The Free Software Foundation is reviewing Novell's right to sell new versions of Linux operating system software after the open-source community criticized Novell for teaming up with Microsoft. "The community of people wants to do anything they can to interfere with this deal and all deals like it. They have every reason to be deeply concerned that this is the beginning of a significant patent aggression by Microsoft," Eben Moglen, the Foundation's general counsel, said on Friday. Update: The FSF claims this is being hyped.
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Member since:2006-01-09
Yes, but Novell never claimed copyrigh of any GPL software, just from the software they made that hapens to use GPL libraries, nothing more.
I'm wondering if you just lack comprehension skills or if you're just poking jabs for fun... If your software uses GPL libraries, it becomes GPL software automatically. Don't want to turn your software GPL? No problem. Just don't use the said libraries. Look elsewhere. There is plenty of LGPL/BSD/MIT /etc-licensed libraries out there that you can use. If you can't find one that suits your needs, you have the option to write one yourself.
But, from the moment that you decide to incorporate GPL code on your product, you have to abide to the upstream license.
Novell is stepping on eggs here because the copyright holder of a large and very important piece of their product is questioning whether they - Novell - have the rights to keep distributing their - FSF - software or not. If it turns out that the MS/Novell deal is indeed breaking the terms of the GPL, the FSF and other copyright holders can and should revoke Novell's rights to keep distributing their software. It is that simple.
I still am not sure if that will be a good thing in the end but Novell should know better what they were doing when they signed that deal.
Member since:2006-11-10
Novell is stepping on eggs here because the copyright holder of a large and very important piece of their product is questioning whether they - Novell - have the rights to keep distributing their - FSF - software or not. If it turns out that the MS/Novell deal is indeed breaking the terms of the GPL, the FSF and other copyright holders can and should revoke Novell's rights to keep distributing their software.
Stallman has already stated that the Novell-Microsoft deal does not violate GPL2, which is, currenctly, what all GNU software and GPL software, for that matter, are licenced under.
Therefore they cannot revoke Novell's right to distribute from that perspective.
I'm not sure how the FSF hopes to accomplish what they're after.
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Member since:
2005-09-27
Yes, but Novell never claimed copyrigh of any GPL software, just from the software they made that hapens to use GPL libraries, nothing more.