[nylug-talk] Patent Infringement Lawsuit Filed Against Red Hat & Novell

[Henning Follmann]

On Fri, Oct 12, 2007 at 02:34:09PM -0700, Compustretch NewYork wrote:
> 
> Yes Henning, your point is taken., howev
> this seems to be pretty big news and surprisingly there was nary a 
> mention here.
> 
> In fact there is/has been considerable news discussion on the list 
> *historically*
> and moreover a lot of listees here clearly are not getting important 
> Linux news elsewhere,
> and may otherwise miss not just important stories, but the incisive 
> analysis of
> our NYLUG community.
> 
> I suppose we could also debate whether our monthly meetings should be a 
> forum
> for mindnumbingly basic "intro to linux" presentations that scare off 
> real programmers
> and long time users, but instead we tend to have speakers covering a 
> wide spectrum,
> just as here the topics covered are, to put it mildly, a heterogeneous set.
> 

Not really my point.
While this is big news and worthwhile to be discussed there is no need to
repost a link to newsoutlets which most likely is read by most who are
interested in this topic anyway.
So if you want to say something do so, say away. 

aaaaanywhooo

The topic is quite interesting from my point of view. I wonder why they picked
Red Hat and Novel (probably the biggest on the linux market).
But the whole thing has not really anything to do with linux.
The patent is only related to X11 stuff. So you could run a linux server, which
would not be touched by this patent.
Sure all distros package xorg or packaged xFree in the past. So that makes them 
somehow a target.
But what is with the Suns, the freeBSDs, how are they gonna react on those
threads?

Me as a enduser? Hmm it's not patent infringement when I do stuff on my own
and don't take financial advantage from the technology in question.
So can they make for example debian go away? Those project might just set camp
somewhere where they cannot be targeted that easily by those lawyers.




Henning


-- 
Henning Follmann           | hfollmann at itcfollmann.com
it consultant              | www.itcfollmann.com