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by Sam Varghese   
Friday, 19 January 2007
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The ends justify the means. That's a favourite saying of those who feel that the destination, not the means of travel, is more important.

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But in the world of free and open source software, as we've seen before, this does not tend to work well. When people chuck principles aside and indulge in short-term thinking, they tend to get bitten hard someplace down the road.

When Novell signed a deal with Microsoft in November last year, it infuriated a large number of veterans in the FOSS community. None more than Bruce Perens, creator of the open source definition, the manifesto of the open source movement. That apart, Perens co-founded the Open Source Initiative, the Linux Standard Base - and he wears plenty more caps. In short, he is one of the founding fathers of a movement that has grown at an astonishing pace.

Perens, who is passionate about what he believes in, set up an online petition, asking Novell to recant the deal. Over 3000 people signed the petition which took the form of an open letter to Novell chief executive Ron Hovsepian. The level of anger in some of the responses was surprising.

Thus, when I noticed that the Australian Linux conference, which ends in Sydney today, had accepted sponsorship from Novell, I wrote to Perens, asking whether this was not some kind of slap in the face for people like him.

Prior to that I wrote to the president of Linux Australia, Jonathan Oxer, asking him whether any ethical considerations had been taken into account when accepting sponsorship from Novell. I haven't heard back.

Perens initially thought the conference was a trade show. But when I pointed out that it was a technical conference, he had no hesitation in saying that the organisers might as well have accepted sponsorship from SCO or Microsoft.

"I'd rather they hadn't accepted a Novell sponsorship. It wasn't very clueful of them, given Novell's recent collaboration with Microsoft in spreading fear and doubt about Linux and software patents," Perens said.


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