TOP LINUX GURU, Eben Moglen says that Microsoft's attempts to win patent suits against those using the open source OS will come unstuck thanks to the Vole's deal with Novell.

Microsoft says that Linux infringes more than 240 patents, and intends to start enforcing them, convincing users to cough up money. Earlier this year, Novell paid a wad of cash for 'vouchers' which would indemnify users of its SUSE Linux from action.

Here's the problem. These vouchers have no expiration date on them, meaning they can be used to indemnify a holder tomorrow or next year. But the GPL v3, scheduled to come into action later this year, includes a clause that extends a granted indemnity to one person to everyone else, too.

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"I'm much happier with many parts of it. I think much of it reads better, and some of the worst horrors have been removed entirely," Torvalds said.

Torvalds was noncommittal about whether he might try to move the Linux kernel to GPL 3--a change that would require the permission not just of Torvalds but also of all other Linux kernel copyright holders. But he didn't rule it out.

"The current draft makes me think it's at least a possibility in theory, but whether it's practical and worth it is a totally different thing," he said. "Practically speaking, it would involve a lot of work to make sure everything relevant is GPLv3-compatible even if we decided that the GPL 3 is OK."

DRM remains a sticking point. The Free Software Foundation drafting the document wants to prohibit hardware companies such as TiVo from imposing restrictions on GPL software used in their products, but Torvalds believes that should be permitted.

"The 'we control not just the software, but also the hardware it runs on' parts still drive me up the wall because I think they are so fundamentally broken. But the new draft at least limits it to a much saner subset and makes it clearer too," Torvalds said.