With all the hoopla flying around lately, we had already pretty much known this. The interesting part of this article is that it lays out the terms which Novell has released for the first time since the agreement. It is particular to note:

Microsoft’s promised patent indemnification to paying SUSE users specifically excludes open source software like Wine, OpenExchange, StarOffice and OpenOffice by name.

It also excludes:

• “office productivity applications (word processing, spreadsheets, presentation software etc.)…that are hosted by or running on a computer acting as a server for a connected client device” (think Google);

• “business application designed, marketed and used to meet the data processing requirements of particular business functions, financial forecasting, financial reporting, customer relationship management and supply chain management” (think salesforce.com);

• “mail transfer agents (a k a e-mail servers)”;

• “unified communications”;

• and video games consoles, console games, video game applications designed to run on a computer and online video gaming services like Xbox Live.

The implication is you can run SUSE free of patent concerns but you’d better be darn careful what you run on top of it. Otherwise you’re good for six years after the last of the covered patents expires.

Um…yeah. Go read the entire article Ajax World Magazine….

Every large Internet company has an online security team in place, and Google is no different. Now the search engine giant is going public. Yesterday, Google launched its new online security blog. The blog will post news on its little-known antimalware team, which, it turns out, has been in existence for about a year.

In its initial post, Google clarifies its now-famous one-in-10-Web-sites-are-malicious statement, derived from a presentation Niels Provos, Dean McNamee, Panayiotis Mavrommatis, Ke Wang, and Nagendra Modadugu gave at last month’s Hotbots 2007. Provos says the figure that is quoted in the media should be 0.1 percent (less than 1 percent) since the analysis used in the paper, “The Ghost in the Browser” (in PDF), covers several billion Web sites. From that number, presenters selected a subgroup of 12 million, of which 1 million were found to be engaging in drive-by downloads of malicious code. There’s also a colorful map in today’s post showing which countries are responsible for hosting compromised Web sites and distribution servers (the U.S. and China both appear bright red, with Canada and Russia coming in a close second on each map).

Read more at CNet News…

Google Security Blog 

Microsoft is not the real patent threat Linux and open source developers should be worried about, said Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth. In fact, the software giant will itself be fighting against the software patents system within a few years, Shuttleworth predicted.

Shuttleworth was responding to a recent Fortune magazine interview in which senior Microsoft figures sent shockwaves through the software industry by declaring that Linux and other open source software violates 235 Microsoft patents.

But while Microsoft is using familiar tactics to put the fear into Linux users, Shuttleworth argued open source and Microsoft are ultimately on the same side of the software patent issue.

“I’m pretty certain that, within a few years, Microsoft themselves will be strong advocates against software patents,” Shuttleworth wrote. “Microsoft is irrevocably committed to shipping new software every year, and software patents represent landmines in their roadmap which they are going to step on, like it or not, with increasing regularity.”

Microsoft makes the “perfect target” for software patent lawsuits, and the company will pay more for such suits every year until they finally threaten its business, Shuttleworth said.

More at ComputerWorld UK… 

Free Software Foundation (FSF) lawyer Eben Moglen claims that the absence of an expiration date on SUSE vouchers distributed by Microsoft will make Microsoft subject to terms of the GPL3, thus undermining Microsoft’s patent threats against Linux by forcing the company to provide nearly unlimited upstream patent licenses. During an OpenLogic online seminar last week, Moglen said that in his opinion, Microsoft is subject to the GPL because the company is distributing SUSE Linux vouchers. Although SUSE Linux is licensed under the current version of the GPL, which has only weak upstream patent licensing requirements, Moglen argues that since the vouchers have no expiration date, Microsoft would become subject to GPL3 requirements—including strong upstream patent licensing requirements—if a company that purchased a voucher from Microsoft holds onto it and redeems it after SUSE Linux software is released under the GPL3.

Read the rest of the article at Ars Technica… 

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is pressing the U.S. Congress to enact a sweeping intellectual-property bill that would increase criminal penalties for copyright infringement, including “attempts” to commit piracy.

“To meet the global challenges of IP crime, our criminal laws must be kept updated,” Gonzales said during a speech before the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington on Monday.

The Bush administration is throwing its support behind a proposal called the Intellectual Property Protection Act of 2007, which is likely to receive the enthusiastic support of the movie and music industries, and would represent the most dramatic rewrite of copyright law since a 2005 measure dealing with prerelease piracy.

Continue reading this article at CNet News Blog 

Suse Linux champion defends open source despite its Microsoft deal

Justin Steinman, Novell director of product marketing for Linux and open source, has dismissed Microsoft’s claims that there are infringements of Microsoft intellectual property, in the Linux operating system.

Novell has an arrangement with Microsoft in which the two vendors agree never to sue each other’s customers over patent infringement, but Steinman was adamant. “I want to make it extremely clear. We do not think there are any IP violations in Linux,” he declared

 Continue the article at ComputerWorld UK

Royalty rates for webcasters have been drastically increased by a recent ruling and are due to go into effect on July 15 (retroactive to Jan 1, 2006!). If the increased rates remain unchanged, the majority of webcasters will go bankrupt and silent on this date. Internet radio needs your help!

The Internet Radio Equality Act has recently been introduced in both the House and Senate to save the Internet radio industry. Please call your senators and your representative to ask them to co-sponsor the Internet Radio Equality Act.

Click here to read more about the SaveNetRadio Coalition…

Listen below to a few public service announcements about the issue:

[audio:http://linuxchic.net/wp-content/uploads/2007/05/Montage_PSA_001.mp3]

[audio:http://linuxchic.net/wp-content/uploads/2007/05/SaveNetRadio_PSA-One_(Produced).mp3]