Open Source Weblog

The covenant not to sue each other’s customers was included at Microsoft’s request, Hovsepian revealed and was not part of the original agreement.

“’So, while the agreement we signed has to do with interoperability, one of the elements that was added at the request of Microsoft was a covenant not to sue customers. That's what it ended up becoming,’ he said….

Asked if he regrets agreeing to that part of the deal given the controversy that erupted over it, Hovsepian said not at all.”

What he does regret, according to the interview, is not explaining it to the open source community earlier. While an open letter was sent on November 20, 18 days after the deal with Microsoft was announced, and the same day that Steve Ballmer’s claims that Linux contains Microsoft IP hit the headlines, Hovespeian concedes that releasing it earlier would have "cleared up a lot of confusion and reduced the emotions associated with it. So that part I would have done better," according to the interview.

While Hovsepian has no regrets the same cannot be said for Justin Steinman, Novell’s director of marketing for Linux and Open Platform Solutions, who has been forced to issue an apology following misleading statements about Novell’s contribution to the Free Software Foundation.

In an interview with ITBusinessEdge Steinman had said “I do want to tell you that Novell is a significant financial contributor to the Free Software Foundation, as are all of the leading Linux distributors around the world. We're one of a number of large corporate entities that contribute to the FSF.”

In response to a query from Groklaw, the FSF’s executive director, Peter Brown, denied this was the case: “Novell last gave funds to the FSF in October 2005, when they donated $5K as part of FSF Corporate Patron program. Since their deal with Microsoft was announced we have not asked them to renew as a patron, nor would we. Novell is not ‘a significant financial contributor to the Free Software Foundation’.”

Steinman has double-checked his facts and duly apologized.

“Further research inside Novell confirms that Peter Brown is correct and I spoke in error. I want to make it clear that I had no intention of making false claims or providing misinformation to the market. I simply said what I believed to be true. Now that I have learned my statement is not true, I want to correct that error,” he writes.

“Thus, I want to apologize to the Free Software Foundation and to the open source community for making this misrepresentation. I should have double-checked the accuracy of my information before speaking, and for that, I offer no excuse.”