On Tuesday 05 December 2006 14:01, Arun K. Khan wrote:
On Mon, 2006-12-04 at 18:27 +0530, jtd wrote:
sue Novell's non paying customers. But Novell is generous to a fault u know - U have a waiver of 180 days for any freebeer downloads. After which u can reinstall from a new dowload for a further 180 days ad nauseum.
There is no time limitation on the openSUSE distro. You must be referring to Novell Linux Desktop/Server.
I am referring to specific portions of any Novell distro that could be covered by the patent covenant. Try figuring that out. Is it Yast or odf or autodetection, ntfs tools, ipx, widows lvm. How do u care? It's novells responsibility to not ship patented stuff right?. Ofcourse not u free loader. It's Novells responsibility only to cover paid customers. U have to figure out in 180 days these tiny pieces of flotsam and junk tossing on the GNU ocean and get rid of such things from your part of the sea or else .... Or else u get sued, not by Novell who permitted the download with no restrictions, in full compliance with the gplV2 but by the big bully around the corner whom u were trying to avoid in the first place.
Parts of the gpl v3 specifically cover use of patented tech in gpld software and IMO already covered this type of subterfuge. But it is being tweaked to cover any issues thrown up by this deal.