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FOSDEM Gets Flak Because of Novell Sponsorship

SOME OF US saw this happening in India [1, 2, 3, 4] and we've already voiced concerns about FOSDEM as well. It turns out we're now alone. Here is a formal letter of complaint about Novell's sponsorship of FOSDEM 2009:

The community is very important, and that is the reason why it shouldn't blandly (pun intended) accept money from an element which has “bought” its way into the community with "dirty" money, using it as a sort of cheap good-will shop to increase it's leverage in it. This is particularly bad as it is a close partner of a certain monopolist software company which has been trying to kill Free Software for over a decade.

[...]

Instead of making a single effort to calm the ocean waters, by rejecting community-dividing patent agreements, by enticing their top engineers to write community embracing comments instead of further dividing the community with extremely hostile comments (that apparently forget years of bad blood against the Free Software bore by Microsoft and incited upon it's partner networks). Just notice how Novell doesn't do a single action in this direction, but instead keeps announcing more and more Microsoft integration and support. What's wrong with this picture?

In conclusion, please tell us how much do you need the community to help you, with hard cash, in order to replace Novell's sad contribution. I'm sure that given a goal we'll meet it, if not for 2009, then surely for 2010.

Here's to a great FOSDEM'09 without proprietary software sponsors!


Maybe it's a little bit like OSCON and OSBC. Those who accept Microsoft or Novell money are causing damage to their own conference/symposium.

Say No to Novell

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