Bonum Certa Men Certa

Having Added Mono and OOXML to OpenOffice.org, Novell Wants to Cash in and Give Patents to Microsoft

Summary: Novell may be days away from approval of being acquired by AttachMSFT and passing almost 1,000 patents to Microsoft; in the mean time, Novell wants to monetise the project it polluted, forked, and to some extent wrecked

NOVELL is a proprietary software company which thinks like a proprietary software company but markets itself as an open source software company or a "Linux company". Some journalists fall for it and propagate the illusion, even though Novell's contributions to OpenOffice.org, for example, can almost be summarised as "adding the features Microsoft paid us to add to OpenOffice.org" (antifeatures like OOXML, which helped Microsoft ram is down ISO's throat). Novell tries monetising Sun's work to which they added OOXML and other such antifeatures. And who can ever forget Novell's Windows-only OpenOffice releases?



"Will Novell give its OpenOffice.org-related software patents to Microsoft now?"Based on Michael Applebaum's latest PR piece, Novell's marketers are back to their odd buzzterm, "agility", as well as "cloud computing" (more on Fog Computing in this other PR post) and of course "innovation", the bigger word for "invention" and sometimes a synonym or eurphemism for "patent" (which itself is a euphemism for monopoly). What ever happened to "open source" at Novell? It dissipated after the Microsoft deal.

Novell can go on and on about award nominations (for obscure awards like the CODiE we mentioned the other day), reviews and "success stories", but the company is a total failure which now feeds Microsoft and some other foes of GNU/Linux with Linux-hostile patents. A lot of pressure is being put on regulatory agencies to stop the CPTN deal, but the OSI and FSF forget to place a lot of the blame and the pressure where it fits (more on that important subject will come later). The main problem is Novell, which could theoretically still withdraw its CPTN deal. Instead, Novell is eager to just sell its patents to Microsoft as soon as possible and an acquisition by attachMSFT is scheduled for 6 days from now, based on Novell. Nobody even raises the question about Novell's motives. The issue was deflected by spin. Remember what we wrote in 2006 about Novell as a patent minefield in OpenOffice.org. Will Novell give its OpenOffice.org-related software patents to Microsoft now? Boycott Novell.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Michael “Monty” Widenius: It Started in 1983 With Richard Stallman (RMS)
The other co-founder of MySQL is a bit notorious for confronting RMS rather viciously
For the Second Time in a Few Weeks Microsoft Lunduke Makes False Accusations Against Senior Red Hat Staff to Incite a Despicable 'Troll Army'
Nothing that Microsoft Lunduke claims of says can be trusted
 
Links 03/10/2025: Lawyers Caught Using LLM Slop Explain Why They Did It, LibreSSL 4.1.1 and 4.0.1 Released
Links for the day
FSF Board Grew 50% Since Last Year, Has New President, Turns 40 in Two Days
It's a good move for the FSF and - by extension - for software freedom
Links 03/10/2025: Conflicts, Death of TypePad, and TikTok/CheeTok Gives a Boost to Far Right Groups in Europe
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, October 02, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, October 02, 2025
Slopwatch: Linux Journal, Google News, and LinuxSecurity
They carry on polluting the Web with fake articles
Gemini Links 02/10/2025: Kubernetes With FreeBSD and robots.txt
Links for the day
Links 02/10/2025: 'Open' 'AI' Resorting to Gimmicks and Fake Funding, Europe’s ‘Drone Wall’ Discussed
Links for the day
Links 02/10/2025: Brave Passes 100M Users Milestone, Kodak Selling Its Own Film Again
Links for the day
su lisa && rm -rf /home/ibm/power
Novell was ruined by another person from IBM, Ronald Hovsepian
A Record Demand at Microsoft: Demand to Cancel
What we're witnessing is a very ungraceful destruction of XBox
Microsoft is Losing Europe
Hence all the "support" and "discount" offers that are limited to Europe
The Free Software Foundation Starts Fund-raising for 40th Anniversary
New pop-up 2-3 days ahead of the 40th anniversary event
Systemd Breaks Networking in Debian and Microsoft Staff Rushes to Make Face-Saving Excuses in LWN
Microsoft's bluca is already there in the comments, his Microsoft money pays for LWN to let him leave comments early
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, October 01, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, October 01, 2025
What the End of XBox Will Look Like: a Fiery Crash
XBox is the next Skype. It won't last much longer. Expect many more layoffs.
Richard Stallman is Going to Finland to Give a Talk Next Thursday
A day later he speaks in Sweden
Gemini Links 02/10/2025: SMTP Pipelining and End of ROOPHLOCH 2025
Links for the day
Slopwatch: Plagiarism, Fake Articles, and FUD About Linux
not a day goes by without Google News feeding FUD from slopfarms
Gemini Links 01/10/2025: Chat Control and End of Life
Links for the day
Links 01/10/2025: Long Covid Risk Reiterated, "Bitcoin Queen" Caught
Links for the day
Links 01/10/2025: EA $55 Billion Deal is Debt and Slop "Raises Vishing Risks"
Links for the day
Bluewashing at Red Hat Means Redundancies
The man who sold Red Hat to IBM meanwhile became a Microsoft Mono booster
After Killing OpenSource.com, IBM ('Red Hat') and OSI Told Us OpenSource.net Would Replace It (But That Didn't Happen)
Now it's time to move on, perhaps tarnishing the "Open Source" label some more (for whatever sponsor wants this)
Linux is Not a Community Project, It's a Wall Street Product
The core goal should be freedom
Bad Actors Abusing the Free Software Community, Vandalising It Using Rogue Politics and Old Tactics
Oil giants have long attempted to do this; now, the digital equivalent of Big Oil does this in technology
Social Control Media Isn't the Future, The Federation or Fediverse Isn't Growing, People's Accounts Vanish for Good
users' accounts will get deleted, not just become inactive
IBM is Failing, This Helps Show Wall Street is Entirely Detached From Actual Commercial Performance
IBM is unable to grow, it's just constantly shrinking
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, September 30, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, September 30, 2025
Clerical Aspects of Publishing and Development
In Free software, the management aspects are considerably reduced
Slopwatch: Fake Articles and Google News Promoting "Linux" Spam or Bot-Generated Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt (FUD)
These slopfarms help misplace blame
Third Wave of Microsoft Layoffs in September, This Time Many in Liverpool Affected
Be ready for more waves of layoffs ahead of the so-called "results" in late October