El vie, 10-11-2006 a las 11:01 +0200, Oron Peled escribió:
> Yes, but copyright law is not the only game in town. The deal talks
> specifically about patents -- Now it may be your software but you are
> not allowed to use it.
It is more than a patent deal. It is a patent deal to support a
distribution model. It can mean that Microsoft will embed Suse as they
do with Internet Explorer or something different, but the announce tells
that Microsoft is paying about distribution rights( 1). In addition, 348
M$ is too much for a simple patent agreement. You cannot get this money
today by suing Linux companies, users or communities.
( 1) http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-6133361.html?tag=nl.e550
To quote from the link you give: "entitling customers to support and maintenance for Novell's Suse Linux Enterprise Server". That doesn't sound like "Distribution Rights". It looks like MS will be another sales channel for Novell.
>
> Obviously, they didn't say *which* patents they are trading (if any).
> FUD has the interesting property of causing real damage even when it
> deals with purely imaginary "facts".
> So even if those patent threats are hollow (as I really think),
> they may be doing real harm.
The official announce from the Novell side( 2)tells that some open
source project as Mono or Evolution, does not infringe Microsoft´s
patents. It could be an important a positive milestone from the legal
side. They also says that any software that infringes Microsoft´s
patents will be removed from Suse so we will a clearer picture in the
near future, but I sure that it will include NTFS drivers.
Hmppfff, speculations speculations speculations - NTFS is part of the Linux Kernel (or at least it's on its way there), if MS wants to sue someone they should sue the developer of this module. The NTFS driver CAN'T be both GPL-compliant and infringe on MS's patents. If Suse removes NTFS from their kernels then users will either move away to other distros (if they need it at all) or compile their own kernels.
( 2) http://dw.com.com/redir?destUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.novell.com%2Flinux
%2Fmicrosoft%
2Ffaq_opensource.html&siteId=22&oId=2100-3513-6133361& nl.ex
Have you read this Q&A? It rebuffs all the claims raised by you and Oron so far - they will NOT put patented code into their product, they were NOT threatened by MS, they do NOT admit to any patent infringement in the past, they will NOT break Mono's ability to be incorporated by other distributions.
From reading this link (have you read it?) I get the impression that Novell have approached MS to get an agreement to support the new MS Office file format on its systems (the new format is covered by some stupid "patents") and got this agreement from MS, only maybe MS's lawyers managed to convolute the document so much that it got some people confused and now Novell is painted as a traitor by the community and have to apologize for its actions simply because they are conceived to be wrong.
My take - let's wait and see what Moglen and co. have to say once they see the full contract (so far even he only speculates, like everyone else) and see what comes out of this deal in a few months (a year?).
