A number of Australian employees of Hewlett-Packard are facing the loss of their jobs as the global computer giant looks to slash its worldwide workforce by up to 30,000.
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Stephen Withers
Monday, 09 July 2007 13:18
Once Novell distributes a version of SUSE that includes software covered by GPLv3 in return for one of those Microsoft certificates, the non-discriminatory clause would seem to kick in and extend the patent protection to all users - at least in regard to the specific piece of GPLv3-licensed software that is also covered by a Microsoft patent.
(This does assume that a court would agree that Microsoft procured conveyance of the software in question, regardless of its statement concerning GPLv3. Also, it should be noted that Microsoft has yet to state which of its patents are being infringed by which pieces of GNU or Linux software.)
Tellingly, Novell's statement describes Microsoft's position as being "taken unilaterally" - presumably an indication that Novell isn't completely happy with the situation.
And there are other signs that the partners aren't in complete harmony. "In addition, the patent covenants offered by Microsoft and Novell to each other’s customers are unchanged, and will continue to apply in the same way they did previously", said Microsoft's statement, but Novell took it one step further: "For Novell customers, all Novell products are covered by the Microsoft covenant not to sue, independent of their channel of distribution, including both server and desktop and whether they are licensed under GPLv2 or GPLv3."
Think again. Most businesses only have PART of a DR plan - and this spells business disaster in the event of an IT disaster.
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