Novell Tips Details Of Microsoft Linux Deal, Spotlighting FSF OppositionNovell Tips Details Of Microsoft Linux Deal, Spotlighting FSF Opposition

The Free Software Foundation, that merry band of advocates of the GNU/Linux operating system (don't call it "Linux" -- FSF president Richard Stallman will get mad), is looking to throw a monkey wrench into the peace pact between Novell and Microsoft. Under that deal, signed last November, Novell insulated itself from Linux patent suits from Redmond and got millions of dollars in much-needed cash to boot. Now, Novell financial filings released last Friday reveal that, while the threat from Microsoft remains at bay, Stallman's posse may pose new problems.The salient information is contained in Novell's latest 10-Q, the regular quarterly financial report companies must file with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The form recounts the details of the November agreement, under which Microsoft agreed not to "assert its patent claims." In plain English, that meant Novell no longer had to worry about Redmond's saber-rattling over potential patent-infringement claims. Whether such claims would hold up in court or not (and judging by history, the answer is not) was and is immaterial. The big worry for a company like Novell is that any threats of lawsuits would scare customers away from its Linux products.

That's precisely what happened when SCO sued IBM and Novell in 2003. The SCO suits are on now their last legs, and the chill they created has long since passed. But, early on, authoritative industry pundits were writing that the litigation would result in a Linux "deployment pause."

It's ironic to me that Novell has had such a seemingly tough row to hoe, when its Linux OS products are so clearly superior to the stuff that's getting all the publicity -- I refer, of course, to Ubuntu. (I'll write about that more in a future post. For now, back to the Novell-Microsoft-FSF to-do.)

Along with patent insulation, Novell got lots of money out of the Microsoft pact. According to the Novell 10-Q:

So far, so good, right? Not so fast. The FSF issue rears its head toward the bottom of the 10-Q, where Novell makes a reference to GPLv3, which is the new version of the GNU General Public License that's currently in the works. (Here's a comprehensive look at the GPL3 debate, by my colleague Charlie Babcock.)

The money quote is contained in the section of the 10-Q titled "Risk Factors":

OK, that's a mouthful. But it's correct in its assertion that the GPLv3 draft could spell trouble and that the FSF has been considering which way to go on the so-called "grandfather" clause. (The most recent public statement from the FSF that I could find on this comes in a blog post from March 28, which says: "We're still considering the issue.")

What could be the upshot? As the Novell 10-Q puts it:

All this may seem somewhat par for the corporate course. Between Microsoft and Novell, it is. They're two companies that, no matter how much they seem to be in opposition, are run by businessmen who are amenable to sitting down and discussing things.

The FSF is coming from a rather different place. As its "About Us" page says, it's a nonprofit organization that has a "worldwide mission to preserve, protect, and promote the freedom to use, study, copy, modify, and redistribute computer software, and to defend the rights of all free software users."

What's its position on Microsoft? Well, a search of the term "Microsoft" on the FSF site returns the following among the results:

Microsoft's New Monopoly Microsoft's Treacherous Computing Free as in bombs Long term, Novell probably has little to fear from the FSF, since the group's bark has long been worse than its bite. Plus, it's only fair to note that it's Novell here that's issued a word of caution to investors of the kind you commonly see in Wall Street documentation. For its part, the FSF hasn't thrown down the gauntlet, or in fact said much of anything on the issue recently. Still, looking over the whole thing, I can't help but call to mind that old expression, "Them's fightin' words."