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.

Jeff Jaffe's broken link (still available in the CTO blog) shows fanaticism for software patents at Novell; Microsoft's cash infusion for Novell is running out

The proprietary bunch is still pursuing software patents, even some of those types which are considered highly controversial

Not just Mono but OOXML too is being used by Novell to promote and to spread Microsoft formats with software patents

Comparison between Sun's vocation and Novell's. WHEN Novell had approached Microsoft (not the other way around), it soon invented software patents as a business model for offering added value to open source software. Sam Dean, inspired by Matt Asay, compares the strategy of Sun to that of Novell and he has hardly any good things to say

Further analysis of what Novell's likely sale means when it comes to its patents and what it is currently doing to MeeGo, to which it added a Mono stack

In hindsight, it is claimed that Red Hat too has an ambivalent view on the subject of software patents, at least historically; Novell, as expected, is not against software patents

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.

There is no substantial news here other than development of discussions, which seem to spread fairly fast from one blog to another blog and soon onto the press. To repeat criticisms from yesterday about Novell’s announcement on China [1, 2], Novell and Microsoft keep spreading software patents to all parts of the world (never mind the legality), using SUSE Linux (Ballnux).