matter, from Novell to Microsoft). Novell's customers receive a covenant ^^^^^^^^^

So these guys *hacked* the GPL by making the customer to *sign the deal* with Microsoft instead of them. As customers were NOT consulted when the deal was signed, it was in fact very much Novell that signed the deal. No matter how the Novell tries to get away from this. Quotes from Groklaw¹:

"Get it? Novell doesn't get the promise from Microsoft. Its *end users* do. Ha ha, GPL. Except that the end users are also licensees, according to the GPL license. Licensees who are not allowed to redistribute, Novell and MS told us, without losing the patent promise, speaking of specifics, according to the deal made on their behalf -- without asking them to agree or not -- and on top of the GPL license they already got."

As long as there is no patent infringement, there is no GPL problem. Read the FAQ: Q4. With this agreement, will Novell include Microsoft patented code in its contributions to the open source community? No. Novell will not change its development practices as a result of this agreement. It has always been our policy in all development, open source and proprietary, to stay away from code that infringes another's patents, and we will continue to develop software using these standard practices. If any of our code is found to infringe someone else's patents, we will try to find prior technology to invalidate the patents, rework the code to design around the infringement, or as a last resort remove the functionality. We're not going to ship code that infringes valid patents, Andreas -- Andreas Jaeger, aj@suse.de, http://www.suse.de/~aj/ SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, Maxfeldstr. 5, 90409 Nürnberg, Germany GPG fingerprint = 93A3 365E CE47 B889 DF7F FED1 389A 563C C272 A126

On Wednesday 08 November 2006 20:11, Janne Karhunen wrote:

On Wednesday 08 November 2006 20:19, Andreas Jaeger wrote:

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As long as there is no patent infringement, there is no GPL problem. Read the FAQ:

Yeah. Provided that there was, GPL section 7 would prohibit Novell from distributing anything in the first place. But by getting/paying royalties Novell is giving out a signal that such things could exist (why pay for nothing?). So we have a chicken and an egg problem with the product Novell is trying to sell here.

Here's my understanding of it: There is not now a patent violation in GPLed code. If there is in future a violation, that code will either be rewritten or pulled (if a rewrite is impossible). In the meantime, customers will not have a license to use patented code, they will be required to stop using it. They will only have a guarantee that they won't end up in court, getting sued for what is essentially someone else's screwup The fact that you can get sued at all as a customer is a major problem with current legislation, IMNSHO, but the fact is the law allows it --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org