SFLC’s Bradley M. Kuhn on Novell-Microsoft
Submitted by srlinuxx on Fri, 11/10/2006 - 07:18.
The Software Freedom Law Center’s CTO Bradley Kuhn has issued a statement regarding the Novell-Microsoft agreements and how they will impact FOSS developers.
Last Thursday, Novell and Microsoft announced a new collaborative effort involving both licensing and technology. The Software Freedom Law Center has been following the situation, and as its CTO, I’ve held a particular interest in how it will impact Free Software developers. One result of the agreement, Microsoft’s patent pledge to developers, has received significant interest from the Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) development community.
A careful examination of Microsoft’s Patent Pledge for Non-Compensated Developers reveals that it has little value. The patent covenant only applies to software that you develop at home and keep for yourself; the promises don’t extend to others when you distribute. You cannot pass the rights to your downstream recipients, even to the maintainers of larger projects on which your contribution is built.
Users win in Linux love-in
It seems the world really is big enough for both Windows and Linux. Earlier this month some of the heat was taken out of the long-standing rivalry between Microsoft and the Linux community thanks to a collaborative effort between old enemies Microsoft and Novell. The result is that we will see Windows Server and Novell SuSE Enterprise Linux work better together.
Both Windows and Linux are making headway in the datacentre. They are not really competing as each is finding its own niche for datacentre systems. What is happening, though, is that Windows and Linux are replacing proprietary Unix servers running Aix, HP-UX and Solaris.
“Replace expensive Risc servers with commodity PC servers” used to be how Windows was sold; the same is true of Linux. Now, the rival camps have formed an unlikely alliance that is putting the nails in the coffin for proprietary Unix.
Full Story.
----
You talk the talk, but do you waddle the waddle?