In the midst of a certain coversation today, an old story returned to my mind. It’s dated September 25^th, 2006. Thus, this happened roughly 4 months after secret negotiations with Microsoft had begun.

Open source software maker Novell said last Friday its board approved the increase of its president and chief executive’s base salary to US$825,000 per year.

I feel obliged to quote Mark Kent who said “Always follow the money. Anyway, all those people out there writing code which Novell sell on – your code has been used to provide the Novell Board with pay rises, and they’re agreeing that you are in the firing line for a Microsoft legal attack!

T turns out that Larry King, whom I recently mentioned, is not the only technophobe in showbiz. Have a look at this one.

According to Starpulse.com, O’Reilly dubbed all iPod users “geeks” and implied that those who bought one were socially inept.

In a move illustrating how in touch he is with young people he spluttered: “I don’t own an iPod. I would never wear an iPod. Did you ever talk to these computer geeks? I mean, can you carry on a conversation with them?”

Related: Ballmer’s iPod

While the impact of the petition may be nothing but words and promises, we also observe action being taken.

Professor Keats shared the mail with the South African anti-software patent mailing list, and gave permission to share it further.

Dear Stafford,

This is a personal email from me, not an official policy of UWC. However, as the custodian of IT at UWC, I will be pursuing a full investigation into a total exit strategy for all Novell products from the University of the Western Cape.

As a non-trivial CUSTOMER of Novell, we will be looking at all our Novell applications during the next 3-4 months, with a view to finding the fastest possible way to get ALL NOVELL PRODUCTS completely out of our environment. As a company that we have been customers of for over a decade, Novell has let us down badly, and as customers, you may expect us to vote with our feet and encourage others within the education domain to do the same.

[...]

No-one other than Andreas Jaeger wound up praising Ubuntu for its Open Week.

Ubuntu’s open week sounds like a really good idea. I’m just surprised that it is done to get users away from openSUSE as Mark Shuttleworth announced on the opensuse mailing lists.

Andreas is one of the roots, if not the principal figure of authority, in the Opensuse project. To put things in context, Mark Shuttleworth invited SUSE developers whilst some people are giving up SUSE, often migrating to or sticking with variants of Ubuntu. This statement by Andreas is therefore quite bold yet generous. It does, however, seem as though Shuttleworth crossed the picket fence and invaded mailing lists of competitors. I am aware of Red Hat employees who read the SUSE mailing lists, but I doubt they actively participate rather than just lurk or post off-list.

Addendum:

Here is the message that started it all.

[opensuse] Invitation to OpenSUSE developers

• From: Mark Shuttleworth [mark at xxxxxxxxxx]
• Date: Fri, 24 Nov 2006 18:16:57 +0000
• Message-id: <45673719.9020906 at xxxxxxxxxx>

Novell’s decision to go to great lengths to circumvent the patent framework clearly articulated in the GPL has sent shockwaves through the community. If you are an OpenSUSE developer who is concerned about the long term consequences of this pact, you may be interested in some of the events happening next week as part of the Ubuntu Open Week:

[...]

Shortly after the infamous deal had been made, I happened to have spotted an article about Sun’s deal with Microsoft. It goes back to 2004.

Microsoft Corp. on Wednesday said that it is looking for ways to work more closely with developers of the Open Office open source project, while at the same time, apparently reserving the right to sue them, according to a legal agreement between Microsoft and Open Office’s major sponsor, Sun Microsystems Inc., made public this week.

PJ has just posted the following analysis. It compares Novell’s deal with Sun Microsystems’ deal.

What do I think Microsoft is doing with these deals? I suspect they are making deals with every entity that has patents, clearing the deck so it can attack Red Hat and the entire Open Source method of development. Whatever is left standing will be firmly inside Microsoft’s embrace, and you know as well as I do what that historically means.

The way this is bound to develop will be interesting for many reason. Among those reasons we have OpenOffice, which is fundamentally the main link between the two deals. While the OpenOffice team approves and supports the deal, Novell can be scrutinised over that very same legal timebomb.

According to Bruce Perens, one ought to expect SUSE to incorporate outdated packages or face some hard financial dilemmas.

“In the face of these [GPLv2 to GPLv3] changes, Novell will probably be stuck with old versions of the software, under old licenses, with Novell sustaining the entire cost and burden of maintaining that software,” Perens wrote, adding that Novell faces a choice of sticking with Microsoft and being left behind, or turning its back on the patent deal.

Matt Asay goes further and mocks Novell’s judgment.

Again, if Microsoft’s patents are only worth $40M or so, and Novell’s are worth $300M, then does anyone have anything to fear about Microsoft’s patent rattling? If their value is comparatively worthless, why is anyone bothering to take them seriously (this assumes, of course, that someone is)?

This confirms what many people argued before. The sums appear nonsential, which leads to suspicion that the motives go beyond what meets the eye. Microsoft’s legal department is nothing to sneeze at and, quite evidently, Novell has been fooled. It’s time to escape the deal (to the extent possible) and save SUSE before it’s too late.

The recent Open Letter/petition illustrates the fact that a lot of damage has already been done and continues to be done at present, primarily because the management is reluctant to admit its mistake. The intention of this site is not to religiously bash and damage Novell, but rather to knock it back into its senses, rather than let it be driven to a state of bankruptcy. Pressure might be the only path to remedy.

[A non-Novell blog post for a change:]

ORE schools have recently begun banning wireless networks. I cannot say that I am surprised. We already know that cellphones emit radiation and their antennas (the larger frameworks which support them and emit even more radiation) can truly become a menace. Wi-Fi-supported laptops and routers have radiative residues as well, although the scale might be different (probably significantly reduced).

Is all the fuss justified at all? It the radiation significant enough to be harmful? Therein lies this debate. There are not enough m studies to provide strong evidence, I suspect.

I wrote about this in more considerable length in the past. The context was similar. This included a discussion about another university that banned Wi-Fi. As I said before, some would dislike the fact that I point out such stories which I have read. Last year I read a study which concluded that heavy cellphone use (an hour a day roughly) can increase the chance of developing brain tumour. The side of the brain that’s closer to the phone (depending on whether you are left- or right-handed) is 260% more likely to develop tumours. That in its own right was enough to persuade me to boycott cellphones.