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

[Jim Cornette]

Les Mikesell wrote:
> On Sun, 2006-11-26 at 20:51, Craig White wrote:
> 
>> And just in case anyone is interested and lost the original link...
>>
>> http://techp.org/petition/show/1
> 
> 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 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.

Just my views,
Jim

-- 
It's important that people know what you stand for.
It's more important that they know what you won't stand for.