Novel and Microsoft

[Michael Havens]

The way I understand it, If you contribute to an open  source project the 
project stays open source, This means MS and Novel are reeling in a red 
herring when it states that they WON'Tassert their patents. This tells me 
that there is an alterior motive.... now, we wait for those who have a clue 
to comment :!)
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<quotes from article>
As part of this agreement, Microsoft will provide a covenant not to assert its 
patent rights against customers who have purchased SUSE Linux Enterprise 
Server or other covered products from Novell, and Novell will provide an 
identical covenant to customers who have a licensed version of Windows or 
other covered products from Microsoft.

 First, Microsoft will work with Novell and actively contribute to several 
open source software projects, including projects focused on office file 
formats and web services management.  Second, Microsoft will not assert its 
patents against individual non-commercial open source developers and users.  
And third, Microsoft is promising not to assert its patents against 
individual contributors to openSUSE.org whose code is included in the SUSE 
Linux Enterprise platform, including SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and SUSE 
Linux Enterprise Desktop.