Attachmate To Retain Novell Unix Copyrights
angry tapir writes "Novell's copyrights for the Unix operating system will remain under Attachmate's control as part of the companies' pending merger, a Novell spokesman has revealed. The confirmation, which came in a terse message posted to Novell's website, seems to rule out questions of whether Unix assets are part of some 882 patents being sold to a Microsoft-led consortium, CPTN Holdings, as part of the deal."
Because open source sucks.
He says, on Slashdot, on the web, on the internet ...
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Though I am a long time Microsoft basher (with very good reason) I have to totally disagree with you. A small company with nothing to lose run by a moron (SCO anyone?) is much more likely to try the kind of Hail Mary that any such attempt would constitute. Microsoft, while wrong in many ways, is not that phenomenally stupid. They actually have something to lose, and would be going up against Google, Motorola, HP, IBM, and thousands of other companies single handedly, and even they can't t weather the ill will such a stupid move would garner circa 2011. If it gets in the hands of another Darl McBride, it is still a non-issue, because they are guaranteed to lose, whether you think it is because we are right (which we are of course), or because big money talks. Any way you slice it, worrying about said trademark and who owns it is tantamount to complete foolishness.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
This whole "GPL is restrictive compared to the BSD-style licenses" thing seems to be the favourite FUD of the corporate masses now.
It seems to have gained a lot of traction, predictably, because it's true, from a certain point of view.
Yes, the GPL grants you fewer rights than a BSD style license. The most important right that it does not grant you is the right to take the rights of others away by closing the source after you have received it.
So I don't think of GPL as "restrictive" and BSD-style as "permissive". I think of GPL as "freedom-preserving" and BSD as "promiscuous".