Linked by Thom Holwerda on Mon 4th Jun 2007 16:57 UTC, submitted by WillM
Microsoft, shrugging off licensing moves to prevent it from repeating its controversial patent deal with Novell, has signed a set of broad collaboration agreements with Linux provider Xandros that include an intellectual property assurance under which Microsoft will provide patent covenants for Xandros customers. In the meantime, Microsoft's covenant not to sue users of Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise will be extended to all General Public License v3 users as soon as Novell includes GPLv3 code within its Linux distribution, according to the Free Software Foundation.
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Member since:
2005-07-09
The "It's just business" line is used to justify a lot of business practices that are eventually either found to be illegal, or made illegal once the public or authorities realizes there's a loophole in the system.
I'm sorry but most businesses don't operate the way SCO, Eron, or Worldcom do. What Microsoft is doing is straddles the line between extortion and slander.
They're able to get away with it because they have an army of lawyers and have no market competition. If Chrysler said GM, Ford, Toyota, and hundreds of other car manufacturers violated 235 patents (which they won't disclose because it's too much work to write them down on paper, but trust Chrysler, it knows what it's saying) and advertised regularly that anyone who purchased any "non Chrysler approved" cars could be liable and be forced to junk their car, Chrysler would be sued out of existence.