What is Digg?1 Comments
- schestowitz, on 10/11/2007, -1/+2Steven, you're missing some big development here...
FTA:
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Novell CEO Ron Hovsepian replied at the time, "Our agreement with Microsoft is in no way an acknowledgment that Linux infringes upon any Microsoft intellectual property. To claim otherwise is to further sow fear, uncertainty and doubt, and does not offer a fair basis for competition."
Novell hasn't changed its position. Bruce Lowry, Novell's director of global public relations, said, "We stand by Ron's open letter of November 20 on this issue. The fact that MSFT is now putting numbers to the patents it thinks are infringed doesn't change our position. Our focus in the patent deal with MSFT was to remove the patent issue from the table for customers."
In other words, Novell continues to state that it does not believe that Linux violates any of Microsoft's patents. If knowing that Microsoft won't bother Novell's customers on such issues makes them feel better, that's fine.
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This is no longer true. :-)
http://www.cbronline.com/article_news.asp?guid=FB198B0A-7B41-4DF1-848B-B4D7C534E6C1
“Since we announced the Novell-Microsoft agreement in November, we’ve always said that the intellectual property agreement provided a foundation for the interoperability between Windows and SUSE Linux Enterprise. This foundation falls into two primary categories: 1) the “covenant not to sue,” which provides customers with peace of mind when they deploy SUSE Linux Enterprise; and 2) the IP access necessary for the technical collaboration to deliver interoperability between Windows and Linux. For better or worse, the community and press at-large have focused on #1, although Novell has talked about both categories since we signed the agreement.
“As you know, engineers at Novell and Microsoft are hard at work on our technical collaboration, and we demonstrated the first results at BrainShare in March. But in order to deliver the interoperability between Novell eDirectory and Microsoft Active Directory, as well as the bidirectional virtualization between Windows and SUSE Linux Enterprise, Novell required sanctioned access to Microsoft’s code in order to develop open source interoperability without violating Microsoft’s intellectual property.
“The Novell-Microsoft agreement is about bridging the worlds of open source and proprietary software, and in order to build this bridge, we’ve had to do several unique things, including signing an intellectual property agreement that would let Novell’s engineers get a look at some of Microsoft’s proprietary code. We’ve also done several other unique things like having Microsoft representatives sell certificates for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server subscriptions to their customers. I’d submit that all of these things are good for the adoption and growth of Linux.
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So, Novell has lied to everyone in its FAQ. It actually says now that patents were indeed part of the deal.
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