If you want to look at it objectively, read the press releases and the FAQs first. There is no patent cross license _anywhere_ here. It is a covenant not sue each others _customers_. Novell can still be sued for patent infringement by Microsoft and vice versa. Novell's _customers_ will no longer be sued by Microsoft. This is completely compatible with the GPL.
I wish people would stop spreading bull about this cooperation. It is compatible with the GPL. Basta!
Yep - DRM in name but not in nature. But that's what Microsoft has been at for years - delivering DRM software that is so shoddy it gets cracked overnight. But nonetheless they are the market leaders - at least here in Germany nearly all "legal" music files downloaded are wma. That's why.ogg, which is waaay better than wma should bust into the market. Who cares if anyone cracks it or not - certainly not the music industry, or they would be kicking up a fuss about wma now. And after all, there is always the DCMA anti-circumvention clause.
And anyway, MP3 would hardly feature in legislation anyway - they'd say something like file formats that do not feature DRM protection. Which might be a good time for the lads at Ogg and Flac to think about adding DRM as a feature - after all, Linus supports it: http://www.linuxkp.org/en/content.php?&content/edi torial/drm_torvalds.html
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If you want to look at it objectively, read the press releases and the FAQs first. There is no patent cross license _anywhere_ here. It is a covenant not sue each others _customers_. Novell can still be sued for patent infringement by Microsoft and vice versa. Novell's _customers_ will no longer be sued by Microsoft. This is completely compatible with the GPL. I wish people would stop spreading bull about this cooperation. It is compatible with the GPL. Basta!
of countries to whom you can't export cryptography? Maybe this gives a new meaning to "open" source computing
Yep - DRM in name but not in nature. But that's what Microsoft has been at for years - delivering DRM software that is so shoddy it gets cracked overnight. But nonetheless they are the market leaders - at least here in Germany nearly all "legal" music files downloaded are wma. That's why .ogg, which is waaay better than wma should bust into the market. Who cares if anyone cracks it or not - certainly not the music industry, or they would be kicking up a fuss about wma now. And after all, there is always the DCMA anti-circumvention clause.
And anyway, MP3 would hardly feature in legislation anyway - they'd say something like file formats that do not feature DRM protection. Which might be a good time for the lads at Ogg and Flac to think about adding DRM as a feature - after all, Linus supports it: http://www.linuxkp.org/en/content.php?&content/edi torial/drm_torvalds.html