Re: Faustian Pact between Novell and Microsoft

["Jeff V. Merkey" <jmerkey@wolfmountaingroup.com>]

Jeff V. Merkey wrote:

> Bernd Petrovitsch wrote:
>
>> On Tue, 2006-11-07 at 09:18 +0100, Pavel Machek wrote:
>> [...]
>>  
>>
>>> This is a watershed moment for Linux. It fundamentally changes the
>>> rules of the game. We're really excited about this deal, and we hope
>>> you are too.
>>>   
>>> (from http://www.novell.com/linux/microsoft/openletter.html) only make
>>> it worse, but acquisition? I'd hope not even mickey$oft has enough
>>> cash for _that_.
>>>   
>>
>>
>> And the first point in the list is "patents" ....
>>
>>     Bernd
>>  
>>
> I can see the lights are coming on now for some folks now.
> Jeff
>

<snip>

/"Microsoft made it clear that only SUSE users and developers, as well 
as unsalaried Linux developers, are protected. 'Let me be clear about 
one thing, we don't license our intellectual property to Linux because 
of the way Linux licensing GPL framework works, that's not really a 
possibility,' said Microsoft chief executive, Steve Ballmer. 'Novell is 
actually just a proxy for its customers, and it's only for its 
customers,' he added. 'This does not apply to any forms of Linux other 
than Novell's SUSE Linux. And if people want to have peace and 
interoperability, they'll look at Novell's SUSE Linux. If they make 
other choices, they have all of the compliance and intellectual property 
issues that are associated with that.'"

</snip>

And those lights are bright indeed ....

Jeff
/