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[Alan Dayley]

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Lynn Newton wrote:
> I meant to add to my previous question ...
> 
> I recall hearing something about a deal Novell made with Microsoft
> a few months ago, which made me raise an eyebrow. I was way too
> busy to follow it.
> 
> Would someone summarize for me, again in a couple of sentences,
> what that was all about, and is Novell's name now a dirty word
> in the open source community?
> 
> I despise most everything about Microsoft and its products, but
> I'm not religious about it, i.e., I'm not an open source
> purist, nor would I boycott some company's products just because
> hey had dealings with Microsoft. I just want to know what's
> going on. If anything.
> 

My nutshell understanding:

- - Mostly non-inflaming part of agreement:
- -- Novell and MS agreed to work together on interoperability between
each other's products.  Fine.  Whatever.  (With regard to Linux/FS/OSS
MS could do all this work already anyway since the source is Free and
open but they haven't.)

- - Inflaming part of agreement:
- - Novell owns some software patents and MS owns some software patents.
- - Novell and MS exchanged money based on:
- -- Novell promised not to sue MS *customers* for infringement of
Novell's patents
- -- MS promised not to sue Novell *customers* for infringement of MS's
patents.
- -- MS promised not to sue FS/OSS "hobbiests" for infringement as long as
they don't share the source they create.

Novell and MS could not do a patent royalty agreement or promise not to
sue each other directly because that would violate section 7 of GPLv2
(http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.txt).  But, by paying each other money
to not sue each other's customers. they get especially the same result
and get around the GPL requirement.

Now, MS claims Linux/FS/OSS violates their "intellectual property" and
gets to point at the agreement as "proof" that such violations exist.  A
big gun in the FUD battle they constantly wage against Linux/FS/OSS.

Novell gets a few hundred million dollars to keep in operation.  And
they are already claiming protection from being sued as a selling point
for their Linux based products.  Novell asked for

The above agreements not to sue only apply to paying customers of Novell
products.  Therefore, purchasing a Novell product is tacit approval of
the above actions.  If you use SUSE, use OpenSUSE and don't pay for it.

Some references:
- - Bruce Parens' press conference at Novell's Brain Share 2007
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20070320130321622
- - Groklaw's library on the entire deal:
http://www.groklaw.net/staticpages/index.php?page=20061218045851480
- - Jeremy Allison resigns from Novell to protest deal (He has a very nice
summary of the feelings about the deal):
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20061221081000710

All corrections to my understanding of the issue are welcome.

Alan
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