Re: Novell-MS Pact: "It's hard for corporate entities to really grasp the GPL. It's a learning process"

[Alexander Terekhov]

The Paralegal (PJ of "When you want to know more but don't know where 
to look" ) at www.groklaw.net:

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It's hard for corporate entities to really grasp the GPL. It's a
learning process, and I'm sure Novell is learning from this experience.
What happens next is hard to say, but what I haven't heard from Novell
is a word saying it is sorry for having done the deal or for the damage
we see it doing. Here's the CEO in a podcast all about his customers and
how he had to put them first. That is the problem, really in a nutshell,
as far as I'm concerned. He thought about customers ahead of the
community, which he's free to do with Novell's own code. But the problem
is, Novell doesn't own Linux code or FOSS in general, so it really had
no authority to set terms for code other people wrote and put under the
GPL on purpose so no company could do what Novell and Microsoft just
did.

I understand wanting to avoid patent litigation, but Novell made
promises to the community that it would use its patents to protect
Linux. Did Novell keep that promise? 
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LOL.

regards,
alexander.