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Boycott Novell Protesters Manhandled In India

Posted by kdawson on from the opposite-of-freedom dept.

James Mathew writes "This is an interesting story from Kerala, India, where the ruling Communist Party organized a national conference in its efforts to hijack the Free Software Movement, which has enviable roots in the state. They got Novell to sponsor it. On the second day of the conference, a few free software activists who displayed posters against Novell were manhandled by the organizers and police — typical of what is expected from them. Most of the snaps taken during the scuffle were forcefully deleted by the organizers, after seizing the protesters' mobile phones. Still they couldn't delete all. Here is another blow-by-blow account."

3 of 360 comments (clear)

  1. Alternative Viewpoint by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Free Software activists start a protest on private property, are asked to leave by owners/organisers and forgo negotiation, instead opting for point-blank refusal. This leads to a confrontation because both of both parties being excessively stubborn.

    Sounds like 50/50 blame split to me.

    1. Re:Alternative Viewpoint by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Open source and free software events have rules and agendas like any other meeting.

      Let's say this was a Open Source and Free Software meeting and all they promoted was proprietary software. Would protesting that be fair?

      That's exactly what they're doing according to Groklaw and even Novell themselves ,

      Novell's SEC filing reads: "If the final version of GPLv3 contains terms or conditions that interfere with our agreement with Microsoft or our ability to distribute GPLv3 code, Microsoft may cease to distribute Suse Linux coupons in order to avoid the extension of its patent covenants to a broader range of GPLv3 software recipients,"

      Remember that Novell helped Microsoft get OOXML approved and Novell forked OpenOffice.org as soon as it moved to GPLv3.

      Of course don't forget that Novell make their own version of Microsoft's SilverLight but they call it Moonlight. It's free to download but you have to download it from Novell to get patent indemnity... it exploits loopholes in GPLv2 in order to remove open source rights. To quote Miguel...

      During the discussion, de Icaza explained that while anyone who downloaded Moonlight from Novell was protected by the company's licensing of Silverlight codecs from Microsoft through the company's own cross-licensing agreement. Mike Schroepfer, vice president of engineering from Mozilla, then raised the question that if he downloads and then distributes the code for Moonlight, would he get the patent protection? "There is a patent covenant for anyone that downloads [Moonlight] from Novell," answered de Icaza, who then acknowledged that "as to extending the patents to third parties -- you have to talk to Microsoft."

      So this is what Novell want to make Open Source. These protesters stood up for the spirit and the letter of the GPL. Good on them!

  2. Boycott Boycott Novell by PixelSlut · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Sorry, but the Boycott Novell people are complete retards to begin with. To my knowledge they don't actually produce anything for the open source community, but they sit around and bitch and whine about Novell who employs all kinds of open source hackers; including kernel hackers, GTK and GNOME hackers, window manager hackers, Mono hackers, accessibility hackers, open source artists, and more. Sorry if I have very little sympathy for the situation. It's not that I think anyone should be 'manhandled' under any situation, but these guys are the most inconsiderate members of the "open source community" and it's hard for me to really take most things they say very seriously.