patents

In a recent article on LinuxJournal, its Editor in Chief Nicholas Petreley wrote that we should be abandoning all code related to Novell and SuSE because it may become tainted with Microsoft's "Intellectual Property". He quoted a note with which he signed Bruce Perens' Open Letter where he says the following:

RegDeveloper has caught up with Eben Moglen to talk about the Novell's deal with Microsoft, FSF's response to it and GPLv3 as the basis of that response. Instead of litigation, which has been suggested by some on the basis of potential violation of the GPLv2, the tool which will be used against this largely negatively criticized deal is the new version of the GPL. Some believe this is just a "knee-jerk" reaction to the "threat of the day", but the clarification provided by Eben Moglen sheds a slightly different light on it. It appears that the GPLv3 is merely following its present agenda, which (with or without the MS-Novell deal) is incompatible with what MS and Novell tried to do with their patent covenant.

It is increasingly becoming clear what the deal between Microsoft and Novell really means for GNU/Linux. Hear it from Microsoft itself: Ballmer: Linux users owe Microsoft. Can you hear the sound of those rattles? Microsoft is hitting the patent threat hard this time, and no matter if it is just empty words or a true promise, this could hurt GNU/Linux much more than the whole Novell deal was supposed to help. If you ever thought SCO case was an annoyance to the legal reputation of GNU/Linux, what do you say to having the biggest software corporation on Earth spell out threats of patent litigation against anyone who doesn't sign a deal with them?