Novell sold to Attachmate
Novell also announced it has entered into a definitive agreement for the concurrent sale of certain intellectual property assets to CPTN Holdings LLC, a consortium of technology companies organized by Microsoft Corporation, for $450 million in cash, which cash payment is reflected in the merger consideration to be paid by Attachmate Corporation." Information on what the "certain intellectual property assets" are is scarce at the moment. (Thanks to Jeff Schroeder).
Update: Novell's 8K
filing is available with a bit more information. The "certain
intellectual property" is 882 patents. There is also an escape clause for
Novell should somebody come along with an offer for the company that includes
buying the patents.
Posted Nov 22, 2010 14:29 UTC (Mon)
by stumbles (guest, #8796)
[Link] (20 responses)
Hardly surprising.
Posted Nov 22, 2010 16:22 UTC (Mon)
by coriordan (guest, #7544)
[Link] (14 responses)
And MS, via CPTN Holdings LLC, gets "certain intellectual property assets" of Novell. If that means patents, then Mono could become a big problem.
Posted Nov 22, 2010 16:36 UTC (Mon)
by coriordan (guest, #7544)
[Link] (7 responses)
Actually, the impact of this isn't immediately obvious to me. Holdings companies don't do development, so we're not talking about copyright and probably not trademarks. US$450 million is a reasonable sum, and first paragraph mention in the press release suggests that these are serious assets. Could it be something to do with removing Novell patents from the OIN pool?
Posted Nov 22, 2010 17:20 UTC (Mon)
by dmarti (subscriber, #11625)
[Link]
Posted Nov 22, 2010 22:03 UTC (Mon)
by armijn (subscriber, #3653)
[Link] (5 responses)
Posted Nov 22, 2010 23:27 UTC (Mon)
by BrucePerens (guest, #2510)
[Link] (3 responses)
Posted Nov 23, 2010 1:19 UTC (Tue)
by linuxrocks123 (subscriber, #34648)
[Link] (1 responses)
---linuxrocks123
Posted Nov 23, 2010 1:31 UTC (Tue)
by BrucePerens (guest, #2510)
[Link]
When they started the organization they sang a very different tune than they do today, which included the patents of members. I think there is a lot about OIN that is not on the web site. I always felt that most industry-sponsored patent defense activities around Linux were more about defending software patenting than Linux. I doubt we can even get a straight answer from OIN on this issue.
Posted Nov 24, 2010 17:31 UTC (Wed)
by FlorianMueller (guest, #32048)
[Link]
I'm not aware of the OIN having deterred anyone from asserting patents against anyone else. The OIN would like to make people believe so, but there isn't even one credible, verifiable success story. There has been some litigation involving Linux regardless of the OIN. When the OIN became involved with the TomTom case, everything that was known about the outcome wasn't any different from how comparable disputes ended.
Posted Nov 24, 2010 17:43 UTC (Wed)
by FlorianMueller (guest, #32048)
[Link]
In this blog post I outlined the three functions of the OIN. It buys up patents at auctions; it wants to serve as a deterrent (mutually assured damage); and it tries to establish a plurilateral cross-license agreement. All three of those activities are related to the concept of a "patent pool". The problem is just that the OIN doesn't appear to have had a verifiable positive impact in any of those areas.
Posted Nov 22, 2010 16:59 UTC (Mon)
by SEMW (guest, #52697)
[Link] (4 responses)
Besides, it's not like Microsoft doesn't already hold a ton of patents (on .NET) that directly apply to mono. How could a few more change anything? What assurances we have against Microsoft suing are based on things like the Community Promise, not a hope that they don't have enough relevant patents. (And the patents Novell donated to the Open Invention Network[2] were, well, donated. They presumably can't be undonated).
[1] http://twitter.com/migueldeicaza/status/6732038669340672
Posted Nov 22, 2010 17:43 UTC (Mon)
by BrucePerens (guest, #2510)
[Link] (2 responses)
Posted Nov 22, 2010 18:04 UTC (Mon)
by dmarti (subscriber, #11625)
[Link] (1 responses)
Another interesting item from the Patent Purchase Agreement section of the 8-K: "Also on November 21, 2010, Novell entered into a Patent Purchase Agreement (the Patent Purchase Agreement) with CPTN Holdings LLC, a Delaware limited liability company and consortium of technology companies organized by Microsoft Corporation (CPTN). The Patent Purchase Agreement provides that, upon the terms and subject to the conditions set forth in the Patent Purchase Agreement, Novell will sell to CPTN all of Novells right, title and interest in 882 patents (the Assigned Patents) for $450 million in cash (the Patent Sale)." Looks like this is just patents, not dusty file cabinets full of historic UNIX copyrights. Optimistically, maybe it's just MSFT trying to protect their Active Directory business from Novell's directory-related patents.
Posted Nov 22, 2010 19:26 UTC (Mon)
by BrucePerens (guest, #2510)
[Link]
Posted Nov 22, 2010 18:24 UTC (Mon)
by whitemice (guest, #3748)
[Link]
and to Python, PHP, glibc, X11, gcc, scheme, Java, GNOME, KDE, D-bus, Apache, Perl, firefox, pidgin, empathy / telepathy, vala, etc....
Posted Nov 22, 2010 20:24 UTC (Mon)
by gus3 (guest, #61103)
[Link]
Posted Nov 22, 2010 17:25 UTC (Mon)
by daniel (guest, #3181)
[Link] (2 responses)
I would tend to think that once again, Microsoft treads near the border of illegal trust making activity, on the wrong side of it.
Posted Nov 23, 2010 5:55 UTC (Tue)
by Tashlan (guest, #17277)
[Link] (1 responses)
$10 million for the setup.
Posted Nov 25, 2010 1:38 UTC (Thu)
by kmself (guest, #11565)
[Link]
The copyright angle is dead.
The purpose of the SCO v. IBM suit was to sow FUD. From conversations I had at the time with at least some tech execs (not particularly clueful ones, but then, that's probably the majority), it was at least somewhat successful.
I continue to give strong kudos to IBM for defending the case as strongly as it did, this has been a huge benefit to all of us in the Free / Open Source software communities.
Posted Nov 23, 2010 1:05 UTC (Tue)
by rodgerd (guest, #58896)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Nov 25, 2010 0:01 UTC (Thu)
by AndreE (guest, #60148)
[Link]
Posted Nov 22, 2010 14:33 UTC (Mon)
by whitemice (guest, #3748)
[Link] (3 responses)
Posted Nov 22, 2010 14:37 UTC (Mon)
by lutchann (subscriber, #8872)
[Link] (2 responses)
Posted Nov 22, 2010 15:06 UTC (Mon)
by Trelane (subscriber, #56877)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Nov 22, 2010 15:53 UTC (Mon)
by stumbles (guest, #8796)
[Link]
Posted Nov 22, 2010 15:05 UTC (Mon)
by BackSeat (guest, #1886)
[Link]
Posted Nov 22, 2010 15:28 UTC (Mon)
by lxoliva (guest, #40702)
[Link] (17 responses)
So instead MSFT gets control of the patents through this holding (read patent troll), and gets someone else to buy the corpse that distributed software that reads on MSFT's patents.
Clever!
Posted Nov 22, 2010 16:54 UTC (Mon)
by coriordan (guest, #7544)
[Link] (3 responses)
* What important patents did Novell have?
Posted Nov 23, 2010 0:03 UTC (Tue)
by drag (guest, #31333)
[Link] (1 responses)
It's not like when you buy a company then all of a sudden you eliminated all the original company's obligations. The good and the bad are part of what you buy.
To know for certain you'll have to look at the OIN contracts and see if there is any escape clause or whatever for pulling your patents back out. Like if Novell could buy themselves out of the OIN then it would be possible for the new patent holders to do that also.
Posted Nov 23, 2010 2:33 UTC (Tue)
by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330)
[Link]
Posted Nov 23, 2010 20:43 UTC (Tue)
by kmself (guest, #11565)
[Link]
A large quantity becomes (depending on which tack you wish to take), leverage in pressing for licensing fees from others (a trick IBM knows well), or a bargaining chip in dealing with requests for licensing fees from others. In either case, the alternative is litigation, generally aimed at busting the patent. Patent busting is expensive and time consuming. Multiply that by 882 patents (a pretty significant holding).
Of course, specific patents may be instrumental in carving out market space, it'll be interesting to see what's in there and how they can/will be used.
I don't particularly welcome this development.
Posted Nov 23, 2010 1:40 UTC (Tue)
by garloff (subscriber, #319)
[Link] (12 responses)
Just my 0.02
Posted Nov 23, 2010 13:07 UTC (Tue)
by gnufreex (guest, #70396)
[Link] (4 responses)
So basically: If they do it publicly, then apologizing goes "it ain't so, they wouldn't be stipid to do that in front all those people; there must be another explanation".
If they do it secretly and some people start connecting dots, then it goes "Prove it or else you are paranoid conspiracy theorist".
Apologizing for MSFT often involves circular argument.
I would say that MSFT have already done secret attacks. For example Acacia might be funded by MSFT, because they got paid off by Redmond (under a guise of cross-licensing deal) as soon as they ended case against Red Hat(and we don't know how that case ended).
Call me paranoid.
Posted Nov 23, 2010 14:47 UTC (Tue)
by ccurtis (guest, #49713)
[Link] (3 responses)
I don't want to spawn an MSFT tirade, but it is irresponsible to hold such enmity towards a single company when there may be larger threats lurking.
The tricky thing with corporations is that they are unpredictable. MSFT, under Bill Gates, was generally anti-patent. Gates publicly warned against software patents. I don't know so much about Ballmer, and even less about whoever might preside next.
If you want to be snarky about it, MSFT isn't an innovator - they're a copier - and as such could be a great ally against software patents. But in reality, they didn't like getting sued by Apple or the other patent trolls and I think that like most engineering-minded entities, they would rather not have to deal with any of that.
The money behind the SCO suit could have been "testing the waters" as some suggest; it could be cronyism (which runs rampant in certain circles, from my experience); or it could be something as simple as "doing the right thing" (by paying for these [maybe not phony] licenses) while being mildly amused by the tempest it creates, because - hey - you've got more money than you know what to do with and it's not going to hurt your business.
So for those reasons it's valid to keep an eye on what MSFT is doing, but also to recognize that - at least for now - they may not be the biggest threat out there.
I do have to admit that I don't follow a lot of these interactions closely and so may not be adequately informed, but Oracle seems to fall into a scary "litigious bastards" camp, and doesn't seem to prefer to use its patents defensively. They also own all of Sun's IP, and we're still learning how that's going to play out ...
That being said, Patent Trolls are a _major_ threat because there is no "defensive patent" contingency that can be used against them. The embedded/small-device market is becoming extremely litigious as well, which is likely to spill over into Linux usage and growth there.
I think defending against these "pure play" patent threats is more beneficial than tirades and pages and pages of conspiracy theories surrounding MSFT. Like all amoral and schizophrenic corporations they need to be watched, but not at the expense of ignoring armies gathering at the back door ...
Posted Nov 23, 2010 15:54 UTC (Tue)
by gnufreex (guest, #70396)
[Link]
You seem to imply that Microsoft is using patents defensively only. I don't think that patent extortion is acceptable or "defensive only". Whey you threaten someone, that is offensive. And I think it is more dangerous to have company go around and suing/extorting GNU/Linux users and OEMs (like Microsoft does regularly), than to sue someone directly and blatantly (like Oracle did). Microsoft should either openly sue and show patents in question, or shut up.
>That being said, Patent Trolls are a _major_ threat because there is no "defensive patent" contingency that can be used against them.
That is why Microsoft is creating shell companies and breading patent trolls. They don't have guts to sue for themselves, so they are using proxies.
Posted Nov 24, 2010 21:50 UTC (Wed)
by khim (subscriber, #9252)
[Link] (1 responses)
Wow! Nothing can be further from truth. Here is the actual quote: Everyone seems to remember first sentence, but not the rest. Microsoft never was anti-patent company. At first it was ignorant, then they discovered dangers and opportunities and embraced them as useful (albeit dangrous) weapons against competition. Note how Bill Gates proposes to use the usual trick again (use monopoly power to muscle it's way into adjacent areas). You are right - but sadly not because Microsoft changed one jot (it's the same untrustworthy bully it always was), but because there are other, more sinister dangers around (Oracle is the biggest one, but Apple is serois enemy too). Remember: former best friend is often the worst enemy - and this certainly applies to Apple and Oracle. But this is temporary situation: it certainly looks like Microsoft is bound and determined to prove this old adage wrong and to prove that it can win back title of "the worst FOSS enemy".
Posted Nov 24, 2010 23:04 UTC (Wed)
by ccurtis (guest, #49713)
[Link]
I think the full quote justifies my belief, but allow me to try to paraphrase my lost response: Software patents are a fact of life for software companies doing business these days. Bill Gates' position is actually the responsible one in the business environment we're living in: the only defense against a software patent claim is to have a large collection of patents yourself - a patent form of mutually assured destruction. The result of this is an oligarchy or an (unintentional) software cartel, but that's due to a bug in the legal system, not Microsoft's behavior wrt patents.
My comment was in relation to Novell's patents - this new company (after the merger and likely IPO in a few years) appears to be a software company, and thus would be in need of a patent portfolio. I also had a rant/warning about patent trolls because they don't participate in the cartel - they, producing nothing, have no need for patent agreement pacts or other legal defense.
[Pondering ... I'm not sure right now if software patent trolls are a long-term good influence or not at this point ... I'm thinking that patents are rarely enforcable against non-commercial infringement. It seems like OSS (GNU-style, anyway) may be effectively exempt. OSS companies, though, are for-profit. They're also easy targets for the trolls to hit first to establish their legitimacy. Thoughts for another day ...]
But back to the point: Gates' words are clearly reactionary, and not of a "here's how we use this to win" nature - they're "here's how we don't get killed". The man is afraid of patent suits not only from competitors, but also from his own customers.
Posted Nov 23, 2010 21:00 UTC (Tue)
by kmself (guest, #11565)
[Link] (6 responses)
1: Microsoft have always played a scorched-earth game. Look specifically to the DRDOS/Novell trial for some choice quotes. Note Nathan "Microsoft Patent Pool Company Founder" Mhyrvold among others:
The strategic side is: ... We put a bullet in the head of our would be
I thought about it all night. Since I came here I said there were two
We need to slaughter Novell before they get stronger.
This really isn't that hard. If you're going to kill someone there isn't
http://www.maxframe.com/DR/Info/fullstory/factstat.html
2: Microsoft have sung the "different game" song before. They really haven't changed yet. I see no reason they will.
3: Microsoft have been very adept players at stacking the political deck and weilding standards (de facto and de jure) to their advantage.
4: Microsoft have waged war by proxy in the past. Wang vs. Netscape and SCO vs. IBM come to mind.
5: Microsoft are starting to show very credible signs of an end-of-growth/end-stage tech giant. A decade of flat to no growth, significant loss of buzz, and restating / rejiggering of financial statements to provide the appearance of growth/health where reality is much less certain. While I look forward to the day when they're no longer a blot and impediment to tech growth and development (and conceding that they've made for certain advances), one downside is that dying tech giants almost always become patent trolls. The one trick left in their bag is a set of patents which they can milk, and shareholder obligations pretty much require them to do so.
6: Microsoft have been paving the way to becoming a patent troll for quite some time. Aquisitions with an eye to key patents and technology, and specifically Nathan Mhyrvold's "Intellectual Ventures". I don't see this ending well.
7. Apple, Oracle, Google: Yes, size, in and of itself, is a problem in the tech world. Somewhat worse as the big players are frequently something like teenagers training hard with a high-protein diet and steroids: they've gotten to be a lot bigger and stronger than they realize. At least Oracle and Apple have some maturity, though they're not particularly acting like it (megalomaniacal, charismatic, powerful CEOs don't help). That's an "and also", not "but" to this discussion.
8: Yeah, MSFT are being public (but very cagy) about this. Seems the North Koreans recently invited western academics to tour a putative uranium processing plant. For some reason, the two remind me of one another.
I'll be really interested to see what Groklaw turns up here.
Posted Nov 24, 2010 13:58 UTC (Wed)
by nhippi (subscriber, #34640)
[Link] (5 responses)
We didn't make IBM run away from Linux in 2000 because IBM was _the_ evil FUD dispersing big company in 1980.
Companies and their relevance does change over time, and we should co-operate with whoever wants to be friendly with FOSS community.. regardless of their past and holding no illusions the company will remain friends forever.
That said.. still practically no OSS code commits from @microsoft.com.
Posted Nov 24, 2010 14:33 UTC (Wed)
by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784)
[Link]
Posted Nov 24, 2010 15:05 UTC (Wed)
by nye (guest, #51576)
[Link] (1 responses)
Do they still have more code in Linux than Canonical, or has AppArmor changed that?
Posted Nov 29, 2010 14:35 UTC (Mon)
by nix (subscriber, #2304)
[Link]
Posted Nov 24, 2010 15:50 UTC (Wed)
by whitemice (guest, #3748)
[Link]
Eh? Microsoft has helped out both the Samba 4 and Mono projects extensively. They may not contribute to the kernel but as someone actually in a position to know - Microsoft [employees] make significant contributions to Open Source.
Posted Nov 25, 2010 1:34 UTC (Thu)
by kmself (guest, #11565)
[Link]
And many of the people quoted are still direct players in the company and its "ecosystem" today.
IBM experienced a sea-change in the early 1990s. Microsoft have seen some setbacks, but I don't think the company has collectively had the experience IBM did at the time. Changing corporate cultures is, as Barbie might say, hard. Really hard.
As for Microsoft contributing to OSS: there are nine commits to the kernel source tree for 2.6.35 from Haiyang Zhang and Hank Janssen. From:
log-2.6.35.gz, part of Greg Kroah-Hartman's Kernel History.
Microsoft have committed a few of their own projects as OSS, and helped out in a few other ways. Oh yeah: hypocrisy is the spice of life, and companies in particular can be spectacularly inconsistent.
That said, at the top, MSFT are still strongly anti-Linux from all I've seen. We're hurting them badly, where it counts.
Posted Nov 22, 2010 15:32 UTC (Mon)
by xxiao (guest, #9631)
[Link] (3 responses)
Posted Nov 22, 2010 16:07 UTC (Mon)
by jospoortvliet (guest, #33164)
[Link]
Note that to some degree openSUSE is separate from Novell - it is a community and the people there-in make their own choices. But as with Fedora and Ubuntu, most of the openSUSE infrastructure depends on the corporate sponsor which also owns the brand and employs many people working within the community. Of course the openSUSE foundation which is being discussed by the openSUSE Board and Novell will decrease that dependency greatly but it is still Work In Progress.
Anyway, anything we say now is pure speculation, so let's hold our horses and see what the plans are. Meanwhile, openSUSE just soldiers on, don't worry about that :D
Posted Nov 22, 2010 22:53 UTC (Mon)
by ewan (subscriber, #5533)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Nov 23, 2010 16:22 UTC (Tue)
by aj (subscriber, #39001)
[Link]
Posted Nov 22, 2010 17:35 UTC (Mon)
by promotion-account (guest, #70778)
[Link]
Each of Novell and CPTN has separate rights to terminate the Patent Purchase Agreement without the agreement of the other party if (i) the closing of the Patent Sale has not occurred or it will not be possible for the closing of the Patent Sale to occur on or prior to April 20, 2011 --sec.gov Interesting.
Posted Nov 22, 2010 19:12 UTC (Mon)
by forlwn (guest, #63934)
[Link]
Posted Nov 23, 2010 7:39 UTC (Tue)
by shemminger (subscriber, #5739)
[Link]
On Zdnet.
Its not Attachmate buying Novell. Its really a private equity deal to buy Novell
clean it up, combine it with Attachmate and NetIQ as a $1 billion company which then can be sold or taken public, said Ira Cohen, managing director at Signal Hill Updata, of New York, NY, a banker who has had dealings with Novell in the past.
Posted Nov 23, 2010 12:43 UTC (Tue)
by sqlserver (guest, #71437)
[Link]
Microsoft consortium buys up 882 Novell patents:
http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/it-business/3249915/m...
Nothing new here. Move along lwn.net readers. This is kernel news, with Microsoft and Oracle buying all the parts of Linux.
You Linux mice were never interested in market share or competition. Just scatter like mice and agree to just get along.
Posted Nov 23, 2010 14:00 UTC (Tue)
by sylware (guest, #35259)
[Link] (1 responses)
Let me feint the surprise.
err.... I cannot.
Posted Nov 23, 2010 16:47 UTC (Tue)
by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501)
[Link]
"...organized by Microsoft Corporation..."Novell sold to Attachmate
And MS gets "certain [Novell] IP assets"
And MS gets "certain [Novell] IP assets"
Mary Jo Foley couldn't get a answer out of them.
What assets?
And MS gets "certain [Novell] IP assets"
They have some use of their members patents to bring defensive action. The companies organized by Microsoft are probably ones that want to have the OIN threat out of the way so that they can bring suits.
And MS gets "certain [Novell] IP assets"
And MS gets "certain [Novell] IP assets"
And MS gets "certain [Novell] IP assets"
OIN lacks credible success story
OIN is all sorts of things including a patent pool
And MS gets "certain [Novell] IP assets"
Probably they got a license or a covenant not to sue.
And MS gets "certain [Novell] IP assets"
"certain [Novell] IP assets" == 882 patents
Someone should interview the folks at Open Invention Network and ask how this effects them. Jon, want to do that?
"certain [Novell] IP assets" == 882 patents
And MS gets "certain [Novell] IP assets"
And MS gets "certain [Novell] IP assets"
Novell sold to Attachmate
Novell sold to Attachmate
$450 million for the real move.
and then it begins...
SCO / UNIX copyrights ...
Novell sold to Attachmate
Novell sold to Attachmate
Novell sold to Attachmate
Novell sold to Attachmate
Novell sold to Attachmate
Nor would they jury rig a standards bodies.
Novell sold to Attachmate
Novell has been heading absolutely nowhere for years. Looks like they've finally arrived.
Novell sold to Attachmate
Novell sold to Attachmate
Novell sold to Attachmate
* What happens to the pledges Novell made to OIN? (Were they promises, licences, or transfers? A mix, IIRC)
Novell sold to Attachmate
Actually, I think that Microsoft may well have paid more monetary damages to patent trolls than any other software company. While they may gain from patent FUD (as in "don't implement that or maybe we might be able to sue you"), if actual patent wars break out their pockets are deep and they have a lot to lose.
Novell sold to Attachmate
What patents does Novell own
Novell sold to Attachmate
We (the OSS community) have been fighting MSFT as our arch-enemy for so long that we sometimes miss that the world has changed.
Looking at how Oracle or Apple behave these days, MSFT looks almost like an open, diverse and friendly company ...
We should certainly not discount them as mostly harmless, but at the same time I think that the panic displayed if MSFT is involved with anything just does not reflect who we need to care about most.
Sidenote: If MSFT wanted to use this for troll attacks against Linux, they surely would have found a set up where they would not be obviously and publicly behind. They have just too mnay customers that use Linux as well who would not at all appreciate such behavior.
Novell sold to Attachmate
Novell sold to Attachmate
Novell sold to Attachmate
Please check the facts first
The tricky thing with corporations is that they are unpredictable. MSFT, under Bill Gates, was generally anti-patent. Gates publicly warned against software patents.
PATENTS: If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented, and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today. I feel certain that some large company will patent some obvious thing related to interface, object orientation, algorithm, application extension or other crucial technique. If we assume this company has no need of any of our patents then the have a 17-year right to take as much of our profits as they want. The solution to this is patent exchanges with large companies and patenting as much as we can. Amazingly we havn't done any patent exchanges tha I am aware of. Amazingly we havn't found a way to use our licensing position to avoid having our own customers cause patent problems for us. I know these aren't simply problems but they deserve more effort by both Legal and other groups. For example we need to do a patent exchange with HP as part of our new relationship. In many application categories straighforward thinking ahead allows you to come up with patentable ideas. A recent paper from the League for Programming Freedom (available from the Legal department) explains some problems with the
way patents are applied to software.
So for those reasons it's valid to keep an eye on what MSFT is doing, but also to recognize that - at least for now - they may not be the biggest threat out there.
I think it follows
I'll update my worldview when I see reason
competitors on DOS like DRI, Desqview, dos extenders etc.
- Nathan Mhyrvold, Microsoft Corp., May 9, 1989. Business as usual.
things that concerned me related to Novell: one Novell partnering with IBM
and two Novell coming at us at the desktop. Both fears have now come true.
- Jim Allchin, Microsoft Corp., Jul 17, 1991 All that's old is new again.
- Jim Allchin, Sept 9, 1991. Business as usual.
much reason to get all worked up about it and angry -- you just pull the
trigger.
- Jim Allchin, Microsoft Corp., Sept 18, 1993. Business as usual.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100217/1853298215.shtml
I'll update my worldview when I see reason
When MSFT release usable, good-quality, non-trivial code that reads on their patents, under a free-derivation free-redistribution commercial-use-permitted licence that includes (or is accompanied by) an explicit royalty-free patent grant, I'll admit they might not be "the enemy".
I'll update my worldview when I see reason
I'll update my worldview when I see reason
I'll update my worldview when I see reason
I'll update my worldview when I see reason
That 20-year trend hasn't changed
Novell sold to Attachmate
Novell sold to Attachmate
Novell sold to Attachmate
Novell sold to Attachmate
Novell patents sale: max close time is April 2011
Novell sold to Attachmate
Maybe just a holding cell
Novell sold to Attachmate
Novell sold to Attachmate
Novell sold to Attachmate