These are more musings on this subject, prompted by a short (so far) email discussion with a friend of mine at Novell (I'll not name the person in question, just to be on the safe side).

My biggest concern is that it implicitly says that there are patent issues that people need to be protected from. Once that is conceded then other Linux/FLOSS users are vulnerable to litigation and royalties now, and Novell customers are vulnerable once this agreement passes. The reason I say this is that courts, should it come to that, wouldn't care about in intricacies, they'll listen to the company with the most lawyers - guess who that would be.

The other thing is that these things don't happen overnight, negotiations toward this agreement must have been happening for months at least and that seems duplicitous to say the least.

At the moment I'm inclined to give the openSUSE project the benefit of the doubt, if not Novell. I will probably be calling for greater independence from Novell for the project this coming week such as its own Bugzilla etc (even if these things are hosted by Novell).

The bottom line in terms of the community is that, in all likelihood, Novell have blown whatever goodwill they have had in the space of a day. That's really sad for the community. They may also have signed their own death warrant - no-one has ever got into bed with Microsoft and come out in good shape - which is sad for most people connected with Novell, with the possible exception of their major share holders should it be a buy-out that sees their demise.