Miguel does a backflip on patent licensing deal

Sam Varghese
Saturday, 08 March 2008 03:45

Opinion and Analysis

So how does this tie in with his statement, made at the Las Vegas conference, that if he had had his way, Novell would have remained strictly open source? Looks to me like the man is trying to be half-pregnant. Looks like he wants to place one foot in the grave and the other in a patch of grease.

I can't think of a better list of questions that de Icaza has to answer than that posted as part of one of the many intelligent comments at LinuxToday. Writes a man who calls himself Grey Geek: "So, the question arises: Why is De Icaza criticizing the "deal" now? What's changed? The terms of Icaza's employment? His salary? His VP status? His duties? GNOME's GPL status?"

Yes, we are all waiting to hear from Ron Hovsepian, the head of Novell, Richard Stallman, the head of the Free Software Foundation and the GNU Project, and the GNOME Foundation. Which side of the boat is de Icaza sitting on now?

With this latest switch of loyalties, de Icaza has nowhere to go. Who will take him up now - Red Hat? Sun? IBM? Google? Possibly the last named - he has already started praising the company saying that while both Windows and Linux have no future, Google does. Maybe that's the way the money trail leads now. But no sensible company, least of all Google, would want the bad karma that comes with de Icaza.

I'm thinking of passing the hat around so poor little Miguel can have something to draw on when people threaten him with patent suits. I'll get the highway collectors out in force tomorrow morning. I need a good name for the fund, that's all.