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Fallout from the Microsoft-Novell agreement continues unabated. Just about everyone who doesn’t work for Redmond or Waltham has jumped in and criticized the deal. Heck, even Microsoft’s own open source guru, Jason Matusow had some less then complimentary things to say about it! Even Novell’s open source honchos, Nat Freidman and Miquel de Icaza, admitted they weren’t consulted about the deal and would have structured it differently if they could.
Almost all of the current fallout concerns the promises not to sue for patent infringement, which Novell and Microsoft granted to each other and their users. The major sticking point appears to be Microsoft’s pledge not to sue noncommercial, individual open source developers while refusing to also make the same promise to commercial developers. That point was made very strongly by former Novellian Matt Asay who said:
“Microsoft has 3.2 bazillion patents. It makes lots of money selling the rights to these in the form of Office, Windows, etc. It doesn't need to earn a nickel more through veiled threats and innovation surcharges on software it does not own, has no rights to, and would do well to embrace. If I'm wrong, and if there are real patent infringement issues in Linux and other open source projects, then I would like to personally invite Microsoft to champion its rights by suing the entire planet.”
Dave Kearns is a writer and consultant in Silicon Valley. He's written a number of books including the (sadly) now out of print "Peter Norton's Complete Guide to Networks." His musings can be found at Virtual Quill.
Kearns is the author of two Network World Newsletters: Windows Networking Strategies, and Identity Management. Comments about these newsletters should be sent to him at these respective addresses: windows@vquill.com, identity@vquill.com .
Kearns provides content services to network vendors: books, manuals, white papers, lectures and seminars, marketing, technical marketing and support documents. Virtual Quill provides "words to sell by..." Find out more by e-mail.
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