I don't feel Mr Leopardi represents "open source people" per se. There are a variety of opinions. OTOH, you could answer his questions. Paul C Leopardi wrote:
OK, if there will be no "binding contribution agreement" then why is Microsoft talking about it? Microsoft is one of the two parties to the deal. Are you suggesting that Microsoft does not know what it is talking about?
Microsoft knows what it is talking about. Moreover, it knows how what it is saying sounds. MS will talk about whatever seems to be to its advantage. What it then does is somewhat independent. That's normal for companies. It's called marketing. I'm not clear about what your concerns are. That Novell will enter into an invalid agreement and be subject to legislation? That MS will? John E Perry wrote:
And you, like so many others, have completely missed the point.
Patent violations have nothing to do with what the patent holder puts out. They have only to do with what the user or vendor uses. I'm afraid I don't understand this. Which users? Which vendors? Microsoft will almost certainly (unless it's all smoke-blowing, as some have guessed) start suing for patent violations of code put into OSS software by _others_. These others will have to defend their code against Microsoft's assertions. Others? Not MS or Novell? MS can bring many cases, but once a couple fail they've had it, AIUI, unless they can keep coming up with unique situations (which seems unlikely). The only way to make use of this is as a threat, making companies hope they won't be singled out. But it can only happen once or twice unless the case has merit (which it seems not to).
The rest of this seems like FUD. IBM and Novell are not the only parties who make use of open source. It is possible for companies to organise. And when has a software patent violation where prior art exists stood up? Can you give an example? Russell Jones Volker Kuhlmann wrote:
On Sat 18 Nov 2006 18:10:06 NZDT +1300, Paul C. Leopardi wrote:
OK, if there will be no "binding contribution agreement" then why is Microsoft talking about it? Microsoft is one of the two parties to the deal. Are you suggesting that Microsoft does not know what it is talking about?
Funny, how open source people scream "FUD FUD FUD" at Microsoft all the time, but then they do a 180 and take every word from microsoft.com as gospel. Shouldn't they know better by now?
Volker
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