Novell MD on getting along with Microsoft
Novell has so far managed to weather global economic uncertainty — at a cost of about 100 engineering jobs in early February. Novell UK managing director Sean McCarry, who was appointed at the beginning of February, is bullish about Novell's prospects, arguing that open source will become increasingly attractive to businesses because of its potential for cost savings.
The company signed a deal with Microsoft in 2006 to collaborate over sales and to license patents Microsoft claims to hold over Linux. ZDNet UK caught up with McCarry to discuss the relationship with Microsoft and Novell's strategy for working with the technology company.
Q: How is the relationship between Microsoft and Novell?
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Sneaky Novell...
Has the agreement [with Microsoft] affected Novell’s standing in the open-source community?
Novell is one of the largest contributors to the open-source community and we do take the community very seriously. We have a Microsoft [press] statement we can send you about that, that might help.
Novell agreed to pay Microsoft licensing fees on the understanding Microsoft would not assert patents it holds that supposedly cover Linux. These patents have never been tested in court and have never been publicly specified by Microsoft. Did Novell make too big a concession to Microsoft in submitting to its patent claims?
I think the intellectual-property conversation is really complex, but I’m not the right person to talk to about this [at Novell]. One aspect of the agreement was protection for Novell customers.
In other words, he is unable to come up with reasonable explanations of his own, so he’s weaseling out instead and referring to other people’s words.
If Novell’s own managers are unable to justify a patent deal that harmed GNU/Linux, who can?