The Open Source Initiative and the Free Software Foundations - two organisations fighting for the same cause, but traditionally in very different ways - have joined forces in an attempt to prevent Novell patents falling into Microsoft's hands.

Yesterday as well as the day before that, some of the press reopened a jar of worms and spoke about Microsoft’s software patents minefield, but bloggers did not pay any attention to Novell’s fight against the free in “Free software”. Novell is just about as guilty as Microsoft because without its participation and pasive endorsement Microsoft’s efforts would hold no water.

Prominent legal counsel the Software Freedom Law Center said that the legal terms covering Microsoft's Open XML document formats pose a patent risk to free and open-source software developers.

Latest examples of Microsoft's strategy, wherein it sends out affiliates to pretend to be FOSS people and then promote software patent deals, separation between Open Source and Free software, departure from the GPL, promotion of "open" core (proprietary) as "Open Source", and demotion of free/libre platforms like GNU/Linux along with free suites/formats like ODF

Microsoft’s agreements with Linux vendors also happen to dispel “patent risk,” which to my mind is as illusory as ghosts given that the odds of Microsoft ever filing patents suits against Linux are virtually nil (huge risks down that path, given that patents can bite Microsoft as much as Linux…probably more so).

Why Microsoft's "extortion" is a serious offence that mustn't be overlooked; How Free software deals with software patents at present

Few events have created more fodder for the blogosphere, more fuel for Microsoft critics and more emotional responses than the Microsoft patent deals with Novell, Linspire and Xandros. While putting together a list of things people hate about these deals is easy, generating a list of positive aspects is much harder.

Novell gets granted a software patents; Microsoft's new acquisition is hit.

There has been much discussion in the free software community and in the press about the inadequacy of Microsoft's Office Open XML (OOXML) as a standard, including good analysis of some of the shortcomings of Microsoft's Open Specification Promise (OSP), a promise that is supposed to protect projects from patent risk.