Faced with a potentially large threat to free/libre and open source software from patent consortium CPTN, the two organisations have collaborated publicly for the first time. Before Christmas Open Source Initiative (OSI) wrote to the German Federal Cartel Office asking them to investigate the acquisition of Novell assets by the CPTN Group as a possibly anti-competitive move by CPTN's four members.

Free Software Foundation Europe has written to the German competition authorities in order to share its concerns about the sale of Novell's patents to a consortium called CPTN, made up of Microsoft, Oracle, Apple and EMC.

Open Source Initiative (OSI) has asked a German competition law regulator to investigate the purchase of patents owned by Novell by CPTN, a consortium led by Microsoft and including Apple, Oracle and EMC.

Samba developer and open source legend Andrew Tridgell says the open source community is poor at fighting patent attacks, but says things could improve with some changes in strategy. He offered his tips for effectively fighting patent holders making claims against open source projects at the recent Linux.conf.au.

Who says that Microsoft and free software developers are enemies?

Reactions to Microsoft's attempt to devour Free/open source software with Windows and software patents; Apache given as example of projects at risk

In-fighting within the open source community needs to stop or risk further alienating companies, attendees at the Cape IT Initiative's (CITI) FOSS event heard last week.

In order to prevent software patents which are owned by Red Hat from falling into the wrong hands (e.g. in an acquisition like Oracle's), something should be done to diffuse them
Red Hat's patents are a subject we previously wrote about in posts such as

About a year ago, Novell joined forced with the EFF. It needed to give the impression that it was just as concerned as many of us about patents. But meanwhile, Novell advocates the very same thing it purports to be fighting.