Linked by Thom Holwerda on Wed 8th Nov 2006 11:24 UTC
Microsoft will pay Novell USD 348 million up front, but Novell will return USD 200 million of that amount over five years. The specific numbers came in an a filing to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission made by Novell late Tuesday. "The financial commitments Microsoft is making as part of this agreement are significant," company CEO Ron Hovsepian said in a statement. In related news, Microsoft has denied that its patent deal with Novell is in breach of the GPL or will automatically spread Microsoft's patent protection to other Linux distributions.
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Member since:
2005-10-02
Of course it will affect other distributions.
Many will think of Novell as a safe choice what it actually isn't. This will affect other distributions. Also, the patent protection does not include other distributions - this affects them too.
In the end, this means Microsoft has been given a great stranglehold on Linux and Open Source in general.
The only good thing to come from this, is that Europe may become a much greater center in the FLOSS-world.