Michael S. Dunsavage wrote:

On 11/22/2010 09:29 AM, Peter Van Lone wrote:

...

http://www.novell.com/news/press/novell-agrees-to-be-acquired-by-attachmate-...

This is interesting. Though, not sure where Suse would fit in...I would like their take on OpenSUSE. And if Suse Studio and Suse Build Services will still exist. I guess we shall see.

Hmm, Attachmate's web site seems to be down. That's not very encouraging since the story doesn't seem to have reached /. yet. Cheers, Dave -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

* Damon Register (damon.w.register@lmco.com) [20101122 16:10]:

I wonder what "certain intellectual property assets" means? I guess that only very few people will know what this means.

Microsoft gets Linux in the end?

I doubt it. Read http://www.attachmate.de/Press/PressReleases/nov-22-2010.htm for a press release that tells more than taht of Novell. Philipp -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On 11/22/2010 7:17 AM, Peter Van Lone wrote:

On Mon, Nov 22, 2010 at 9:10 AM, Damon Register wrote: <snip>

...

I am a bit curious about the part of the article that says "Novell also announced it has entered into a definitive agreement for the concurrent sale of certain intellectual property assets to CPTN Holdings LLC, a consortium of technology companies organized by Microsoft Corporation,"

I wonder what "certain intellectual property assets" means? Microsoft gets Linux in the end?

Attachmate is going to operate a Suse business division, so I highly doubt that there is any particular linux ip (which would not be legal anyway) being transferred to the consortium. I'm betting it has to do with some of the Novell products that don't fit with Attachmates product plans -- what those are, I don't know. It will be interesting to watch.

While Microsoft won't get opensuse, there were over 800 patents purchased by the Microsoft front group. Some say this was purely defensive on the part of Microsoft, not wanting these patents to fall into other hands. However, I can't think of worse hands for them to fall into. These may be the things that come back to haunt us when this group starts shutting down Android, or some other key technology, even if they don't directly affect Linux. If these patents are the much hyped "cross licensed" technology which composed a great deal of the MS-Novell agreement, it means MS is now free to exercise its own patents, you, now, the ones that they have claimed all along that Linux violates. Add to this that Attachmate is a thinly-held private company and the true ownership is not transparent, and could be bought out at a moment's notice. It wouldn't be the first time that Microsoft found an unlikely buyer, filled their pockets, and told them to go out and buy something, then snapped up said buyer. -- _____________________________________ ---This space for rent--- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On 23/11/2010 11:50, Lew Wolfgang wrote: [pruned]

Fred forwarded this link:

http://www.itnews.com.au/News/239447,novell-sold-for-22-billion.aspx

“If I was sitting there looking at [US$2 billion] coming in, I’d probably be quite happy as a Novell shareholder,” Longbottom said.

“[But] as a Novell customer, I’d be very worried.”

I think that more than Novell customers need to be worried...

Regards, Lew

I also sent Fred another article - which I just posted in off-topic. BC -- Attorney: Doctor, do you recall the time that you examined the body? Witness: The autopsy started at 2030 hours. Attorney: And Mr. Denton was dead at the time? Witness: If not, he was by the time I finished. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On 23/11/2010 18:43, michael getachew wrote:

...

I think that more than Novell customers need to be worried...

i understand that SUSE belongs to Novell but how about openSuse? is opensuse considered novell property

From the Novell site: http://www.novell.com/products/#o you will see that openSUSE is a Novell product. Answer your question? BC -- Attorney: Doctor, do you recall the time that you examined the body? Witness: The autopsy started at 2030 hours. Attorney: And Mr. Denton was dead at the time? Witness: If not, he was by the time I finished. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On 23/11/2010 19:53, Andreas Jaeger wrote:

On Tuesday 23 November 2010 09:07:19 Basil Chupin wrote:

...

On 23/11/2010 18:43, michael getachew wrote:

...

...

I think that more than Novell customers need to be worried...

i understand that SUSE belongs to Novell but how about openSuse? is opensuse considered novell property

From the Novell site: http://www.novell.com/products/#o

you will see that openSUSE is a Novell product.

And if you follow any of the links, they point to the openSUSE wiki. It shows up on the list of products but it is not a product anymore. We did this for historic reasons.

...

Answer your question?

I fear you got confused ;)

Andreas

Sorry, Andreas, no confusion on my part - or anybody else's part. That is what the url shows. And it shows what it is meant to show. I don't think there is anyone in the (ex) Novell organisation who does not have the brain power to ensure that what is displayed there to the world is incorrect. (The alternative becomes a truly mind-boggling speculation....) This matter has been raised, from memory, many many months ago - but the "misleading" information, as suggested, has not been amended. Nobody is interested in any "wiki". Most people don't even know what a "wiki" is. People read what they search for and read what is stated on the (ex) Novell site. What is shown in on the official (ex) Novell site is what people first see and is what they take to be the official statement from the company. BC (PS. I'm glad that you are taking that paternity leave you mentioned shortly after your son was born :-) . Take care of him, your wife, and yourself. Just relax, and bear in mind what my father used to tell me, "I work to live and not live to work." Ciao.) -- Attorney: Doctor, do you recall the time that you examined the body? Witness: The autopsy started at 2030 hours. Attorney: And Mr. Denton was dead at the time? Witness: If not, he was by the time I finished. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On 23/11/2010 19:51, Andreas Jaeger wrote:

On Tuesday 23 November 2010 08:43:19 michael getachew wrote:

...

...

I think that more than Novell customers need to be worried...

i understand that SUSE belongs to Novell but how about openSuse? is opensuse considered novell property or since it is open-source and developed by non-novell developers too will it be left alone? or should we expect to see a fork of opensuse like libreoffice with openoffice?(lol-libresuse).

The openSUSE project is not a product of Novell and I expect it will be left alone,

Andreas

I am not going to go into arguments about semantics, but (ex) Novell claims that openSUSE is one of its products as I spelt out in the earlier post. openSUSE is a product of Novell - as the Novell url I mentioned earlier clearly states so. QUOTE Products *Novell. Making IT Work As One.* Your customers don't care what you're running—as long as it works flawlessly, 24/7/365. That's our job. Come see how Novell can keep you in business. ....... openSUSE http://www.novell.com/products/opensuse/ * Features http://en.opensuse.org/Portal:11.3 * How to Buy http://www.novell.com/products/opensuse/howtobuy.html * Tech Specs http://www.novell.com/products/opensuse/sysreqs.html * Documentation http://en.opensuse.org/Documentation * Download http://software.opensuse.org/ * Support http://www.novell.com/support/products/opensuse/ UNQUOTE http://www.novell.com/products/#o No "wikis", no disclaimers, no "read the small fine print", but a clear statement. 'Nuff said. BC -- Attorney: Doctor, do you recall the time that you examined the body? Witness: The autopsy started at 2030 hours. Attorney: And Mr. Denton was dead at the time? Witness: If not, he was by the time I finished. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On Tue, 2010-11-23 at 04:17 -0500, Andrew Joakimsen wrote: ...

But isn't that a technically for legal reasons? Last time I heard, Novell owns some subsidiary which owns Novell Cayman Islands which ...

In that case, i suggest another fork: OpenCayman ;-) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On Tue, 23 Nov 2010 23:19:14 -0600, David C. Rankin wrote:

So we will do the proverbial "wait and see", but John's concern about the "thinly-held private company [where] the true ownership is not transparent" is always troubling on any number of fronts...

Sounds like nothing to do with the UNIX copyrights. See: http://www.novell.com/company/ir/message.html (Just saw this posting a few minutes ago) Jim -- Jim Henderson Please keep on-topic replies on the list so everyone benefits -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On Wed, 24 Nov 2010 17:09:00 -0300, Cristian Rodríguez wrote:

El 24/11/10 16:48, Jim Henderson escribió:

...

Sounds like nothing to do with the UNIX copyrights. See:

http://www.novell.com/company/ir/message.html

and If it is not clear enough by now, Linux has nothing to do with Unix, there is no Unix "ip" on it, get over it.

But of course. Jim -- Jim Henderson Please keep on-topic replies on the list so everyone benefits -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

jsa wrote:

The outcome of the SCO / Novell suit was not that there was no Unix in Linux, but rather that Novell owned the Unix patents SCO was trying to enforce.

Actually, the fight's been mostly about copyrights. Patent issues were dropped early on. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On 11/24/2010 02:32 PM, jsa wrote:

Pam over at Groklaw has this to say:

Quote: No doubt we'll find out in time. It is being reported that what it will get is 882 patents. Blech. How many does Novell own? Is that all of them? If so, will we get to watch Son of SCO, but with patents this time? But keep in mind that the WordPerfect litigation could be in this picture, and I wonder if this could be a kind of deal to tactfully settle it out, with Microsoft paying to end it this way? $450 million isn't a lot, though, so how could it be all of the patents? Nevertheless, selling any patents to Microsoft is like selling your baby to a pedophile in the limited sense that you can reasonably predict what it will do with the acquisition.

Novell's CEO is telling "valued customers" in an email that it's a merger agreement, that Novell believes "the transaction is great news for our customers," that all contracts will be honored, and that the IP sale to Linux's sworn enemy "will not impact customers", whatever that means. Not a word about Linux and what it means for SUSE. Not a word to reassure the community. --endquote

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20101122130625952

The curiosity to me is why have all these seemingly reasonable minded people having picked up on those couple of sentences about the intellectual property aspects of the deal. It had never really crossed my mind before I saw Pascal's announcement. To me it was like seeing a fish in your bathtub. It certainly stood out. I'm not worried about opensuse, I'm more curious about "what the hell are they talking about?" -- David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E. Rankin Law Firm, PLLC 510 Ochiltree Street Nacogdoches, Texas 75961 Telephone: (936) 715-9333 Facsimile: (936) 715-9339 www.rankinlawfirm.com -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On Friday 26 November 2010, Cristian Rodríguez wrote:

El 25/11/10 22:55, David C. Rankin escribió:

...

I'm not worried about opensuse, I'm more curious about "what the hell are they talking about?"

It is just FUD, This old boring story that somehow links dinosaur old Unix with linux sourcecode.

Technically speaking, it is bullshit :) and the old unix systems are a dead horse.

It is bull, but the horse is a zombie. I am amazed on an almost daily basis how many 30+ year old systems are still in production use out there Anders -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On 25/11/2010 07:32, jsa wrote:

On 11/23/2010 09:19 PM, David C. Rankin wrote:

...

The IP issue is what caught my attention as well. (see my reply with to the announcement by Pascal Bleser). It's rare to see someone float a "trial balloon" specifically concerning IP related to acquisition of an open source project.

I'm not so much concerned about OpenSuse. There are other distros out there.

But let us assume that some of those patents acquired were for the portions of Unix held by Novell ... Would that have any effect on Linux in general?

Pam over at Groklaw has this to say:

Quote: No doubt we'll find out in time. It is being reported that what it will get is 882 patents. Blech. How many does Novell own? Is that all of them? If so, will we get to watch Son of SCO, but with patents this time? But keep in mind that the WordPerfect litigation could be in this picture, and I wonder if this could be a kind of deal to tactfully settle it out, with Microsoft paying to end it this way? $450 million isn't a lot, though, so how could it be all of the patents? Nevertheless, selling any patents to Microsoft is like selling your baby to a pedophile in the limited sense that you can reasonably predict what it will do with the acquisition.

Novell's CEO is telling "valued customers" in an email that it's a merger agreement, that Novell believes "the transaction is great news for our customers," that all contracts will be honored, and that the IP sale to Linux's sworn enemy "will not impact customers", whatever that means. Not a word about Linux and what it means for SUSE. Not a word to reassure the community. --endquote

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20101122130625952

Have you seen this? Groklaw accused of censorship To my mind, Groklaw http://www.groklaw.net is one of the indispensable sites in open source. Just don’t get on Pamela Jones’ bad side. (I’m afraid I just did.) When I took this beat, back when the /SCO vs. IBM/ case was in full flower, Groklaw was always on top of the story. Sometimes I disagreed with it, but I saw it as unbiased, authoritative and credible. There have always been those who claimed the opposite http://linux-blog.org/groklaw-and-censorship/, starting with SCO management. The mysterious Pamela Jones http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamela_Jones — never seen, a self-described paralegal, signing everything PJ, but with a detective’s instincts, a librarian’s access to research materials, and a litigator’s sharp tongue — added spice and mystery. If you’re a legal geek, Groklaw is delicious enough to be practically pornographic. But now several people have come forward with separate claims of Groklaw censoring their comments, and Florian Mueller has posted examples of the practice at Scribd. http://www.scribd.com/doc/43344245/10-11-19-Groklaw-Censorship-Evidence http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/groklaw-accused-of-censorship/7826 BC -- ATTORNEY: Now doctor, isn't it true that when a person dies in his sleep, he doesn't know about it until the next morning? WITNESS: Did you actually pass the bar exam? -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Friday, 2010-11-26 at 11:30 -0800, jsa wrote:

Its her site, she can censor what she wants.

Somehow I'm not surprised you raised this issue but never say a word about the censorship that happens on this very list.

If that were true, your post wouldn't be here >:-) - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. (from 11.2 x86_64 "Emerald" at Telcontar) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.12 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAkzwVgkACgkQtTMYHG2NR9XhywCeKDQASLmiwA5JvgGxFygW8Xes OxYAn0tqLrMIP1r+g+3UK8bct3apu2Cx =4XTE -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Basil Chupin wrote:

The article I referenced talks about "censoring" and not "moderating". Some people can't tell the difference between moderating and censoring. There have been some on Groklaw that have tried to abuse it. When they get banned, is it moderation or censorship?

-- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org