‘Last call’ draft of GPLv3
May 31st, 2007 by Kevan Barney
Del.icio.us
The Free Software Foundation today released the “last call” draft of GPLv3. Here’s Novell’s takeaway from the draft:
Nothing in the last call draft of GPLv3 suggests that the final version of GPLv3 will inhibit Novell’s ability to include GPLv3 technologies in SUSE Linux Enterprise, openSUSE, and other Novell offerings as these technologies become available. We note that the language which grandfathered the Novell–Microsoft agreement remains in the draft. We will continue to distribute Linux and other GPL’d technologies. All of this is good news for our customers.
The terms of the last call draft suggest that the final version of GPLv3 will not interrupt our partnership with Microsoft. We remain committed to that partnership, which we believe will help grow the Linux market and satisfy longstanding customer needs. We look forward to providing the fruits of our joint technical interoperability to our customers and our fellow community members in accord with our previously outlined roadmap.

May 31st, 2007 at 5:35 pm
[...] For some reason, Novell’s PR Blog is stating that their take away from the Final Call Draft of GPLv3 "will not interrupt [their] partnership with Microsoft". So, if Novell’s assertion is true, this means that Microsoft is entirely comfortable with Novell passing on the (formerly discriminatory) patent covenant to all downstream users: If, pursuant to or in connection with a single transaction or arrangement, you convey, or propagate by procuring conveyance of, a covered work, and grant a patent license to some of the parties receiving the covered work authorizing them to use, propagate, modify or convey a specific copy of the covered work, then the patent license you grant is automatically extended to all recipients of the covered work and works based on it. [...]
June 1st, 2007 at 8:40 am
[...] For its part, Novell said the following on its blog: [...]