Posted on 11/20/2006 10:28:45 PM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
***********************8AN EXCERPT ******************************
| Monday, November 20 2006 @ 08:34 PM EST |
|
Novell has posted a letter to the community. Here's, to me, the heart of it: Our interest in signing this agreement was to secure interoperability and joint sales agreements, but Microsoft asked that we cooperate on patents as well, and so a patent cooperation agreement was included as a part of the deal. In this agreement, Novell and Microsoft each promise not to sue the other's customers for patent infringement. The intended effect of this agreement was to give our joint customers peace of mind that they have the full support of the other company for their IT activities. Novell has a significant patent portfolio, and in reflection of this fact, the agreement we signed shows the overwhelming balance of payments being from Microsoft to Novell. In that case, with all due respect, you should not have signed an agreement called a patent cooperation agreement that gives Microsoft the opportunity to say the things Mr. Ballmer has been saying. I believe that is obvious now. He didn't even wait until the ink was dry. And you should have considered the GPL, its importance to the community, and considered what paying royalties means in that context. And we hope you will fix this. Update: Microsoft has now responded. You can read it in full on David Berlind's blog. It's a very odd response: |
fyi
Trying very hard to understand all of this.
Bottom line, the way I'm reading all of this, is that Microsoft is laying claim to patents for code that is within Linux, without ever being specific about what exact code that might be...and is trying by any means to muscle in on controlling Linux over the long haul. Am I close?
If so, sounds like a replay of the SCO effort....I'm confused also....
It's about the GPL and GPL2 ...
Balmer is an fn punk... if he's so sure of this then he should post the code for everyone to see. bastard
I just gotta say it again.. sorry
Balmer you bastard!
Ballmer deserves Ken Lay's fate.
Novell is now caught between a rock and a hard place, on one hand they're so broke they had to go into an agreement with Microsoft simply for the dollars, on the other hand their primary customer base is so anti-Microsoft they could be destroyed anyway. Bottom line, another American Unix company pays the piper for involving themselves with Linux and open source. Sun, Silicon Graphics, SCO, Cray, Novell, the list continues to grow of companies who are now shadows of their former selves. Even IBM is about to be passed by HP as the world's largest computer company. Microsoft? Still leading in profits, at record levels most every quarter.
How is this different than what SCO was trying to force upon IBM, other than the fact that SCO is now Microsoft and IBM is now all Linux distros, except for Novell?
How many times do I have to set you straight? Sun, SGI and Cray lost it because they couldn't keep pace with the hardware from Intel and AMD, not because of OS competition. It used to be that about the fastest thing you could have on your desktop was a Sun SPARC or an SGI MIPS, but not anymore -- it's an Intel or AMD.
Novell was screwed before it started playing with Linux. First by Microsoft, then successively by itself.
And you have it backwards with SCO, because it wasn't a UNIX company that got involved with Linux, it was a Linux company that got involved with UNIX.
And Windows itself ships with open source software, so you lost your argument there.
For one, SCO v. IBM isn't about any SCO patents. The big difference is that Microsoft actually makes software that people want to buy, while the SCO case is a sad attempt by a failing company to use jackpot justice to rescue itself from its own mismanagement. Even among people who want to use traditional UNIX, the reputation of SCO's product compared to Solaris or others is not very good.
Thanks,...good explanation.
LMAO you're actually agreeing with me since Linux ran on Intel and AMD, but most Unix did not.
And Windows itself ships with open source software, so you lost your argument there.
Hilarious!
I'm not agreeing since it's about the hardware, and not the software. No comment on SCO being a Linux company?
Hilarious!
Do you dispute my statement that open source software ships with Windows?
BTW, where's that apology?
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