Getting grubby with ZFS

Posted Dec 8, 2010 11:42 UTC (Wed) by corbet (editor, #1) In reply to: Getting grubby with ZFS by JoeBuck Parent article: Getting grubby with ZFS So then why did Eben and company say that Novell/Microsoft was within the bounds of GPLv2, and why did they go out of their way to add special language prohibiting such deals in GPLv3?

Posted Dec 8, 2010 12:05 UTC (Wed) by AlexHudson (guest, #41828) [Link]

Because the patent stuff was offered by a third party; Microsoft indemnified Novell's customers but Novell was not bound by any agreement with Microsoft.

If Novell had bought a license from Microsoft which covered their customers, that would have been covered by the GPLv2 language.