Debates over GPLv3, Novell and Microsoft
A post on OSNews regarding Novell's official response to the recent draft of the GPLv3 led to a discussion on the merits (or lack thereof) of the Novell-Microsoft deal. Not surprisingly, most respondents have a negative view of the agreement.
Many seem to be of the opinion that a better approach would be for Microsoft to make a blanket patent moratorium that applies to all distributions of Linux.
Remember, Microsoft is a company just got hit by a $1.5 billion judgement over IP relating to MP3 that they thought they had already licensed. What the open source community is asking is that Microsoft completely lay down its patent defensive capacity while companies that distribute Linux maintain their ability to sue Microsoft with impunity. That is, quite frankly, nuts, and I seriously doubt Stallman thinks Microsoft would ever go for that.
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today's howtos
|
The Plan Backfired
The plan to establish an oligipoly wherein small companies face walls ('junk patents') and entry barriers ended up hurting some big companies as well. But still, they wish to tell us that small companies benbefit from patents, overwriting reports in the process. See the following example:
Big businesses boast of patent benefits, for small businesses
,----[ Quote ]
| A report published by an EU task force on intellectual property claims
| that small businesses benefit from a patent system, despite lacking
| almost any participation by the small business community.
|
| Instead, the report, titled IPR (intellectual property rights) for
| competitiveness and innovation, was written up almost entirely by
| large corporations and the patent industry.
|
| [...]
|
| The report does note objections from the likes of patentfrei.de and
| Sun Microsystems, which were recorded at some length in the report.
| But this does not appear to have impacted the conclusion of the
| report in any way
|
| [...]
|
| Jean-Pierre Laisne, of ObjectWeb, an open source software community,
| said that he found the report useless: participants were told that
| all their contributions would be recorded but at the end only
| those of Business Software Alliance and Microsoft were used.
`----
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/99155/big-businesses-boast-of-patent-benefits-for-small-businesses.html