[Article] MS, Novell bury the hatchet

[Glen Turner]

> So there's an agreement between two parties, in which one of the parties
> agrees not to pursue lawsuits against some subset of the population.
> 
> If you're not a member of that subset of the population, that means
> there isn't any agreement to avoid suing you.

Maybe I'm interested in lower prices in the hypervisor market, so
I'm not pleased that Microsoft and Novell are ganging up on VMWare
in an attempt to reduce competition in the long run.

Maybe I'd like a choice of directory federation software, including
free software, so I'm not pleased that Microsoft and Novell are working
to develop secret federation APIs.

Maybe I've got a large Linux deployment and I'm not fond of the way
that the patent agreement leaves room for Microsoft to legally harass
Red Hat, Ubuntu and Debian.

> ... which is precisely the same situation you were in yesterday

Yes, but today people's strategy is clearer, which is why the discussion.

> If you're a member of the group of "individual non-commercial open
> source developers and users" who are protected by the agreement, then
> you won't get sued for patent infringement.  As I read it, that covers
> folks like Samba, Mono, and other groups of individual non-commercial
> open-source developers and users.

All of the Samba core team are employed by one company or another
with products in the field of network attached storage.  So I'd say
the patent license covers none of them.  But we'll see.

Cheers,
Glen