RedHat never signed a deal with MS. Novell's action brought a lot of negative feedback (and probably money loss) against them from the community.
Note that this deal and the MS tax are different things. MS tax is paid (by you) when you buy an MS-installed computer. You get it back (sometimes) if you disagree with the EULA and contact the manufacturer. You don't pay anything due to this MS-Novell / MS-Xandros deal -it's just a bogus blackmailing attempt by MS. Asus (manufacturer of Eee PC) has no reason to make us pay MS tax for this laptop. You probably are paying for Xandros with EE PC, but Xandros is already non-free (like RedHat, unlike Fedora). It probably is non-free because it comes with codecs and flash preinstalled (which is what you want if you are buying a laptop but are unfamiliar with Linux). Mehmet. On Wed, 13 Feb 2008 16:27:03 -0500 Charles Cranston <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xandros > > On 2007-06-04, a "broad collaboration agreement" between Xandros and > Microsoft was announced.[8] The agreement included "patent covenants > [to not sue] Xandros customers", similar to the agreement that > Microsoft reached with Novell which has been widely criticized > within the free software community. To date, there has been no real > evidence that any patent infringement has occurred. Microsoft appears > unwilling to specify which patents it alleges to have been infringed. > Because this deal was signed after March 28, 2007, Xandros will > apparently be unable to distribute software licensed under version 3 > of the GNU General Public License while party to the patent > arrangement.[9] > > Presumably that is what is being referred to. I know nothing about > any deals with Fedora andor RHEL. > > On Feb 13, 2008, at 4:13 PM, Richard Matthew McCutchen wrote: > > > On Wed, 2008-02-13 at 14:44 -0500, Shawn Wells wrote: > >> brian raszap wrote: > >>> and it includes a patent protection warranty, when the MS guys > >>> come a > >>> knockin' you can say hey im running xandros and already paid the > >>> MS tax. > >> > >> As does Fedora and RHEL. > > > > Does Fedora really come with a patent protection warranty even > > though its users pay nothing to Red Hat in exchange? > > > > Matt
