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For some people, when Novell recently made a deal with Microsoft, it might as well have sold its soul to the devil.
At the same time, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has been mouthing off about how Microsoft signed the pact because Linux “uses our intellectual property” and Microsoft wanted to “get the appropriate economic return for our shareholders from our innovation.”
Novell, with its corporate headquarters in Massachusetts—not hell—was not amused.
So it was that Novell CEO Ron Hovsepian replied to many of these concerns in a Nov. 20 “Open Letter to the Community from Novell.”
The letter actually could have a better name—its actually a letter both to the community and to Microsoft.
First, to the community, Novell reminded open-source fandom that its done a lot of good in the past for open-sources IP (intellectual property) rights.
While Hovsepian didnt mention this one, I will. Novell, with its own IP claims to Unix and its highly entertaining slash at SCO for the money SCO got from Microsoft, has made darn sure that easily the most public attempt to ruin Linux will likely come to nothing.
Does this sound like a company thats suddenly turned anti-Linux? Anti-open source? It doesnt to me.
Im fed up with people acting like Novell has become a heretic in the Church of Open Source. There has always been a wide range of opinions about whats proper and whats not in open-source software.