For years, Microsoft has insisted that open-source vendors acknowledge that its patent portfolio is a precursor to interoperability discussions. Monday, Microsoft shed that charade and announced an interoperability alliance with Red Hat for virtualization. Red Hat has long argued that patent discussions only cloud true interoperability, which is best managed through open source and open standards. Now it has got what it wanted; unlike the Novell-Microsoft agreements, there is no exclusionary patent deals or cross payments.
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Member since:2005-07-06
Red Hat hasn't been solely a Linux distributor in a long time now. Red Hat acquired among other things JBoss (middleware), Netscape (directory, certificate server etc). Might want to refer
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/RedHatContributions
Edited 2009-02-17 04:02 UTC
Member since:2005-07-06
And Red Hat isn't offering those as part of Red Hat Linux?
Granted, NetWare is just legacy stuff, but Novell's product portfolio is still broader than Red Hat's.
GroupWise, eDirectory, ZENworks, etc. are all major Novell products that need to work well on Windows, too.
Somehow the deal between Novell and MS is made in the popular media to be just about Linux and other FLOSS software, but it's not. It's not that Novell admitted that its FLOSS products violate MS patents. This deal isn't even one-way. MS Exchange might violate Novell patents that are used in GroupWise and the other way around.
Why is the patent deal made into "Novell admits Linux violates MS patents"? Why not "MS admits, it violates GroupWise/NetWare/... patents"?
Novell fought SCO (and won). Novell contributes heavily to FLOSS. Among all companies there are many that are so much worse than Novell. Maybe my information is wrong, but I don't think that e.g. Xandros contributes much to FLOSS -- I don't see Xandros on this list: http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/gregkh/images/lpc_200... . In fact Xandros and MS made a very simiar deal: http://www.xandros.com/news/press_releases/xandros_microsoft_collab...
Still Xandros is praised for putting Linux on the eee PC and Novell is supposed to be the bad guy.
Member since:2007-08-01
"Red Hat is solely a Linux distributor".
Yeah, sure:
http://sources.redhat.com/projects.html
http://www.redhat.com/truthhappens/leadership/osdevelopment/
http://et.redhat.com/page/Main_Page
http://lwn.net/Articles/222773/
...
"It's better to keep your mouth shut and give the impression that you're stupid than to open it and remove all doubt."
Member since:2005-07-01
http://www.redhat.com/truthhappens/leadership/osdevelopment/
http://et.redhat.com/page/Main_Page
http://lwn.net/Articles/222773/
All those projects are Open Source and most form important parts of Red Hat's Linux distribution. I believe the point was that Novell, on the other hand, has a wide portfolio of closed source, commercial projects that are entirely seperate from it's SUSE operating system. That is the difference between the circumstances of the two agreements.
Yes. Yes it is. To that end, please don't make insulting remarks in the OSNews comments section. Last time I looked, personal attacks were against the rules.
Member since:
2005-07-06
Oh please. You can't compare both cases. Red Hat is solely a Linux distributor. Novell's portfolio is much bigger. The patent deal with MS also covers GroupWise and other closed source offerings from Novell.
The next thing you should not forget is that Novell gets lots of cash from MS. Novell is a business. Businesses seek profit. That's why Novell doesn't feel stupid.