A Tectonic article reveals that Novell has just signed a deal with a South African bank. Under the deal, 12,000 desktops are expected to be shifted to GNU/Linux.

With 12 000 desktops switching to Linux this is very likely the most significant Linux and open source implementation in South Africa to date.

Elevating news if all that is said there is true! Microsoft and "intellectual property" have no presence in this one particular scoop.

To repeat some older news, the Free Software Foundation confirms its certainties. It is convinced that Novell's so-called 'patent protection' will be extended to everybody else (if it is valid at all).

Microsoft's covenant not to sue users of Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise will be extended to all General Public License v3 users as soon as Novell includes GPLv3 code within its Linux distribution, according to the Free Software Foundation.

Microsoft begs to differ and we shall see if this ends up in court where disagreements can be resolved.

In other (largely encouraging) news to Apache, the Free Software Foundation, and GPLv3 (perhaps much to Microvell's discomfort), there is apparently another licence breakthrough.

The forthcoming GPLv3 license will be compatible with the Apache Software License, the Free Software Foundation has announced. It could enable some of the most popular free and open source software projects to be merged for the first time.

Things are looking bright for GPLv3. It also becomes apparent that -- contrary to Microsoft's argument -- GPLv3 achieves much more than painting Microsoft a victim. For this reason, wide adoption by developers is expected.