[PLUG] Microsoft and SuSE/Novell sign agreement

[Eric Wilhelm]

# from Keith Lofstrom
# on Thursday 02 November 2006 05:03 pm:

>Wow ... and ... Wow.   Time to plan that ski vacation in hell...

Better plan it for a few years out.  And even then, get refundable 
tickets.

There's nothing new here.  Having watched the press conference, I'm 
mostly hearing that MS feels entitled to extract licensing fees from 
Linux users (likely by virtue of their patent on the backslash and 
similar "innovations".)

What puzzles me is how this doesn't put Novell on the wrong side of the 
GPL.  It implies that only licensed SUSE customers are granted a 
license to use this supposed MS IP.  If this is the case, I would 
assume that this license is not universally transferable, which sounds 
like the imposition of restrictions on GPL'd code not owned by Novell 
-- hence voiding their right to use said code.  Guess we'll see what 
the courts think about this having-and-eating-not-your-cake business.

The other fun fact is their claim that they'll grant a covenant to 
"individual" open-source developers.  That means as long as you're 
writing free software and not running a company, they will be happy to 
steal your work and not sue you as soon as they file a patent for it.  
If you have money to extract, I guess that's a different story.

--Eric
-- 
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler."
--Albert Einstein
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