Johannesburg, 22 Nov 2006
Novell CEO Ron Hovsepian has written an open letter to the community in which he denies the 2 November patent co-operation deal between his company and Microsoft is an admission that Linux infringes on any of Microsoft's intellectual property rights.
"Our agreement with Microsoft is in no way an acknowledgment that Linux infringes upon any Microsoft intellectual property," writes Hovsepian on Novell's site.
"When we entered the patent co-operation agreement with Microsoft, Novell did not agree or admit that Linux or any other Novell offering violates Microsoft patents."
Microsoft has confirmed this position. In a statement of its own it said: "We at Microsoft respect Novell's point of view on the patent issue, even while we respectfully take a different view. Novell is absolutely right in stating that it did not admit or acknowledge any patent problems as part of entering into the patent collaboration agreement."
Nevertheless, Microsoft's CEO has been on the attack. At a SQL Server conference, in Seattle last week, Steve Ballmer said anybody with Linux in their data centre "had an undisclosed balance sheet liability".
"To the degree that people are going to deploy Linux, we want Suse Linux to have the highest percent share of that, because only a customer who has Suse Linux actually has paid properly for the use of intellectual property from Microsoft," said Ballmer in response to a question from an audience member.
In his letter, Hovsepian also said the company "strongly challenged" statements made by those parties who have spoken about the announcement in a damaging way.
"Our stance on software patents is unchanged by the agreement with Microsoft. We want to remind the community of Novell's commitment to, and prior actions in support of, furthering the interests of Linux and open source, and creating an environment of free and open innovation. We have a strong patent portfolio and we have leveraged that portfolio for the benefit of the open source community."
The companies announced a covenant not to sue each other's customers earlier this month. Under the terms of the deal, Microsoft will pay $108 million to Novell upfront and Novell pledges a sum of $40 million over the next five years.
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