Re: [Fsuk-manchester] FOSDEM 09 Controversy

[Lucy]

2009/1/14  <address@hidden>:
> Gyn Moody has written a quite level headed piece on a plea surrounding
> Novell's sponsorship of FOSDEM 09.
>
> http://www.computerworlduk.com/community/blogs/index.cfm?entryid=1730&blogid=14
>
> It's interesting to see the two conflicting points of view...
> http://static.1407.org/20090105-fosdem-2009-appeal.html
> http://www.paeps.cx/weblog/fosdem/letting_the_community_help.html
>
> On the one hand it's very easy to see the anti-novell point of view, if a
> company was actively trying to stem the spread of free software, letting
> them give you money could have negative consequences... T
>
> On the other hand, perhaps FOSDEM should give space (in sponsorship as they
> do in speaker slots) to people from both points of view...


When I first read the article, I thought 'who cares, as long as
they're getting money with no strings why does it matter'? Then as I
read I realised that as a result of the sponsorship Novell are being
portrayed in a very positive light and I'm not sure they deserve that.
That said they are a free software company and develop a lot of free
software, even if they don't do everything the way I'd like. It's a
difficult situation and I'm glad that the problems are being debated,
so everyone who goes to fosdem can be aware of the issues. I really
hope that the person on paeps.cx doesn't speak for all of the fosdem
organisers though!

This .net quote on 1407.org is particularly worrisome though:
>Bob Muglia, Microsoft Senior Vice President, has said:
>"There is a substantive effort in open source to bring such an implementation 
>of >.Net to market, known as Mono and being driven by Novell, and one of the 
>>attributes of the agreement we made with Novell is that the intellectual 
>property >associated with that is available to Novell customers."

I guess getting it to be released under the GPLv3 would fix those problems?