MICROSOFT'S cunning plan to be the ruler of Linux has hit a slight snag. Its Linux ally Novell is not going along with its plans to force Linux distributors to join its approved partners, pay up or be sued and the Open Sauce community has a counter attack planned. According to ZD Net, Eben Moglen, who is designing the next version of the GNU Public License GPL v3, says that the Free Software Foundation's next draft includes a new clause where those agreeing to it will not sue anyone else. This automatically applies to everyone using the new licence and means that if Vole does not cancel its pact, it would end up automatically indemnifying all GNU vendors and users. However, changes to the GPL will not fix any patent problems with Linux which is stuck in GPL v2 because a lot of Linux developers, including Linus Torvalds, don't like the strongly worded anti-DRM clauses. If the two sides can kiss and make up then the new licence will make Microsoft's plan history. A few weeks ago if you had suggested that the two sides would bury the hatchet people would have laughed. Rest at the Inq. Torvalds had some issues with the extraneous details brought in by the GPLv3. On the Linux Kernel Mailing List he insisted that Linux would stay with GPLv2. How this will affect his decision is the question, as the benevolent dictator for life.
