Messages in this thread |  | | | Date | Tue, 07 Nov 2006 15:12:25 -0700 | | From | "Jeff V. Merkey" <> | | Subject | Re: Faustian Pact between Novell and Microsoft |
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Bernd Petrovitsch wrote:
>On Tue, 2006-11-07 at 09:54 -0700, Jeff V. Merkey wrote: > > >>Bernd Petrovitsch wrote: >> >> >> >>>On Tue, 2006-11-07 at 09:18 +0100, Pavel Machek wrote: >>>[...] >>> >>> >>> >>> >>>>This is a watershed moment for Linux. It fundamentally changes the >>>>rules of the game. We're really excited about this deal, and we hope >>>>you are too. >>>> >>>> >>>>(from http://www.novell.com/linux/microsoft/openletter.html) only make >>>>it worse, but acquisition? I'd hope not even mickey$oft has enough >>>>cash for _that_. >>>> >>>> >[...] > > >>>And the first point in the list is "patents" .... >>> >>> >[...] > > >>I can see the lights are coming on now for some folks now. >> >> > >How many patenst does Novell have? Do they play in the "more than 1000 >trivial, prior art and software patents" league like M$? >So from Novell's point of view it is probably somewhat a cross-licensing >deal. >"What does M$ really gain from it?" is the interesting question. > > Bernd > > The Pike patent from the USL acquisition is the one Microsoft most wanted to get their hands on, as well as the SMP patents. The Pike patent controls overlapping Windows. M$ has wanted to get clear of it for some time. With the cross license from Novell, they are home free. Novell has a large number of networking and directory patents.
Not quite 1000, but they have some very good ones on SMP, clustering, and form the USL acquisition.
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