Re: Faustian Pact between Novell and Microsoft

[Jeff V. Merkey]

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.

Jeff
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