Re: [Sheflug] NVidia on SuSE and the SuSE/Novell/M$ thing

[Alex Hudson <home@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, 2007-03-27 at 17:40 +0100, Lesley Binks wrote:
> Some pundits out there support the move
> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/01/02/novell_microsoft_deal/
> and point out where the Linux community lets itself down.  My view is
> it's not the license that is the problem, it's the attitude from the
> source, i.e. the open source and free software movements, that the
> license is plain for end users when it has been clearly demonstrated and
> commercially exploited by Oracle that the license isn't clear to the end
> user.
> 
> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/03/02/novell_q1_07_earnings/ shows
> that the Linux part of Novell is improving with a 46% increase in
> revenue over last year.  Is this what the dogmatists are upset about?

No, the "dogmatists" are upset because Novell has signed a patent
agreement with Microsoft which deliberately circumvents the provisions
of the GPL. Effectively, they're saying "You're only safe from Microsoft
patents on Linux if you use our distribution".

Hence why there isn't an issue with Red Hat and Fedora: Red Hat have
never signed any private agreement with any entity (that I know of) that
is at all similar.

Cheers,

Alex.


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