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On Tuesday 10 July 2007 17:56, Mark Jose wrote: > > I believe that GPLv3 has allowed for the MS/Novell deal. Jeremy stated on > Slashdot that he saw no reason why Novell could not include the GPLv3 > licenced Samba in future releases - > Indeed. As I understand it (although IANAL, etc.), the specific Novell/Microsoft deal has been allowed, but any similar deals made in the future will be affected by the license. The license states that if such a deal is made, the patent protection must be extended to everyone who receives the software (and not just to customers of those involved in the deal). This is quite clever - deals intended to divide the community and give some Linux distributors an unfair advantage (as you might risk getting sued for patent infringement if you go to a distributor who hasn't partnered with Microsoft) will now provide a substantial benefit to the entire community by giving everyone patent protection. Personally I can't wait for the anti-tivoisation stuff to take affect. There are some NAS vendors whose devices run Linux (and Samba) and make it impossible for device owners to run altered firmware based on the available source code, meaning I can't fix the software that's running on the hardware I've paid for even though it's FLOSS. Regards, David. -- David Johnson www.david-web.co.uk -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html