Re: [school-discuss] Fwd: A Landmark Announcement

[Chris Gregan <cgregan@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

With some more research on the issue, I see the points made here are all 
valid. I have numerous contacts in Novell, and will see if I can get 
some comments on the concerns voiced here. I will respond back to this 
topic with my results, if any.


Chris Gregan
cgregan@xxxxxxxxxxx
Open Source Migration Specialist/Founder
Aptenix LLC-Desktop Solutions
New Market, MD
(240)422-9224

"Open source, open minds."

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lee rodgers wrote:
> Well, since we're all top-posting horribly, I thought I'd just interject 
> w/ a quote from GrokLaw
>
> "..I read that as saying that there's an intent to have their FOSS cake 
> and eat it too, i.e., they tried to work *around* the GPL rather than 
> just follow it. They know the GPL code can't be encumbered with patents, 
> but they want to do it anyway. I read that as clear intent to sidestep 
> the spirit of the GPL while embracing a perceived loophole in it, to 
> profit from the GPL without adopting it. And by they, I mean Novell too. 
> It agreed to this deal."
>
> This makes perfect sense from MS's perspective, and gives us insight 
> into the quandry MS is in: MS *CANNOT* do OpenSource ... at least, not 
> directly.
>
> MS's main line of bizniz has increasingly become *reinventing the wheel* 
> (wait, that was always their MO.. ;-) b/c of the plethora of FLOSS 
> projects out there. Starting with Apache on Linux many M$ tools now 
> duplicate FLOSS / free projects (instead of the other way around so many 
> years ago ...).
>
> Think of all the big software shops ... Adobe/MacroMedia, Sun, CA, IBM, 
> Oracle, BlackBoard... they're on the verge of being eclipsed by FLOSS. 
> So what to do? Get into the stream & offer mgm't tools (sometimes 
> lacking in FLOSS projects) that they can wrap around the free stuff...
>
> The next big wave is Open Courseware/Content that'll go along with all 
> the free tools.. imagine free curricula to go along with LiveSwif, 
> AviDemux, GIMP, Blender, etc....
>
> What this tells me is that they know they can't conquer the Open Source 
> Hydra .. commercial distro or not, there's so much going on that's not 
> GPL, in BSD (which M$ borrows from), Postgres (in the fully free area) 
> and the GPL'd work in Gnu & Linux that it's simply not feasible to start 
> throwing lawyers around w/out ending up in a counter-suit quagmire of 
> mutually assured distraction...
>
> /lee
>
>
> ======
> /lee
> +-----------------------------------+
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