Jay Scherrer writes:
List,How will this alliance of Novell with Microsoft effect future releases of Fedora?
It won't.On the contrary, even though IANAL, I think that Red Hat actually has a very good opportunity to screw Novell here, legally-wise, and use those naive, gullible fools to get, essentialky, a patent indemnity from Microsoft without wasting much time in legal negotiations.
I haven't really looked at SUSE's contents up to now. When I did, I found that they still ship two packages that I own the copyrights for. I know that they were there many years ago. I checked, and the latest SUSE OpenLinux has fairly up-to-date versions of both of them, so Novell is doing their diligence to keep things up to date.
I think that Microsoft overlooked a small detail by pulling this stunt. I believe that copyright holders actually have an opportunity to turn this whole thing around on its head, and use the agreement to establish, on fairly solid legal grounds, that their software does not contain any technology that either Microsoft, or Novell, claims any patent rights on; and if they did, they failed to mitigate any damages given an opportunity to do so, so it's a moot point anyway. Joe Schmoe can't do this, only those who hold a copyright on any package shipped by SUSE have the necessary standing.
And, since SUSE is also an RPM-derived distro, and the copyright on RPM is firmly held by Red Hat, I think they have an excellent opportunity here to legally flip a birdie to both Novell, and Microsoft.
I actually considered drafting a letter to set the whole thing in motion, at least on my behalf, but decided to wait a bit. I'll wait until Eben Moglen weighs in with his thoughts after reviewing the legal documentation that he's reported to be reviewing. Since FSF holds the copyright on glibc, they're in a better position to bitch-slap them, than anyone else.
Let's see if Eben comes to a similar conclusion. If my private little theory is right, he'll reach the same conclusion, and FSF will issue a call to everyone who holds a copyright on any package in SUSE, so send a little letter to Novell and Microsoft that will wrap up this episode quite nicely.
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