Bruce Perens Microsoft-Novell Protest

[Alex Hudson]

On Fri, 2006-11-24 at 13:39 +0100, Xavi Drudis Ferran wrote:
> But I think the agreement essentially changes nothing:

There is a potential difference here.

OIN is supposed to protect users of free software, by retaliating
against people who sue via patent claims some developer or user of
certain packages.

OIN's patents come mainly from Novell.

If Novell haven't transferred those patents explicitly to OIN, then
Microsoft are effectively free from OIN retaliation, and will be able to
press patent claims against those OIN is supposed to protect.

That is supposition based on the patents listed on OIN's website; all
but one of them are assigned to entities other than OIN, at least one of
those non-OIN entities is a business known to have been purchased by
Novell and is therefore presumably a Novell patent.

Cheers,

Alex.