Since the very beginning of this affair. we have been slightly concerned about Red Hat's appointment of a new CEO. Fortunately, Jim Whitehurst understands the issues at play. He also addressed the key question before.
The news is not about his disdain for Microsoft's intimidation, but it's actually in the fact that he never communicated these matters, unlike his predecessor, Matthew Szulik. Here is a portion from a new interview.
Does the patent settlement you announced recently [with FireStar Software] that is consistent with the GPL mean that you are in a better position to be able to settle your patent dispute with Microsoft?
[Jim Whitehurst:] The problem is that we don't know what the Microsoft [patent threat] is. They have said in the past that 235 patents [are infringed by Linux] and we have yet to see what any of them are. Conceptually, it should be possible but, again, we don't know what we are talking about there.
When was the last time you spoke to Microsoft regarding patents?
[Jim Whitehurst:] I am sure, as a company, we have an ongoing dialogue on a lot of things. I have had dialogue at a senior level, but it has been more on how we can work better on interoperability for customers; I haven't had any direct conversations around the patent issue.
Tell The United States Patent and Trademark Office that software and business method patents should not be part of the EU-US patent treaty.
--Source