Just weeks after its controversial patent cooperation agreement with Microsoft, Novell is hitting out at statements made by Microsoft executives that the deal acknowledges that Linux infringes on its intellectual property.
Novell has been under fire from many members of the Linux and open-source community since entering into a set of broad collaboration agreements with Microsoft to build, market and support a series of new solutions that will make Novell and Microsoft products work better together, including providing each other’s customers with patent coverage for their respective products.
Recent statements from Microsoft officials like CEO Steve Ballmer that the deal effectively acknowledges that Linux infringes on his company’s intellectual property have exacerbated these criticisms from the open-source community.
The brouhaha culminated in Novell CEO Ron Hovsepian releasing an open letter to the Linux and open-source community on Nov. 20, in which he says the company “strongly disagrees with and disputes” these Microsoft statements.
“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,” he said.
“We disagree with the recent statements made by Microsoft on the topic of Linux and patents…Our agreement with Microsoft is in no way an acknowledgment that Linux infringes upon any Microsoft intellectual property,” Hovsepian said in the letter.
When Novell entered the patent cooperation agreement with Microsoft, it did not agree or admit that Linux or any other Novell offering violated Microsoft patents, he said, adding that the agreement with Microsoft in no way changed Novell’s stance on software patents.
John Dragoon, senior vice president and chief marketing officer for Novell, based in Provo, Utah, told eWEEK in an interview following the release of the open letter that when a customer is making a decision whether or not to deploy in certain environments and there are impediments to that deployment, whether real or imagined, “It is in Novell’s interest, selfish interest, I will admit, to advance-remove whatever those inhibitors be to the advancement of Linux and open source.”
The agreement with Microsoft removed a lot of those inhibitors, in that it addressed technical collaboration issues, business collaboration issues and some customer concerns, he said.
“Some customers, for whatever reasons, decided they did not want the hassles of addressing intellectual property issues. Our doing this agreement with Microsoft is not an admission that we believe Linux is impugned in any way, but it is an admission that we wanted to remove whatever impediments there are to the adoption of Linux and open source and do that on behalf of our customers,” Dragoon said.
“For some customers, not all, this was an impediment, and we addressed it. Some customers had [reason to] pause because of these reasons and we have now removed that pause for them and that’s good for Linux and open source,” he said.
Read the full story on eWEEK.com: Novell CEO Rebuffs Microsoft Claims.
