Moglen nicely summarize the danger of the Novell agreement

[ago]

What is the danger? Moglen sees that Microsoft is dividing the commercial and noncommercial sectors of the FOSS community, and then after they do that, "Microsoft then will be able to use its patents to sue to block the development of software in the non-commercial sector without the fear of suing its own customers, which is the force that now constrains them from misbehavior with their patent portfolio."

[ago]

Non-commercial Linux includes the whole GNU, the kernel, Debian, and of course Ubuntu. Splitting the commercial/non-commercial realtionship in Linux is equivalent to transform it back into good old Unix...

[deanlinkous]

commercial == company, for commerce
noncommercial == not a company, not for commerce
in general of course...

[deanlinkous]

IMO, basically they want linux "owned" by someone/thing/company so that there is someone to go after.