Novell Injects MS Lawsuit Exploit Into Open Office

F.M. Petain writes, "It looks like Microsoft's first move in the 'Linux owes us' game is to move a Pawn. A few days ago, a Novell programmer, Noel Power, submitted patches to add VBA compatibility to Open Office's spreadsheet module. This is great for people trying to convert the business desktop from closed source to open source, but is this gift really a ticking time bomb? What happens when Microsoft declares that the VBA code was stolen?" The patches may have been submitted only a few days ago, but the code must be considerably older; the article claims that nine distros in adition to SUSE already support the VBA extensions in their versions of Open Office. (Linux.com and Slashdot are both part of OSTG.)

Comments

Proof or STFU

[Anonymous Coward]

Q4. With this agreement, will Novell include Microsoft patented code in its contributions to the open source community?

No. Novell will not change its development practices as a result of this agreement. It has always been our policy in all development, open source and proprietary, to stay away from code that infringes another's patents, and we will continue to develop software using these standard practices. If any of our code is found to infringe someone else's patents, we will try to find prior technology to invalidate the patents, rework the code to design around the infringement, or as a last resort remove the functionality.

Novell is committed to protecting, preserving and promoting freedom for free and open source software.

http://www.novell.com/linux/microsoft/faq_opensour ce.html

Re:The word is "caution".

[CYwo1f]

Why bother? Patent violations can exist in either. Even copyright violations can exist in either.

Of course, but how is it more likely to occur in this case than in any other open source project? Because Novell and MS are both involved (although only Novell directly)? I'm just not ready to take that as proof of poison.

Given the recent events, a higher level of caution would be advisable. Whether you agree or not.

A higher level of caution does not justify the baseless accusations present in the slashdot summary.

This module was first documented a year ago from what I can tell. See the history on this wiki page: http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/VBA

While it seems that Novell does maintain and develop the code now, I'm sure somebody familiar with the ooo-build repository can track down the original author(s).

Re:*all* patches from Novell must be rejected

[innocent_white_lamb]

Given Novell's recent actions I'm thinking of going back to Red Hat
 
The macro that is included as a VBA demo in the article http://www.linuxtalk.co.uk/ooo_vba/hypocycloid-dem o.xls works with the OpenOffice that is included with Fedora Core 6. I just tried it on this computer. So the "evil patch" is apparently already present in Red Hat's OpenOffice.