<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> <html> <head> <meta content="text/html;charset=ISO-8859-1" http-equiv="Content-Type"> </head> <body bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000"> Les Mikesell wrote: <blockquote cite="mid1167943353.16197.123.camel@oldmoola.futuresource.com" type="cite"> <pre wrap="">On Wed, 2007-01-03 at 18:32 -0800, Robert Arkiletian wrote: </pre> <blockquote type="cite"> <pre wrap="">The point is, of all the distros out there only SuSE has implicitly admitted that it is violating M$ IP by accepting a covenant for it's customers that states M$ will not sue them for any IP violations. </pre> </blockquote> <pre wrap=""> That's not at all clear - and Novell has explicitly stated the opposite. In any case, everyone else is using the same code and has the same violations if any exist. </pre> <blockquote type="cite"> <pre wrap="">Samba does not violate any M$ IP. M$ wishes it did. We can thank the brilliance of Andrew Tridgell for that. </pre> </blockquote> <pre wrap=""> I'm not sure anyone can say that with any confidence, given the state of US patent law and the number of patents held by MS. And no amount of brilliance can work around a patent - that's the point of having them. </pre> <blockquote type="cite"> <pre wrap="">For M$ it's a win-win situation. They get the FUD they wanted plus get the FLOSS community to abandon one of the top 3 distros. And for anyone that buys the BS that this deal was about creating better interoperability, all I have to say is M$ has been hard at work doing it's best to thwart Linux-Windows compatibility for a long time. </pre> </blockquote> <pre wrap=""> I think you missed the other half of the arrangement. Novell still claims rights to the original UNIX code (in spite of SCO's claims) and MS now includes Services-For-Unix and other things that might possibly infringe. It's better for everyone for MS to be able to use good, well tested designs instead of inventing something worse and putting it on our networks. </pre> <blockquote type="cite"> <pre wrap="">They hate Samba and tried to obfuscate it out of existence. But Tridgell is not someone easily obfuscated :) </pre> </blockquote> <pre wrap=""> Samba is really only interesting to someone running Windows anyway. If the GPL didn't prevent people from distributing all the components you need together, we might have had some real competition to windows by now and made it irrelevant. </pre> </blockquote> Les, if you have a problem with GPL'd software, then why are you on the K12LTSP list? If you're convinced that you're at legal risk for using GNU/Linux or any other GPL'd software such as Samba, then you're free to go to Windows or Mac OS X. --TP <div class="moz-signature"> _______________________________ Do you GNU!? <a href="http://www.gnu.org/">Microsoft Free since 2003</a>--the ultimate antivirus protection! </div> </body> </html>