[Wolves] Further to our microsoft/novell discussion at the lug

[chris procter]

--- David Morley <davmor2 at gmail.com> wrote:

> I saw this and it does seem to point out a couple of
> massive
> inconsistency with the deal
> http://www.linuxjournal.com/node/1000121
> have a read it is quite interesting, and


The quote:
"Novell makes no admission that its Linux and open
source offerings infringe on any other parties'
patents."

doesn't imply that there are no patent infringements
in SuSE, nor does it imply there are, it is a formal
way of refusing to answer the question, so it is not
inconsistant with:

"We addressed the proprietary issues through the net
up-front payment. The open-source we addressed through
the percentage of revenue."

Another interesting quote is:

"The patent agreement covers everything from
openSUSE.org that is included in past and current
Novell supported versions of SUSE Linux Enterprise
Server and SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop. It also
covers future versions (for 5 years) of SUSE"

Which seems (to me at least) to say that everything
Suse have released is covered forever full stop.
Everything they will release in the next 5 years is
also covered. Now maybe I've missed something but that
doesn't sound like "Novell is jeopardizing the future
of Linux for its own short-term rewards" for a start
it only applies to SuSE not Linux in general, and
secondly it applies to all of Suse, not just the open
source parts (Novell sell proprietry stuff for linux
as well as open source stuff).

Thats from
http://www.novell.com/linux/microsoft/faq.html so
there may be something "lost in translation" but its
as authoritative as any source on the internet. 

Note that the deal cuts both ways, 
"Microsoft's customers receive the same covenant from
Novell in return for payment from Microsoft to Novell"
so Novell wont sue microsoft customers (that would be
the Novell who own [possibly :)] a lot of the rights
around Unix) and MS pay Novell bucket loads of cash.
This is not a one way deal.


As I mentioned at the lug this reminds me of the
MS/Apple deal in the mid 90's whereby MS bought
$400million Apple shares as part of the settlement on
the Apple/win95 GUI lawsuit, which kept Apple afloat
and allowed them to turn things around. Apple, love
them or hate them they are a lot better off after
their MS deal then before, Novell are getting a
similar amount of cash and a similar chance to turn
themselves around. 

A mass boycot of Suse like this guy calls for would
prety much destroy Suse leaving Redhat with complete
control over the commercial Linux server market (has
anyone ever seen a Ubuntu Server install in the
wild??) which is not a good thing for Linux. Any one
company, wether it be Canonical or Redhat, dominating
the linux market is a very bad thing.

I do wonder if you did a find and replace for
Microsoft with IBM in this deal if anyone would have
even noticed, I suspect that the flames this is
generating has more to do with "Novell make deal with
the enemy" then anything else. 

Novell have been fighting MS for a long time and are
still around to tell the tale, so sure they may have
been duped but there is no way this deal is the simple
"Novell bend over for MS" cartoon that some people in
the communtiy seem to want to paint it as.

Rant over, that is all.

chris 

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