Tirsdag 07 november 2006 16:17 skrev Pascal Bleser:
Yes, a FAQ would be great too.
I agree a lot with Pascal, it's impossible to predict the consequences of the agreement in general, but it's very clear that openSUSE is suffering a lot. I sent the following questions to Novell Open Audio for their upcoming show on the subject, maybe some of these could be rephrased for an FAQ, and maybe they could also serve as inspiration for AJ's blog regarding which subjects to cover. 1) What is Novell's answer to the allegations of GPL violations with regards to: a) offering special patent protection for it's customers that does not apply to other users of the same code, including openSUSE users. And b) paying a royalty to a third party for distributing free software. 2) It's announced that MS will receive part of Novell's revenue. Is this a fixed sum per SLED subscription sold? or how will this be calculated? 3) Can it be guaranteed that ODF will remain the default format of Novell's edition of OOo, for as long as ODF is the default format upstream? 4) Will Novell continue to support the ODF alliance and fellowship and push for ODF to be adopted as widely as possible? 5) A lot of headlines say "MS to interoperate with open source". Isn't it the case that MS will only cooperate on interoperability with Novell's proprietary products? 6) Novell have talked a lot about open sourcing more of it's proprietary technologies in the recent years, which has endeed happened on some occasions, will this deal affect the plans to open up more technologies in the future? 7) Are Novell surprised by the very 'mixed' reception that the deal has gotten from the community with users leaving and some even talking about a boycott? 8) Isn't this whole thing Microsoft succeeding with the oldest trick in the book - "divide and conqour"? 9) I'd like to hear more about the long term visions and strategies Novell have for 'mixed source'. 10) The patent issue seems to play a large role in this whole thing. Which surprises me a bit, since I thought Novell were focusing on the developing markets that don't seem to be as polluted by out of control software patents as the US apparently is. I hope Novell are working on a better long term solution to the problem than paying revenue to competitors. Money which will of course be reinvested in putting Novell out of business. These are new, I didn't send them to NOA, thought of 'em later. 11) Is it possible that we will see technology that is known to be covered by a MS patent, implemented in openSUSE under an OSS license in the future? 12) Is there any (small) area where the deal helps the Linux community at large, and not Novell/SUSE Linux _only_. Martin --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org