On Wednesday 08 November 2006 03:51, Boyd Lynn Gerber wrote:
At a Novell conference today the advised reading this and if any question post them via the links on the page.
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." "And if it is true, as Novell asserts in the FAQ, that Mono doesn't infringe any patents, and there are no specific patents involved, and no threat of litigation was in the air, and their SUSE doesn't have any patent infringement issues with Microsoft, who needs a Patent Cooperation Agreement about absolutely no patents at all? Well, there aren't any patents except if you are not using SLED; then there are. And then the bogeyman will get you. And he throws chairs. And how come Microsoft has to pay so much more than Novell for the same promise? Riddle me that, Batman." ¹ http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20061107194320461 -- // Janne --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org