On Saturday 04 November 2006 00:05, Ed McCanless wrote:
Anders Johansson wrote:
It does not mean the infringing code won't have to be removed, it just means Novell customers and partners won't suffer any legal consequences
And vice versa, of course. Novell has patents too, the deal cuts both ways
So, for clarification, you are saying that M$ can force the removal of infringing code found in open source software, and the open source community can force the removal of infringing code found in M$ software, which is not easily examined, because it is not open source?
There is a difference between copyright and patent. It's much easier to find infringements of patents, because patents cover an idea, a way of doing something, while a copyright covers an exact particular implementation IF (and it's a big if) something is infringing, then it will have to be removed. But this has always been true (it's the reason why mad and other mp3 packages were dropped. RealPlayer can stay because Real has a patent license) What this deal means is if there is an infringement, or a suspected infringement, the discussion is taken with Novell and/or Microsoft, not the customers, so customers won't face enormous legal bills (witness Autozone, DaimlerChrysler etc. Customers worry about that, not because they think the legal claims are true but because the lawyers' bills are true)