A Novell odatette a Microsoftnak.

Kövezz, de attól tartok, hogy ennek a tegnapi gigamega MS-Novell hírnek a lényegét a Groklaw kapta el:

The two companies will work on compatibility, mentioning specifically Novell developing code to support Microsoft’s Office Open XML in OpenOffice. Microsoft will push SUSE. HP once again is there in the background, saying this is great. IBM says it is great. Intel. All the corporate dudes who showed up for Oracle’s announcement. Obviously there is a corporate dance the community isn’t invited to. What? They couldn’t get Rob Enderle?

És:

I hate to break it to Ballmer, but SUSE Linux is GPL code, which the two parties may find puts a little pebble in the shoe of this alliance. And on that joint research facility where the companies will „work with customers and the Open Source community,” they may get customers, but how will you get anyone from the community to show up? And can Novell please provide us with specificity? Exactly what patents of Microsoft’s are being paid for? And precisely where inside SUSE might one find them infringed? As for how wonderful it will be to mix proprietary code with FOSS, anybody see a trend here? Who’d a-thunk it was Microsoft having that dream all along?

Röviden: a Novell odatette a picsáját a MS-nek, plusz finoman szólva is a FOSS community faszával veri a csalánt. Mindehhez a közösség munkáját lefölöző (és persze azért a közösséget elvileg erősen támogató) óriások (IBM, HP, Intel) vidáman asszisztálnak, mert ha a Novellnek sikerül, nekik is fog, a morális oldalt meg ki nem szarja le.

És ez nagyon nem szép dolog.

Update: Eben Moglen megmondja a tutit, az egyezmény nem felel meg a GPL-nek.

„If you make an agreement which requires you to pay a royalty to anybody for the right to distribute GPL software, you may not distribute it under the GPL,” Moglen told CNET News.com Thursday. Section 7 of the GPL „requires that you have, and pass along to everybody, the right to distribute software freely and without additional permission.”…

Whether the partnership precludes Novell from distributing Linux depends on precise terms of the agreement that Moglen hasn’t seen, he cautioned.