● 03.19.07

●● Novell: Open Source Supporter Turned Open Source Parasite

Posted in Action, Deals, Free/Libre Software, Marketing, Microsoft, Novell at 8:29 pm by Shane Coyle

From the Raining on Novell’s Parade Department…

Bruce Perens spoke out today against Novell’s self-serving and morally questionable attempt to circumvent the spirit of the GNU General Public License, referring to the arrangement as he had in the past: as a "protection racket"

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Perens, a vocal opponent of the Microsoft/Novell patent deal, stated that while the arrangement was legal under the GPLv3, Novell’s deal was made in “bad faith with the open-source community and [was] not moral.”

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More than that, though, Perens said, if the Novell-Microsoft patent deal is allowed to stand. It would take only as few as “two or three intellectual property law-suits” of open-source developers or small business at a cost of at least $5 million dollars a pop, to destroy open-source development. So, from where he sits, Novell is running a “protection racket” with “Big Mikey” as the enforcer

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Perens also surmises that the deal may be the beginning of Novell’s exit strategy from their Linux business, which "hasn’t taken off, and won’t anytime soon". Perens also believes Microsoft may indeed buy Novell, since Novell would lack the resources to fork the numerous essential GNU utilities that will be moving to GPL3.

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