Novell could be banned from selling Linux

[rlk at alum.mit.edu (Robert L Krawitz)]

   Date: Sun, 4 Feb 2007 15:21:30 -0500
   From: "Martin Owens" <doctormo at gmail.com>

   First thing is that the FSF tends to take business to court on
   behalf of the software programmers. so even if Novell broke the
   GPLv2 on the Linux Kernel; the FSF would still go after them on
   behalf of the Linux Kernel devs. obviously asking first might be an
   idea but breaking the license is breaking the license regardless of
   who hauls them into court over it.

Only a copyright holder can take someone to court for violation of a
copyright license.  The FSF doesn't hold copyright to any of the Linux
kernel that I'm aware of, and so would have no standing to go to
court.  It would have to be one of more of the kernel developers suing
over a violation of the kernel's copyright.  The FSF could take action
if the copyright to any of the GNU tools were violated (since the FSF
holds the copyright to the entire GNU toolchain).

I read something else recently (don't remember just where) where Eben
Moglen said that his words were taken completely out of context.

   The new GPLv3 will be implemented by enough tools, especially since
   this deal. Imagen Novell unable to distribute new version of Samba
   Server/Client which integrate better with Vista. they'd have to
   spend a lot of money on this Microsoft partnership to build up
   current v2 versions and the pace of FOSS has always been in the
   community not in the single business.

   Besides it's not about forcing any body to do anything, it's about
   the agreement that is agreed upon by Company A in order to get and
   redistribute software that it wishes to make money from if it
   suddenly disagrees half way through then they no longer have the
   right to distribute the software.

>From what I've read the real motivation is to ensure that nobody can
pull this kind of stunt, and to force Novell to change or abrogate the
patent agreement.

-- 
Robert Krawitz                                     <rlk at alum.mit.edu>

Tall Clubs International  --  http://www.tall.org/ or 1-888-IM-TALL-2
Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- mail lpf at uunet.uu.net
Project lead for Gutenprint   --    http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net

"Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works."
--Eric Crampton

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