Eben Moglen To Scrutinize Novell-Microsoft Deal

An anonymous reader writes "Novell is providing Eben Moglen's Software Freedom Law Center with confidential access to the legal terms of the Novell-Microsoft partnership, allowing to organization to verify if the deal is compatible with the GPL2 and GPL3 licenses. Moglen in the past has alleged that the patent license between the two companies could be in violation with section 7 of the GPL. Novell on Tuesday published a document on its website, explaining that they circumvented the GPL provisions by providing a patent license to the end user rather than between the two companies."

Comments

What if?

[ihatepcs]

There has been a lot of folks in here commenting and asking the question about "If he finds it in violation, then what?", how about the converse question? What if Eben finds that it is not in violation? Novell has copped an awful lot of crap over all of this. SJVN has also written an interesting perspective pointing out that Novelle is not SCO and a lot of the angst that is being directed asgainst them is quite possibly unwarranted. You know somewhow, I can't see everyone who has bagged Novell over it coming out and saying "oops I was wrong". So, what if Eben finds that it is compatible with GPL? Tp

No the minute he says it is compatible with the GPL, he is immediately labeled a traitor by the community. And no one will pay it any mind at all. Thats how this whole thing goes.. no matter what whomever says that even suggests that this may not be the bad thing it's getting all the hype about, they are labeled a troll, thrown insults, vile comments and the like.