Novell defends patent future of open source

Novell has promised to use its patent powers to protect its open source products against the threat of legal action from third parties in a bid to keep the momentum of growth going.

It has announced this statement to help customers feel more confident about taking on their open source products.

Jack Messman, chairman and CEO of Novell said: "Open source is a disruptive technology. As a collaborative development model, it delivers economies of scale and a quality of software that traditional software vendors are hard-pressed to match.

"This is great for IT customers, because it means more innovation and choice. Because of its disruptive nature, open source threatens entrenched interests, some of whom are fighting back with vague accusations of intellectual property risks in open source technologies.

"Novell today is taking an active stand in defence of the software we offer - both proprietary and open source - by stating our willingness to use our own patent portfolio to help our customers. We urge other vendors with relevant patents to make the same commitment."

Competition in the open source market has come from Linux, Apache, MySQL, JBOSS and many others, providing freedom of choice for customers.

Joseph A. LaSala Jr., the general counsel of Novell added: "The intellectual property risks associated with open source software are really no different than those with proprietary software. Novell is committed to the protection of intellectual property in the emerging 'mixed source' environment, where proprietary and open source solutions co-exist.

"While patents play an important role in protecting intellectual property, their use by some vendors to influence customer choice is without precedent. We believe that customers should be free to make purchasing decisions based on factors such as price, value, security and service, not based on threats of intellectual property litigation."

The issue of patents had divided some in the open-source community and software industry, however.

Some patent holders have vowed not to use their lawyers over open-source programs, such as IBM.

But IBM, Sun, Hewlett-Packard and Red Hat have all said they aim to boost their patent portfolios to protect intellectual property.

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