On 2006-11-03 18:53, John Andersen wrote:
On Friday 03 November 2006 13:48, Anders Johansson wrote:
If at some point in the future, there should be a patent claim against code in the distribution, this deal means Novell customers and partners can be safe in the knowledge there won't be any patent lawyers knocking on the door
Really? What about the other Distros? If you should happen to find an infringement in SuSE, would it not also likely appear in Slack, TurboLinux and Debian?
That certainly depends on who put in the infringing code. If the kernel boffins, in all good faith, accept a kernel mod from Novell, only to find themselves and all non-Novell distros suddenly being sued by Microsoft, only a judge in the USA would be insane enough to believe the kernel boffins are at fault. At worst, the offending code would be removed in less than a day (just re-issue the most stable kernel tree prior to Novell's tinkering); at best, the offending code would stay, and Novell and/or Microsoft would lose all right to cry foul -- after all, you can't claim to be the victim of an offence if you are the one who committed it.