Open Source Blog

Novell’s first cut is the deepest
February 05, 2007

“You don’t have to be a carpenter to know that it’s a lot harder to fix a mistake once the cut has been made. Hence true craftsman know all to well that proper due diligence up front can save a lot of heartache down the road,” writes Novell’s chief marketing officer, John Dragoon.

Maybe the company should have thought of that before it cut its patent deal with Microsoft, even if a huge amount of nonsense has been written about that over the weekend.

It is astonishing how much has been written about the deal in the last 72 hours given that almost nothing of any note has happened other than Reuters getting somewhat confused about the whole thing.

Contrary to reports, Novell is not going to be banned from distributing Linux. The FSF’s move to the GPL v3 may make it difficult for the company to continue its relationship with Microsoft, but then we already knew that.

We already knew that the FSF’s general counsel was investigating the agreement to see if it was in keeping with the GPL.

We also already knew that FSF chairman Richard Stallman had stated that while Novell is not in breach of the GNU GPLv2, it will be in breach of the GPLv3 when the FSF has finished drafting it.

We also knew that this will leave Novell in a precarious position because while the Linux kernel will remain under GPL v2 GNU tools such as Samba will move to the GPL v3.

As Bruce Perens pointed out, Novell will continue to be able to ship older GPL v2 versions of that software, but will quickly become isolated. The end result is that Novell faces a choice of sticking with Microsoft and being left behind, or turning its back on the patent deal.

About the only new thing to have been reported, as Groklaw rightly identifies, is that Moglen will report his findings in two weeks. We wait with baited breath.

In the meantime, given the potential problem Novell has presented itself with in cutting the deal with Microsoft, it is amusing to see the Dragoon advising people “to take out your tape measure and use a pencil” before reacting – or over-reacting to GPL v3 stories.

If Moglen and Stallman are right, Dragoon could soon be finding out quite how hard it is to fix a mistake once a cut has been made.