[nzlug] Petition re Novell/MS deal

[Jim Cheetham]

On Fri, Nov 24, 2006 at 09:01:47PM +1300, Volker Kuhlmann wrote:
> Pardon me, but this has to do with distro exactly what? This is just
> really silly. If Linux is affected by patents, all distros are equally
> affected and singling out any one has no basis in reason.

Not quite - if the patents that affect Linux are owned by Microsoft,
they *will not* affect users of Novell's Linux. That's the whole point
of the deal.

Under those circumstances, organisations that depend on their Linux
infrastructure will be forced to become Novell customers, or cease using
Linux altogether.

You're quite right that this has nothing to do with the technical
distinctions between distributions, and nothing has happened to any of
the SuSE distros in a technical sense.

-jim