Novell could be banned from selling Linux

[Martin Owens]

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.

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.

Regards, Martin

On 04/02/07, Matthew Gillen <me at mattgillen.net> wrote:
> Kristian Hermansen wrote:
> > On 2/4/07, Matthew Gillen <me at mattgillen.net> wrote:
> >> Right.  But that's a distinction that's hard to explain to
> >> journalists.  To
> >> the journalists defense, many people lump everything that comes with a
> >> distribution as "Linux", since the kernel by itself isn't that useful.
> >
> > So could Novell jump into the OpenSolaris market or not according to
> > proposed actions by the FSF?
>
> I haven't the slightest idea.  I think the whole thing is less about
> "punishing" Novell than it is about discouraging (by force if necessary)
> linux vendors from helping Microsoft spread their patent-FUD when the sign
> agreements like this.
>
> No matter what the FSF does regarding changing the license, it won't have an
> immediate effect (I don't think so anyway), since the GPLv2-licensed version
> of all these tools are still perfectly functional.  And IIRC, the Novell-MS
> deal (the patent-protection part of it anyway) was only for 5 years.  Novell
> could easily skate by that much time on the GPLv2 versions of basic system
> tools (even while keeping current with software that stays GPLv2, like Linus
> has indicated that the kernel will, or software that never was GPL, like
> apache).
>
> Matt
>
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