On 11/22/2010 7:17 AM, Peter Van Lone wrote:
On Mon, Nov 22, 2010 at 9:10 AM, Damon Register <damon.w.register@lmco.com> 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