Novell Partners With EFF on Patent Busting

Seymour writes "Novell and the EFF have announced that Novell will be contributing to the EFF's Patent Busting Project. Novell will also support the EFF's efforts toward patent reform, including with the WIPO. Could this be Novell trying to get back in the good graces of Linux users? 'Novell's agreement with Microsoft has been a source of contention within open source circles, with one Red Hat executive accusing the company of appeasing Microsoft; others have accused Novell of violating the GPL with the agreement. Either way, signing the deal with Microsoft did a lot to sully Novell in the eyes of many Linux users, and Novell's decision to link up with the EFF on patents may have been made with an eye towards getting some of its street cred back with the OSS community.'"

Comments

KOL novell

[steveoc]

You have encountered an Horned Novell
 
`O'
/|\
  | [MScontract(tm)]
/ \
| |
 
He takes you by surprise and tries to Pimp slap you with his MSContract (tm)

Novell's attempts to work with the EFF are all well and good, but really .. for as long as there remains any ink on any deal with Microsoft's name on it:

An exploiter is you.

Novell may have gained many meat from this deal, but the loss of moxiousness is overwhelming. Until Novell clicks on the unequip link to the MScontract(tm) in their inventory, they will continue to suffer a permanent drain to their Moxie. No amount of practicing the accordian will ever be able to put this right.

Re:Doesn't really work like that

[houghi]

Don't forget to take out any code put in the kernel, KDE and GNOME and other projects made by people that are payed by Novell. Put your money where your mouth is.

Re:How curious

[mrsteveman1]

I found this gem in the opensuse faq about the deal

"Novell has also created or is among the top sponsors of projects such as the Linux Kernel, GCC, OpenOffice.org, KDE, GNOME, Tomboy, F-Spot, Banshee, Beagle, (K)NetworkManager, Kickoff, Evolution, XEN, Xgl, and Compiz etc. Are you refusing to use any of those as well? Since they all have substantial amounts of Novell code."

Microsoft CAN'T sue Novell

[DrYak]

If MS gets serious about pursuing litigation [...] Novell is sitting on a plump little target -- Suse

No. Suse can't be a target for the simple reason that Novell and MS have both signed a mutual agreement no to sue (in addition to agree to collaborate for interoperation).
In fact, that's where the whole story began. Microsoft hoped (and somewhat managed it) that people think that this should mean is that Novell could get sued because of Linux patent infringement and thus signed a deal with MS. Whereas in fact, the net cash flow was massively in favor of Novell (thus you can imply that, maybe, MS was affraid of Novell, somewhat. Novell has indeed a lot of rights inherited from the original Unix).

And that's where the problem currently lies. Novell has earned $wad_of_cash with this procedure. But now Microsoft is starting to go after the rest of the OSS community. Novell knows that all comunity members must work together to protect their work. But Novell can't retaliate, because there's quite a few thing they promised in their agreement with Microsoft, and that $wad_of_cash is nice enough. They don't want to breach the contract and loose their precious.

Helping the EFF fighting is an indirect way that enables them to do thing some of which may be against their agreement with MS.
Just like before, MS used SCO as a proxy to try to sue Linux shops.

If MS threatens to sue over patents, Novell can't counter sue them, but they can help the EFF to either : bust those special patents OR destroy the whole bogus patent system through reforms.