On 03/22/2010 10:06 PM, Marcel Rieux wrote:
On Mon, Mar 22, 2010 at 6:49 PM, Sam Sharpe
<lists.redhat(a)samsharpe.net
<mailto:lists.redhat@samsharpe.net>> wrote:
On 22 March 2010 22:36, Marcel Rieux <m.z.rieux(a)gmail.com
<mailto:m.z.rieux@gmail.com>> wrote:
> Suse uses AppArmor without kernel integration and I'm not sure
what support
> they offer for the project. They bought AppArmor and later licensed
> everybody except maybe 2 developers (not sure).
>
> Anyways, Novell is pretty much a living dead. Its Novell business
is, of
> course, dead and Suse still lives because it's on a live support
line from
> Microsoft.
Do yourself a favour. Don't try to pass your opinions off as fact.
Novell is very much alive.
I must confess that I'm not very strong on opinions; I'm better on facts.
Then you should probably try finding some. The drivel below is complete
fantasy.
2006. Microsoft sends a letter to Red Hat pretending that the Linux
kernel infringes 235 of their patents and that they'll have to pay
royalties.
Wrong.
Red Hat answers: "Yeah, no problem! Send the patent list."
Somehow, it seems that Microsoft lost the list. Red Hat, who was eager
to pay, never received it.
So wrong as to be laughable. Red Hat has maintained all along that
there is nothing to pay, that Microsoft has never actually provided
evidence of any infringement. Red Hat made crystal clear that it did
not enter into any patent agreement with Microsoft when it did the
cross-certification work last year around running Windows as a guest on
on RHEL and running RHEL as a guest on Windows.
See Q5 at
http://www.redhat.com/promo/svvp/
Novell, on the other side, didn't ask for the list. They crawled
to
Microsoft asking no question and signed. Of course, the deal wasn't that
bad.
"The deal involves upfront payment of $348 million from Microsoft to
Novell for patent cooperation and SLES subscription. Novell will pay
around $40 million to Microsoft over 5 years."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novell#Agreement_with_Microsoft
http://www.google.ca/search?q=novell+2006+%24348+million
In other words, Microsoft paid ~$148 million to drive a wedge into the
Linux community and Novell was glad to comply.
Here's the result:
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=NOVL&annual
<
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=NOVL&annual>
Now, the shares are gaining on an "offer" of a $2B buyout... which the
Novell board of course refused as way too low.
People usually have opinions to make up for their ignorance of facts.
Seriously - next time you pump this crap onto the list, please check
your facts.