[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

FRom Groklaw:

Novell Speaks - Updated

***********************8AN EXCERPT ******************************

Monday, November 20 2006 @ 08:34 PM EST

Novell has posted a letter to the community. Here's, to me, the heart of it:

Our interest in signing this agreement was to secure interoperability and joint sales agreements, but Microsoft asked that we cooperate on patents as well, and so a patent cooperation agreement was included as a part of the deal. In this agreement, Novell and Microsoft each promise not to sue the other's customers for patent infringement. The intended effect of this agreement was to give our joint customers peace of mind that they have the full support of the other company for their IT activities. Novell has a significant patent portfolio, and in reflection of this fact, the agreement we signed shows the overwhelming balance of payments being from Microsoft to Novell.

Since our announcement, some parties have spoken about this patent agreement in a damaging way, and with a perspective that we do not share. We strongly challenge those statements here.

We disagree with the recent statements made by Microsoft on the topic of Linux and patents. Importantly, our agreement with Microsoft is in no way an acknowledgment that Linux infringes upon any Microsoft intellectual property. When we entered the patent cooperation agreement with Microsoft, Novell did not agree or admit that Linux or any other Novell offering violates Microsoft patents.

Our stance on software patents is unchanged by the agreement with Microsoft....In closing, we wish to be extremely clear that Novell is committed to protecting, preserving and promoting freedom for free and open source software. We recognize that the community of open source developers is essential to all our activities in Linux, and we welcome dialog with the community as to how we can continue to work together toward these common goals.

Ron Hovsepian
Chief Executive Officer
Novell, Inc.

In that case, with all due respect, you should not have signed an agreement called a patent cooperation agreement that gives Microsoft the opportunity to say the things Mr. Ballmer has been saying. I believe that is obvious now. He didn't even wait until the ink was dry. And you should have considered the GPL, its importance to the community, and considered what paying royalties means in that context. And we hope you will fix this.

Update: Microsoft has now responded. You can read it in full on David Berlind's blog. It's a very odd response:

[Cinnamon]

Balmer is an fn punk... if he's so sure of this then he should post the code for everyone to see. bastard

[Cinnamon]

I just gotta say it again.. sorry

Balmer you bastard!

[ShadowAce]

[marvlus]

How is this different than what SCO was trying to force upon IBM, other than the fact that SCO is now Microsoft and IBM is now all Linux distros, except for Novell?

[Gene Eric]

Novell claimed they'd indemnify licensees against suits related to the Enterprise product of the SuSE linux dist. a number of years ago.

Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said if customers bought Linux from anyone but Novell, they could face trouble.

You don't need to purchase linux. The question is who can be sued for providing or receiving support.

[Gene Eric]

and another thing:

"I suspect that (customers) will take that issue up with their distributor," Ballmer said, adding that if customers considered doing a direct download of a non-SUSE Linux version, "they'll think twice about that."

I think people may think twice about a statement that sounds like a threat.