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

[Lesley Binks <lesley.binks@xxxxxxxxx>]

Alex Hudson wrote:
> 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".
Well, shouldn't the dogmatists ensure the GPL is upheld or that GPL'd
material is removed when there are other patents and licenses that
contravene it.  And insisting that all GPL'd material is removed from
SuSE would kill SuSE as a Linux distro, right?

> 
> 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.
But as far as I understand it there is some involvement with Novell and
RH over CentOS? Or is that wrong?

Regards

L.

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