Alan Cox talks about cooperation with hardware vendors, patent law, microkernels, and GPLv3: "I think [the MS-Novell deal] is a bad idea and that Novell are going to get stung by the GPLv3, and rightfully so. The license is designed to keep the software free, if it fails to do this then it needs fixing, so GPLv3 hopefully will fix this flaw."

I've been trying to make sense out of the new Version 3 of the General Public License and I've got to tell you, I can't yet.

"Microsoft made a few mistakes in the Novell-Microsoft deal, and GPLv3 is designed to turn them against Microsoft, extending that limited patent protection to the whole community," explains GPLv3 co-author Richard M. Stallman.

"The Free Software Foundation today released the final version of the new GNU General Public License, GPLv3. Novell welcomes and supports GPLv3 and we appreciate the collaborative process that led to its conclusion."

Microsoft has issued a statement about its position in regard to the Free Software Foundation's version 3 of the GNU General Public License, which was crafted in part to protect users from possible Microsoft patent infringement lawsuits. Microsoft's stance?

"Microsoft cleared the air July 5 on its obligations to GNU General Public License Version 3 support, declaring it will not provide support or updates for GPLv3 under the deal it penned in November with Novell to administer certificates for the Linux distribution."

Over two years ago, Microsoft and Novell signed an interoperability deal. Part of this agreement was a patent deal that suggested that Linux infringed on Microsoft's IP. Since then, Microsoft has signed a number more of these deals with various companies, but the Novell one is still the most famous.

Bits from the press about Novell and virtualisation for the most part. MANY people may not remember this, but Ron Hovsepian admitted giving power to Microsoft in the datacentres. It was part of the deal that Novell should permit Windows to run as a host and SUSE usually be a guest.

"Novell will continue to ship the complete version of its Linux enterprise server even though Microsoft is attempting to distance itself legally from the new General Public License (GPL) v3 open source license."