In its annual report for the fiscal year ended October 31, 2006, Novell expressed concerns over how the new version of the GPL may affect their business. Microsoft might stop distributing SUSE coupons if the GPL version 3 interferes with their agreement or puts Microsoft's patents at risk, ultimately causing Novell's business and operating results to be adversely affected.
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pogson
16 years 46 weeks 3 days 15 hours ago
Normally an agreement not to sue
Normally an agreement not to sue between two corporations would be barely a blip on the radar, but when one is a convicted monopolist promoting the old ways of greed and bullying and the other is a poster child for GNU/Linux hailed for promoting truth and the advantages of FLOSS and contributing to FLOSS, one must take notice. It is like a train wreck about to happen. We just cannot turn away.
I had great respect for Novell until this deal. It seems to be not in their own interests in the long term and discarded much good will which is priceless to a corporation. What Novell was doing was no longer working. They needed a change and I thought FLOSS was it. Now it seems they have completely lost their way.
The details of this and other situation involving legalities of FLOSS are discussed and documented on Groklaw.net