Novell has posted to the Securites and Exchange Commission (SEC) Internet web site redacted variations of the corporation;s patent,
Microsoft Office 2007 Enterprise, business and technologies agreements with Microsoft, which it signed in November 2006.Novell officials stated earlier this week they'd publish these paperwork prior to the end of May possibly. The corporation released the filings late on Might 25, the start of a three-day vacation weekend within the U.S.Did anything juicy allow it to be previous the “marked as confidential” cuts? Groklaw has highlightsof some with the documentation specific towards the Microsoft-Novell patent arrangements:“If the final version of GPLv3 contains terms or conditions that interfere with our agreement with Microsoft or our ability to distribute GPLv3 code, Microsoft may perhaps cease to distribute SUSE Linux coupons in order to avoid the extension of its patent covenants to a broader range of GPLv3 software recipients, we might need to modify our relationship with Microsoft under less advantageous terms than our current agreement,
Microsoft Office 2010, or we may well be restricted in our ability to include GPLv3 code in our products,
Office 2007 Professional, any of which could adversely affect our business and our operating results. In such a case,
Office Professional 2007, we would likely explore alternatives to remedy the conflict,
Office Professional 2007, but there is no assurance that we would be successful in these efforts.”So now it;s even more obvious why Microsoft has been throwing around the “235 patents infringed by open source” claim. Novell is confirming that Microsoft may perhaps have to stop distributing SuSE Linux coupons if the Free Software Foundation;s General Public License (GPL) version 3 goes through using the current patent language in place.Having to eliminate the SuSE distribution part of its Novell agreement would hurt Microsoft;s campaign to convince other open-source vendors to sign similar deals. It also wouldn;t make Microsoft look too good to the handful of large corporate customers (that Microsoft touts every chance it gets) who Microsoft has convinced to go with SuSE Linux.There is a lot more legal mumbo-jumbo on the SEC web-site regarding the Microsoft-Novell deal. Anyone see any other interesting nonredacted info?