Boycott Novell is a site that annoys me. Every day there’s something new about how evil Novell is. The issue I take with all that is Novell, for all its fraternising with the enemy, actually contibutes to the open source world. Anyway they wrote a letter pleading with Mark Shuttleworth (South African, space-venturering Ubuntu leader) to ditch the nasty, nasty Novell project, Mono from Ubuntu:
Mark Shuttleworth, whom we have great respect for after maintaining his stern stance against intimidation tactics, has responded to our concerns regarding the existence of Mono in Ubuntu.
So is Ubuntu going to boycott Mono and all other Novell products? No. Shuttleworth writes:
Hi Roy
At this stage we see no significant issues with patents and Mono. There is a risk of a patent claim against almost any component of Ubuntu - across every jurisdiction in which Ubuntu ships, the patent minefield is too complex. Our view is that we can deal with patent suits if they arise, but removing or re-engineering the relevant components.
Yesterday’s announcement from Microsoft suggests that they have come round to the view that patent litigation is not an effective strategy for them.
The real patent risk to free software, in my view, is not a large-scale industry participant like SONY or IBM or Microsoft, instead it is a small, hard-to-identify patent holder who does not actually need to get products out the door. We cannot live in fear of that threat, we can only respond to it as an when it arises.
I don’t mean to undermine the good work that you do in reminding people of the risks, but only to say that we have discussed this in Ubuntu and are confident that the course we are on is a reasonable one.
Mark
I’m not defending Microsoft, but I completely agree with Mark. There’s a threat when they sue. Going around spreading things like “boycott Novell” is really going to help the Linux community mature, isn’t it?
Somebody from the Middle East is buying SCO (or at least squeezing $100m in their general direction) because they “saw a tremendous investment opportunity in SCO and its vast range of products and services, including many new innovations ready or soon to be ready to be released into the marketplace”.
No more drugs for that Middle Easterner.
Read the whole depressing story at Groklaw.