This is PR ju-jitsu.

Story: Moglen: how we'll kill the Microsoft Novell dealTotal Replies: 2
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cr

Nov 21, 2006
3:42 AM EDT
Novell's cringing capitulation, followed immediately by Ballmer indulging his urge-to-bully, handed the GPL3 proponents a big PR win within and without the FLOSS movement. Now, with Moglen's statement in counterblaste to Ballmer's, Linus' disinterest in copyright-sifting (since the Linux kernel has been specifically GPL2 practically from the start, a clean shift to GPL3 might not even be possible) has been encapsulated and any vulnerability it may represent has been contained, while Microsoft is flat on its back thinking, "Hey, that was supposed to be my finishing move!"

Considering that GPL3 has yet to even be finalized, this is just the kind of vague but ominous threat that Microsoft loves to use, but this one has teeth: once GPL3 is finalized as a legal document (and FSF does have that history of momentum; they have to presume that it will be finalized and implemented) and the GNU toolchains move to it, any serious move to continue manipulating the Novell/MS deal into a patents-protection racket could leave MS facing the Nazgul on the field of legal battle. Unlike US-DOJ, they're not for sale to lobbyists.

I can visualize Moglen jotting the last period on the last sentence and chuckling to himself, "Check."
dinotrac

Nov 21, 2006
3:53 AM EDT
>Novell's cringing capitulation

Cringing capitulation? You are breathing some heavy fumes. Novell extracted hundreds of millions of dollars from Microsoft. That is not a cringing capitulation.
Libervis

Nov 21, 2006
3:53 AM EDT
Beautifully said. :)

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