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Who cares about the GPL3? In case you've forgotten Linus doesn't want the GPL3 and neither do the rest of the serious kernel developers.

http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS9955615279.html

If only a handful of developers move to the GPL3, and that looks to be the case, it's the GPL3 that won't matter. Yes, some of their code, most noticeably gcc, will be GPL3. But again, so what? It's also under the GPL2, Linus and other practical open-source developers will keep using the old version and fork their own.

Perens et. al seem to have forgotten that you can't stop Novell, or anyone else, from using GPL2 code.

Steven

And again all the posts that are +5 are those that say the same thing over and over again.

The deal is done. Live with it. At least Novell tries to answer the questions people have. They are damned if they do and damned if they don't. People asked that they wanted the details of the deal, so they gave them. They gave a lot of promises.

The IRC meeting will most likely also just be a lot of copy-cats yelling: Yes, but you signed a deal with M$ and we are so anti-M$ that we don't care about anything else.

So instead of yelling that it is so bad, come up with a realistic alternative what you want and what questions you want answerd. Be at the IRC meeting and/or see that your answers are asked on the site if you can't be there.

It is very much fun to react emotionaly, yet it is only spreading the FUD further, no matter who started that FUD.

The useal links:
http://lists.opensuse.org/archive/opensuse-announc e/2006-11/msg00004.html
http://dev-loki.blogspot.com/2006/11/call-to-dump- suse-linux-wtf.html
http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS4287912423.html
http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2168151/novells- opens-microsoft
http://en.opensuse.org/Meetings/Status_Meeting_200 6-11-08/transcript#The_Novell.2F_Microsoft_deal

Let us not wait what will happen in, say a year.

Also let us not look at it objectivaly and let us completely ignore what Novell has done for the Open Source community. Just let us drop them and then hope that Novell goes broke and some others fill in the void that will happen.

Also let us ignore the fact that Novell is not SCO or the Novell is also interested in seeing that the deal is coplying with the GPL

Also let us forget all the Novell suported projects

It is great to so that people are not realy pro Linux, but are rather anti-Microsoft.

Yes, we should watch the deal closely and decide when things go wrong. To decide now will not do anybody any good, execpt perhaps RedHat, who are happily joining in the FUD for obvious reasons.

Oh, this was all sarcastic.

As I offered earlier:

"Under the patent cooperation agreement, Novell's customers receive directly from Microsoft a covenant not to sue. Novell does not receive a patent license or covenant not to sue from Microsoft, and we have not agreed with Microsoft to any condition that would contradict the conditions of the GPL. Our agreement does not affect the freedom that Novell or anyone else in the open source community, including developers, has under the GPL and does not impose any condition that would contradict the conditions of the GPL. Therefore, the agreement is fully compliant with the GPL,"

http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS4685037869.html

That reminds me of another, historical, agreement:

"Under the treaty, England receives directly from Germany a promise not to attack Poland. England does not receive a promise not to attack Germany, and we have not agreed with Germany to any condition that would contradict the conditions of previous treaties. Our agreement does not affect the freedom that Poland or any other country in Europe, including France, has under previous treaties and does not impose any condition that would contradict the conditions of such treaties. Therefore, the treaty is fully compliant with all previous treaties."

Sincerely,

Neville Chamberlain

Novell = newSCO? I think not as does the author of the original article.
Read his follow up addressing just that question:
http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS4287912423.html Novell is not new SCO.

The reasoning is sound as are the conclusions.

As I offered earlier:

"Under the patent cooperation agreement, Novell's customers receive directly from Microsoft a covenant not to sue. Novell does not receive a patent license or covenant not to sue from Microsoft, and we have not agreed with Microsoft to any condition that would contradict the conditions of the GPL. Our agreement does not affect the freedom that Novell or anyone else in the open source community, including developers, has under the GPL and does not impose any condition that would contradict the conditions of the GPL. Therefore, the agreement is fully compliant with the GPL,"

http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS4685037869.html

That reminds me of another, historical, agreement:

"Under the treaty, England receives directly from Germany a promise not to attack Poland. England does not receive a promise not to attack Germany, and we have not agreed with Germany to any condition that would contradict the conditions of previous treaties. Our agreement does not affect the freedom that Poland or any other country in Europe, including France, has under previous treaties and does not impose any condition that would contradict the conditions of such treaties. Therefore, the treaty is fully compliant with all previous treaties."

Sincerely,

Neville Chamberlain

"Under the patent cooperation agreement, Novell's customers receive directly from Microsoft a covenant not to sue. Novell does not receive a patent license or covenant not to sue from Microsoft, and we have not agreed with Microsoft to any condition that would contradict the conditions of the GPL. Our agreement does not affect the freedom that Novell or anyone else in the open source community, including developers, has under the GPL and does not impose any condition that would contradict the conditions of the GPL. Therefore, the agreement is fully compliant with the GPL,"

Novell Inc., which like Red Hat is an Oracle partner, found Oracle's Unbreakable Linux initiative "an interesting development."
Kevan Barney, Novell's senior manager of public relations said, "We agree with Oracle that Linux is an enterprise-class operating platform and that it deserves world-class support.' Still, Novell has been providing world-class support for operating system platforms for more than 23 years, including for Linux, for the last, almost, three [years]."
"That said," Barney continued, "Oracle's announcement is primarily targeted at Red Hat Linux servers. Red Hat and Novell have very different capabilities in the enterprise space. We have been saying for years that Novell is, in fact, the best option for enterprise deployments of Linux because of our global support capabilities, indemnification, and broad partner ecosystem. While Red Hat customers running only Oracle on Red Hat could benefit from Oracle support, customers who run applications on Linux in addition to Oracle need broader support for their Linux environments."

Yep. Mozilla has been on both sides -- they had to rename Phoenix to Firebird, then Firebird to Firefox.

And Debian's been on both sides, too, when they forced the DCC to drop "Debian" (originally it was the "Debian Common Core Alliance.")

The Firefox logo is trademarked, so Debian doesn't consider it to be Free and will not include it as part of its distribution.

And for Sun, the deal-breaker is that Evolution is GPL-licensed.

Oh yeah, Sun hates the GPL

i think the latest version of the linux kernel includes broadcom wireless drivers.

some article about it

Among the changes in this new draft are that the license only directly restricts DRM (digital rights management) in the special case in which it is used to prevent people from sharing or modifying GPLv3-covered software. According to the FSF, the clarified DRM section preserves the spirit of the original GPL, which forbids adding additional restrictions to free software. In short, GPLv3 doesn't prohibit the implementation of DRM features, but prevents them from being imposed on users in a way that they cannot remove.

Linux Watch has published some comments from Linus.

And here's a blog entry from Linux-Watch refuting it http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS9262793005.html

I don't see what the problem is here. If you want to take a system out of a box and run a portal on it, you have many choices for OS, web server, database, app server, and portal system. They chose some of the most common configurations and tested them as installed.

No, it does not do a very good job of isolating the specific performance properties of various parts of the stack, nor does it do a terribly good job of indicating the best stack. It's mostly an indicator of what the fastest portal is.

However, the important thing is that 3 of the application stacks were identical across Windows and Linux, and for all 3 of those the Windows system was between 7 and 15 times faster than the Linux system. Since no performance optimization was done on any of the systems, it is a test of out-of-the-box performance, not optimal performance.

As Linux zealot Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols says, the test was perfectly fair. Why would somebody spend a few thousand dollars to hire a consultant to tweak their Linux JBoss application when the exact same application works 15 times faster on a Windows machine with no extra work? Sure you might have somebody in-house with that kind of expertise, but most places don't.

dom

"You can argue until you're blue in the face that document format and application features are two separate things, but this fact remains: if you dictate a format, then people have to use an application that supports the format!"

An application that supports the format? You mean, like, Microsoft Office?

I think you're the one missing the point here. Anyone who argues apps agains formats is liable to fall into the same logical hole: Just because an app - or an app-maker, for that matter - doesn't support a format today, doesn't mean that they can't or won't. The mere fact that it is standard and required will almost inevitably be enough to ensure that someone steps up and supports the format.

Ultimately, the whole point of open formats is the exact opposite of telling someone which application they can or cannot use. The truth of it is that open formats allow the customer to decide what's best for him, without fear of finding himself at the mercy of a single, predatory vendor.

Microsoft Office has built-in help for people with disabilities, such as voice synthesizers, special screen readers and enlargers, Winske said. But he said OpenDocument-based products do not yet.

'The process, quite frankly, was driven by one individual in a very powerful position (Kriss) issuing a memo to an individual in a less powerful position (Quinn). Then he was told to get it done and forget about any obstacles,'

http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS5139606687.htmlC oming soon: ODF for MS Office Some more days to wait until new opportunities in the office suite world !!

This is a big bonus for more open standards, but what is not mentioned is the reality of landing the PO/contract for all of those potential Microsoft licenses will still strongly favor incumbents because they can come up with a triple-special licensing bundle for OS+Office Productivity that can't be beat.

Sadly enough, it puts the burden on WordPerfect to support ODF. Which isn't coming real soon. http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS7758948461.html I think Wordperfect is the preferred word processor in the legal industry. They'd be wise to start now, but I have a feeling they won't.

Those which run under Linux probably wouldn't require new hardware either.

Find me a Linux driver for my paid-for yet unsupported Microtek Scanmaker 4850 flatbed scanner, which was purchased long before I thought of switching this computer to Linux, and I'll believe you. Unless you are working with a computer that was built from the ground up for Linux, including buying a printed copy of a distribution's hardware compatibility list to carry with you to the computer store, I am 90 percent sure that you will have issues with at least one piece of hardware if you switch a computer from Windows XP to a common Linux distribution.

And what about vertical-market proprietary software intended to run on the same computer, which is either available only for Windows or (if you're lucky) available for multiple platforms but priced such that using multiple platform versions in an organization is cost prohibitive? You would have to use Wine (significant overhead and less than full compatibility) to run your existing licensed software for Windows on a Linux box.

It's the same reason most listeners prefer payola'd major label music to independent music: repeated exposure builds familiarity.

Which magazines and which TV channels are you looking at? In the news magazines and cable news channels, I see a whole bunch of advertisements for Microsoft Office software.

Then why doesn't Sun advertise its StarOffice software, the official commercial distribution of OpenOffice.org? Or by "giving away software" do you also mean "we're practically giving it away", that is, budget software?

While I'm as big a fan of conspiracy theories as the next guy, I'm sorry to say that no such speculation is neccessary in this case.

The guy just cannot write.

Seriously, check out Linux Desktop or Linux Watch and check out other articles by this guy (his name is Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols). It's all the same story: flawed, simpleton logic; egregious typos (he must hate copy editors, because he's obviously never let one near one of his articles); sentences so poorly constructed that although you know you're reading English you can't figure out for the life of you what the guy is saying.

Even when he's not that bad, he's bad...

DSL, for those of you who don't know it, is one of several "mini-Linux" distributions. Of the set, it's probably the most well thought of since it actually manages to pick a GUI into its goodness and, having turned version 2.0 recently, it's the most mature of the mini-Linuxes.

See, he's just a bit off-kilter; it's not that you can't parse the sentence, it just gives you that queezy feeling in your stomach that you can't explain. I don't know where this guy learned to write, but I can tell you that I won't be reading any more of his "articles."

do you think it will last? Is Windows picking up momentum or is Unix losing momentum?

No mention is made regarding possible contributing factors:

• MS Windows servers may be more expensive -> more money spent
• MS Windows servers may be less efficient -> more money spent
• It may be faster/cheaper/easier to just knuckle under and get a server with MS Windows and then install something else (e.g. Linux) -> more money spent

I wonder what the real reason this report was published. Maybe there's a minimum daily quota of MS articles to drown out stuff like Linux on the Intel-based Macs or articles on Vista on Linux. Or maybe it's the trouble MS is having with the EC, that they'd like to hide in a cloud of smoke.

"Richard M. Stallman, the GPL's primary author and founder of the FSF (Free Software Foundation), explained that he didn't understand Torvalds' objection to the GPL 3, but that, in any case, "The Linux developers can decide whether to allow use of Linux under GPL version 3. This won't directly affect other parts of the system."

and a quote from the linked article ...

"'If you mean keys that developers use for signing source releases, GPL v3 says nothing about them,' said Stallman."

Sometimes it's what you don't say that counts. If Linus interprets it this way, what makes Stallman think a lawyer won't argue it that way in court? Maybe he should just explicitly state that this is in no way ever to be interpreted in the manner to which Linus objects.

I also find a couple of other things interesting here ...

1) Stallman wants the kernel to be called Linux, and distros to be referred to as GNU/Linux. So why is he suddenly ... seemingly intentionally ... trying to make it sound like the kernel is a small (virtually insignificant, if I understand his words) part of "the system"? What system?

2) Since Stallman is not a Linux developer, and Linus is a major one, wouldn't it be fair to paraphrase what he is saying as: I have no say in the matter, but Linus has a very large say in it?

I guess the truth may set you free, but it won't necessarily get the kernel released under GPLv3 ;-}