The latest draft release of the GNU Public License version 3 (GPLv3) released last week includes provisions that aim specifically to stop future software patent deals like the one made by Microsoft and Novell last fall.
The proposed language has caused controversy in the technical and legal realms of the open source community.
Read the rest here (Networkworld)
According to Reuters, the “Linux camp” is trying to “sabotage” the deal between Microsoft and Novell.
One wonders if Reuters has a special interest in slinging misinformation about the Linux community, or just deeply misunderstands the Linux community and can’t be bothered to get it right.
Read the rest here. (Linux.com)
In an interview Peter Brown, executive director of the Free Software Foundation, said:
“We need to make sure such deals don’t make a mockery of the goals of free software,”
“The Free Software Foundation will seek to undermine the Microsoft-Novell patent deal by incorporating language that will accomplish that goal into the new license agreement that will cover rights to much of the code in Linux.”
“They found a way to effectively proprietize free software by offering patent promises to Novell,” Brown said. “Whenever a new method comes along to effectively turn free software into proprietary software, we will adjust the license.”
The Open Source community has had the opportunity to be extremely vocal of late. With the Vista launch, and Dell’s IdeaStorm suggestion box website they’ve had ample chance to flex their feedback muscles. Still neither of these recent events compares to the sheer outrage that the Microsoft-Novell pact received last year. But as Novell proved last week, this was an instance of the community being more loud than correct.
Thoughts on: HP sees huge Linux desktop deals.
After rumors about Dell computers with Linux there is a new buzz: HP and Linux.
According to this Story “Hewlett-Packard is closing custom deals for thousands of desktop PCs running Linux”.
“Deals are made with Novell, Dell said it’s poised to do the same.”
I honesty wonder if Mr Shuttleworth is a sleeping beauty, waiting for some princess to kiss him and wake up.
I have not heard anything substantial from the Ubuntu front about Computers with Ubuntu-Linux pre-installed.
The PC market is slowly starting to open for computers with Linux, and it looks like Ubuntu might miss out.
Playfully attacking Novell on making deals is easy, but at least Novell has chances of getting on the Linux PC market, something I have not seen yet from Canonical.
Tuxicity
Good Novell news seems to be coming off the presses.
According to SeekingAlpha and Linuxinsider Novell has posted a loss of $20 million this year, compared to $4 million last year, and yet has to spend about another $45 million for restructuring to make expenses lower.
Analysts say Novell’s earnings and revenue were below expectations.
However, thanks to the Novell-Microsoft deal, got a revenue of $230 million.
Overall revenue declined by 5 percent, but when you compare the whole ting to the last quarter of last year, we see a revenue growth of 46 percent and invoicing increase over 650 percent.
In short (according to SeekingAlpha:)
- With the Microsoft deal Novell got more costumers
- The Novell-Microsoft deal accelerated the Novell-Wal-mart deal
- Novell seems to have gotten a halo
Also critics of Novell-Microsoft have to shut up from now on according to SeekinAlpha . Click here for the critics the story refers to.
Well I have no clue what those figures mean and see no reason why critics should shut up. although I am not a serious critic on the Novell-Microsoft deal.
Critics should never shut up! We need them!
Can someone explain what those figures mean?
Is Novell in more trouble then ever or are they doing well ? (Does Novell truly have a halo?)
Tuxicity.
Original from channeltimes.com:
Open source vendor Novell has asserted that there is no truth in speculations of it losing out on the General Public License (GPL) to sell Linux operating system software.
NEW YORK — When the the third draft of the General Public License comes out, look for language that addresses the recent Microsoft-Novell patent deal.Members of the Free Software Foundation, which oversees the draft change process for the GPL, said a new patent clause is being inserted in the draft that could effectively thwart future patent pacts similar to Microsoft’s deal with Novell.
The development of openSUSE 10.3 is now officially underway with the release of the first alpha: “I’m glad to announce the first public alpha release of openSUSE 10.3. Since the openSUSE 10.2 final release, the most significant changes are: GNOME is moved to /usr; KDE updated to KDE 3.5.6; Linux kernel updated to 2.6.20, there’s no Xen support enabled for now; pattern for minimal text install; update of OpenOffice.org to version 2.1.3; the whole distribution is now built with -fstack-protector to better guard against some buffer overflows; usage of LUKS by default for crypto partitions in YaST….” Read the rest of the release announcement for more details and known issues. Download the DVD images via BitTorrent: openSUSE-10.3-Alpha1-DVD-i386-iso (3,728MB), openSUSE-10.3-Alpha1-DVD-x86_64-iso (3,749MB).
The openSUSE project is a community program sponsored by Novell. Promoting the use of Linux everywhere, this program provides free, easy access to openSUSE, a complete Linux distribution. The openSUSE project has three main goals: make openSUSE the easiest Linux for anyone to obtain and the most widely used Linux distribution; leverage open source collaboration to make openSUSE the world’s most usable Linux distribution and desktop environment for new and experienced Linux users; dramatically simplify and open the development and packaging processes to make openSUSE the platform of choice for Linux developers and software vendors.
Reuters posted a story on Saturday morning, of all times, titled “FSF says Novell could be banned from selling Linux” that sent the blogosphere and several media outlines into a frenzy of activity. While some folks didn’t bite, many places on the web just repeated the story verbatim. It’s a fetching headline, but a bit misleading since the Free Software Foundation doesn’t really have that authority over Linux.
The FSF Can’t Ban Novell’s Linux Distribution Rights | Linux Magazine >> more..
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