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.

Affinity for Microsoft code still comes from the Microsoft faithful for the most part

Another case of Novell's software patents and more debate about their need (or lack thereof)

Andrew Tridgell has published a patch that could make the Linux implementation of the FAT filesystem impervious to Microsoft patent claims of the kind that forced a settlement from TomTom. The patch alters the VFAT code so that it does not generate both short and long filenames.

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

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

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

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

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).