On Mon, 2006-11-27 at 06:17, Jim Cornette wrote: > > > > Does anyone happen to know what companies do/don't have > > cross-licensing arrangements with Microsoft already in > > place? I thought this was common practice among all > > big companies and that I'd seen similar things with > > HP and Sun a couple of years ago - and IBM has probably > > had one for ages. Why is this one even newsworthy? > > > > There were instances where M$ would take the most likely culprits, like > laptops used by individual employees and find instances of "softshare" > violations and hold a company in threat of suit if they did not purchase > a license 6 version to "protect" them from suit. I meant patent cross-licensing, like this: http://business.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=04/07/19/2315200&tid=110 http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1750293,00.asp http://www.itworld.com/Man/2687/060524msnec/ http://www.itworld.com/Man/2681/040409microsoftlegal/ > I do not see Novell getting any benefit out of the deal w/ M$ other than > fewer lawsuits. This fear of course worked with other companies in the > past who use M$ anything. Even with Novell and M$ assuring the customers > that they will be protected, most companies are probably well underway > with migration from the bully OS to co-operative OS versions. The > partnership with those two organizations probably is seen as similar to > past blackmail schemes. I think you are going to see every company with anything to lose join in these agreements as insurance against potentially very expensive lawsuits and to raise the bar against start-up competition. But it's not news. -- Les Mikesell lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx
