On Fri, 2006-11-24 at 18:16 +0000, Mark Shuttleworth wrote:
Novell’s decision to go to great lengths to circumvent the patent framework clearly articulated in the GPL has sent shockwaves through the community. If you are an OpenSUSE developer who is concerned about the long term consequences of this pact, you may be interested in some of the events happening next week as part of the Ubuntu Open Week:
"circumvent the patent framework clearly articulated in the GPL" I think the point of the agreement was not that MS or Novell wanted to ADD patented things to Linux. It was to protect from the claim that things protected by patent are ALREADY THERE, claiming to be GPL. I can't claim to be able to prove this one way or the other. But if (for the sake or argument) there is patented code in open source, it will be in Ubuntu's as well. Perhaps, now that MS is somehow legally connected to a Linux distro, that can lead to MS clearing up the FUD (from all sides) on this. Steve B's wilecat statement that Linux owes MS and Novell's counterclaim that this is not the case will surely be played out so the claim is settled one way or the other. MS and Novell now have a dialog. Surely this can only be good. I'm not naive. Just trying to think positive. How SUSE developers jumping ship to Ubuntu will help this patent issue along is unclear to me. Perhaps Mike would have been better off simply offering that Ububtu and OpenSUSE work together in the Linux spirit of openness. The fact that SUSE's build service allows builds for more distro than SUSE tells me this would have been met with a positive response. Too bad the offer to work together was mixed with FUD- -- Roger Oberholtzer -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org