OSI Refers Novell Patent Deal To Authorities 88
WebMink writes "Worried that the unholy alliance of Microsoft, Apple, Oracle and EMC — hardly known for their collaboration — is establishing a patent troll called CPTN to attack open source software, the Open Source Initiative has announced that they have referred the Novell deal over to the German competition authorities."
Wouldn't the Sherman AntiTrust Act apply in the US (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Wouldn't the Sherman AntiTrust Act apply in the (Score:4, Interesting)
They can make some powerfull enemies (Score:3, Interesting)
IBM (yes they are a big patent troll) and Google have a large vested interest in open source software.
I can only imagine the deal with Sun and Oracle has already made IBM very nervous. It would bug me if I worked for them.
The second they start suing and filing injunctions to force us to buy their products you can bet they will fight back. Not to mention Mark Shuttleworth has invested hundreds of millions in Ubuntu and other products which would be killed by such an onslaught. He would probably contribute to such a cause and fight as well. It would be a legal war equivalent to World War I to say the least in the industry.
It would be very ineffective for the big boys to wage. Sure they would convince many fortunate 500 companies for an anti-gnu clauses but many would fight back. The extra revenue for those who are fall to the sight of lawyers will be much smaller than the legal costs to fight IBM, Google, Redhat, Rackspace, and whoever else all combined.