[OT] Protest the Novell-Microsoft Agreement - Sign Bruce Perens petition

[Les Mikesell]

On Mon, 2006-11-27 at 06:17, Jim Cornette wrote:
> > 
> > Does anyone happen to know what companies do/don't have
> > cross-licensing arrangements with Microsoft already in
> > place?  I thought this was common practice among all
> > big companies and that I'd seen similar things with
> > HP and Sun a couple of years ago - and IBM has probably
> > had one for ages.  Why is this one even newsworthy?
> > 
> 
> There were instances where M$ would take the most likely culprits, like 
> laptops used by individual employees and find instances of "softshare" 
> violations and hold a company in threat of suit if they did not purchase 
> a license 6 version to "protect" them from suit.

I meant patent cross-licensing, like this:

http://business.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=04/07/19/2315200&tid=110
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1750293,00.asp
http://www.itworld.com/Man/2687/060524msnec/
http://www.itworld.com/Man/2681/040409microsoftlegal/

> I do not see Novell getting any benefit out of the deal w/ M$ other than 
> fewer lawsuits. This fear of course worked with other companies in the 
> past who use M$ anything. Even with Novell and M$ assuring the customers 
> that they will be protected, most companies are probably well underway 
> with migration from the bully OS to co-operative OS versions. The 
> partnership with those two organizations probably is seen as similar to 
> past blackmail schemes.

I think you are going to see every company with anything to
lose join in these agreements as insurance against potentially
very expensive lawsuits and to raise the bar against
start-up competition.  But it's not news.

-- 
  Les Mikesell
   lesmikesell at gmail.com