Novell could be banned from selling Linux

[Matthew Gillen]

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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