[nzlug] Microsoft on Novell Deal

[Simon Bridge]

On Sat, 2006-11-18 at 11:39 +1300, Matt Brown wrote:
> Despite Novell's assertions that they aren't acknowledging any patent
> infringements, the fact that they're paying money to Microsoft
> acknowledges that the patents are at least worth something. Essentially
> novell has taken FUD and given it some level of legitimacy.
> 
> What remains to be seen, in my opinion, is how much legitimacy Novell
> has given Microsoft with this deal.

Oh - I thought that Novell has received some money from MS? Did I
misread that?

It is possible to pay licence fees without acknowledging patent
infringements - Novell can now market a SUSE version wich explicitly
includes proprietary codecs, and fonts, that users have so far just
installed themselves. SUSE has previously been explicitly free of these.

Of course, MS seem to be trying to use the agreement to emphasise the
legitimacy of the *concept* of IP - at least, *their* IP, in itself. And
they do seem to be trying to make out that linux uses their property (I
guess, technically, linux *users* use MS, and others, IP and only if the
legitimacy of IP as it is applied to software is recognised in the first
place. While some distros *may* use their IP in this sense, it has not
been shown that linux *itself* does so, nor that SUSE-Linux does so.)

There are lots of ways of getting some kind of partnership between
proprietary and open software. That software giants are prepared to
experiment, whatever their motives, is showing the strength of the
open-source models.

Considering past hostility to these models by the same companies, we
should be suspicious of recent moves to allow more interoperability
between the worlds.

We should be watching how MS handles things, as well as Novell.