"Often cast as the peacemaker in free software disputes, Bruce Perens is on the warpath. When we caught up with him, he wasn't in a mood to be charitable to Novell. On Friday the Utah company, which markets the SuSE Linux distribution, revealed that it was entering into a partnership with Microsoft. Redmond would pay Novell an undisclosed sum in return for Novell recognizing Microsoft's intellectual property claims. Novell received a 'Covenant' promising that it wouldn't be sued by Microsoft."It's a case of 'Damn the people who write the software'", he told us. "Novell is in a desperate position - it has a smaller share of the market than Debian,"" he told The Register. Update: Novell responds to community's questions: here, here and here. Update 2: Havoc Pennington's take.
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Member since:2006-01-06
Ethics aside (I pretty much agree with most reactions from the community), it must be uncomfortable to be a customer of their enterprise Linux products. While the patent convenant buys a little temporal protection (for only five years at the moment, and with possibilities for Microsoft to bail out), it is dangerous license-wise with two possible turns this could take:
Nah. Actually, it's quite the opposite. Novell's customers gain the certainty that they won't be sued by MS for patent infringement. Neither Novell nor Microsoft have to assert any particular code as infringing on any particular patent. So, the issue of the GPL is a red herring.
Member since:2005-07-13
Nah. Actually, it's quite the opposite. Novell's customers gain the certainty that they won't be sued by MS for patent infringement. Neither Novell nor Microsoft have to assert any particular code as infringing on any particular patent. So, the issue of the GPL is a red herring.
Novell has offered IP indemnity for their enterprise linux platforms ever since the SCO debacle began, so this isn't really ground-breaking and not likely to sway customers any more than before. Besides which I think the red herring in all this is the concern that a company like MS would actually go after users of a patent-infringing product rather than the producer, when has that ever happened and what would the likelihood of success be? That simply goes beyond FUD into the realm of near-infinite improbability. After all, we're not talking about something concrete like copyrighted code being illegally distributed or unlicensed software, unless there's something Novell really isn't telling us.
Anyways, I still say it's all about protecting the questionable mono bits, but the way I see it is if enterprise IT customers choose to deploy it for mission critical applications after experiencing Novell's own failure to make it work effectively for Zenworks, well then patent litigation is the least of their worries. They'll be more concerned with their employment status.
"The wave of departures is a sign of internal struggle, but amidst all the bad news, there is a glimmer of hope. According to an anonymous HTC executive cited by WSJ, the crucial HTC One is selling 'pretty good so far'. The executive revealed that HTC sold about five million One units since launch, a performance that is deemed encouraging. However, sales have been limited by the persisting supply issues that still plague the production of the HTC One." Finally some good news for HTC. Five million units amidst supply constraints is very impressive.
"Sony gave the PS4 50% more raw shader performance, plain and simple (768 SPs @ 800MHz vs. 1152 SPs & 800MHz). Unlike last generation, you don't need to be some sort of Jedi to extract the PS4's potential here. The Xbox One and PS4 architectures are quite similar, Sony just has more hardware under the hood. Weâll have to wait and see how this hardware delta gets exposed in games over time, but the gap is definitely there. The funny thing about game consoles is that itâs usually the lowest common denominator that determines the bulk of the experience across all platforms. On the plus side, the Xbox One should enjoy better power/thermal characteristics compared to the PlayStation 4. Even compared to the Xbox 360 we should see improvement in many use cases thanks to modern power management techniques." AnandTech does its usual in-depth thing."The Verge has learned that HTC's Chief Product Officer, Kouji Kodera, left the company last week. Kodera was responsible for HTC's overall product strategy, which makes the departure especially notable on the heels of the global launch of the make-or-break One. It's not just Kodera. In the past three-odd months, HTC has lost a number of employees in rapid succession." I really hope HTC pulls it together.
"It is with huge pleasure that the Debian GNU/Hurd team announces the release of Debian GNU/Hurd 2013. This is a snapshot of Debian 'sid' at the time of the Debian 'wheezy' release (May 2013), so it is mostly based on the same sources. It is not an official Debian release, but it is an official Debian GNU/Hurd port release." Important note: 75% of Debian packages are supported bu Debian GNU/Hurd. Impressive.
"The first killer app was VisiCalc. This early spreadsheet turned the Apple II from a hobbyist toy to a business computer. VisiCalc came with room for improvement, though. In addition, a new architecture and operating system, the Intel-based IBM PC and MS-DOS, also needed a spreadsheet to be taken seriously. That spreadsheet, released in early 1983, would be Lotus 1-2-3, and it would change the world. It became the PC's killer app, and the world would never be the same. On May 14, IBM quietly announced the end of the road for 1-2-3, along with Lotus Organizer and the Lotus SmartSuite office suite. Lotus 1-2-3's day is done." Impressive 30 year run.
"There's a disconnect between how Apple CEO Tim Cook sees his company's tax strategies and how some members of the US Senate view it. That became clearer than ever today after Cook and two other Apple executives testified before Congress, explaining why they're holding most of their international income in Irish subsidiaries like Apple Operations International, which declare no tax residency anywhere in the world. AOI hasn't filed a tax return anywhere in the world for the last five years, yet it earned $30 billion in income from 2009 to 2012, according to a Senate report released yesterday." Just because something is legal, doesn't mean it's just. Apple, Google, Microsoft, and many more - these companies might not be breaking any laws, but it's obvious to anyone that what they are doing is scummy.
The new WebKit Opera for Android has been released. "Opera 14 for Android is built on top of Chromium 26, with a total overhaul of the UI in native code, making it fit well with the latest Android design guidelines. Go get the build from Google Play or point your browser to m.opera.com, and give it a spin!"
The Verge pointed me to a blog post by Leap Motion - which reveals how their Kinect-like motion control works with Windows 8. "From the second you plug in your Leap Motion Controller, you'll be able to browse the web and interact with your computer just by moving your hands and fingers in the air. With Leap Motion technology and Windows, you can do everything that's possible with multi-touch inputs - without actually touching anything. This also means that existing applications in Windows 7 and 8 will respond to your natural hand and finger movements. Soon, we'll show you how Leap Motion will work with Mac OS X." Quite cool.PocketNow interviews Marc Dillon, and there's an interesting note about why Jolla is keeping the display properties under wraps: "We're leaving some of those details out because we do understand that there are a lot of really big players in the market and they tend to take certain components in the market and dominate them. We created the ability to actually be able to run Sailfish on multiple hardware displays and be able to swap components, so this is part of the demand and supply planning phase. We are committed to this industrial design which is a 4.5-inch display, an 8 megapixel camera on the back and a front-facing camera at the front, and the exact specs of the display we'll provide when we're close to delivery." Something you rarely hear anything about.
"This is my NeXTstation Turbo Color booting the Mac System 7.1 Operating System using a hardware add-on called 'Daydream'. The Daydream has a Mac ROM and a few custom ICs in it and hooked up to the NeXTs DSP port. Turns your NeXT into a full fledged 68k powered Mac." So cool.
Member since:
2005-11-18
Ethics aside (I pretty much agree with most reactions from the community), it must be uncomfortable to be a customer of their enterprise Linux products. While the patent convenant buys a little temporal protection (for only five years at the moment, and with possibilities for Microsoft to bail out), it is dangerous license-wise with two possible turns this could take:
- If Novell did not "work around" section 7 of the GPL correctly, they may lose their right to distribute a lot of GPL-ed software.
- Even if this does not happen, developers may relicense software under a license with stricter rules when it comes to patenting. And there are some major organisations that do copyright-assignment, that can apply a new license to their software for new versions.
If the second scenario happens, Novell may lose permission to distribute some essential software. As a result it will not be able to distribute their enterprise distributions with newer software, or provide customers with updates that use newer versions[1].
IANAL, but my estimation is that customers have less protection and more uncertainty since the deal.
[1] I haven't looked well enough at GPLv3 yet, but if it's anti-patent clauses are stronger than GPLv2, they may possibly be out of the league when it comes to GNU software that is relicensed.