FUD aside, I think the community did have a genuine reason to criticize it: Novell was indeed implicitly backing Microsoft's claim that in order to use GNU/Linux a user should pay, directly or indirectly, royalties to Microsoft for their intellectual property.
From Novell's FAQ, answer to Q5:
The [royalty] payments [to Microsoft based on a percentage of Novell's revenues from open source products] are for Microsoft's covenant [not to sue] directly to Novell's customers.
But then Ron Hovsepian, Novell's CEO, posted an open letter to the community, where he says:
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.
Novell should not have paid Microsoft for their covenant not to sue Novell customers. It is difficult to reconcile the above statements with the fact that Novell will be paying $40 million to Microsoft under the patent cooperation agreement.
However, under the light of the recent clarification and as long as Novell continues to distance itself from unsubstancied claims made by Microsoft with the purpose of harming GNU/Linux, I see this is as a minor negative aspect of an overall positive event. Bear in mind that there was an overwhelming balance of payments being from Microsoft to Novell (Microsoft pays $108 million up-front, Novell will make ongoing payments of the aforementioned $40 million) and that Novell, which has a market cap of $2B, is receiving around $500M. The deal has other positive things beside these payments.
The energy of the free software community is better spent fighting software patents than Novell. In reality, any non-trivial software does very likely infringue some patents. This has nothing to do with the deal between Novell and Microsoft. It's not Novell's fault that the United States laws are broken enough to make it possible for Microsoft (and probably other companies with similar portfolios) to demand royalty payments from users of non-trivial software such as GNU/Linux. It remains to be seen if they are bold enough to actually pursue this.
I think there is nothing for Novell to do at this point. Of course, it should continue to react to further developments, distancing itself from future unsubstancied claims made by Microsoft to harm GNU/Linux. But, at this point, it shouldn't, in my opinion, bother with the FUD being spread by some members of the community.
Update 2006-11-21: Updated to reflect Hovsepian's letter.
Discussion (7)
Last update: 2007-01-11 (Rev 10088)