5. Detrimental to Linux at large

Let's put aside all the heated revolted reactions of the open source community on the "betrayal" committed by Novell when they signed the patent covenant with Microsoft. I am on the side of the believers that it was a betrayal indeed, but this is not the point.

The point is that the patent cooperation agreement could be seen by some as beneficial for Linux, because "hey! Microsoft has just acknowledged that Linux is a real competitor!". As long as Microsoft agreed not to sue the customers of Novell for the «use of specific copies of a Covered Product as distributed by Novell or its Subsidiaries (collectively "Novell") for which Novell has received Revenue (directly or indirectly)», more and more users would have the confidence to buy Novell's Linux solutions, hence Linux will benefit!

Flawed argument. And a very poor one.

Indeed, the Linux solutions you would buy from Novell will make you immune to patent claims. But the use of the free counterpart, that is openSUSE, is not giving you immunity! (To make things even weirder, the individual contributors to openSUSE are still protected, whereas Novell as a company can still be sued by Microsoft, and vice-versa.)

The worse of all: this creates a unilateral, competitive advantage of Novell in the Linux world. Like in any other monopolistic practices (let's say oligopolistic, by also counting Microsoft), this is only beneficial to Novell Linux (SLED, SLES) and Novell Linux alone! Once again, only the commercial solutions qualify.

This is sabotaging the advancement of Linux as an open-source project, because open-source is about choice, and the Novell-Microsoft agreement is about suppressing the competition — being it Red Hat or the 100% free Linux distributions.

Even worse, should it be still possible: this undermines the very spirit of the open and FREE software, as long as Linux distributions you won't pay for are excluded from any protection. By signing this covenant, Novel acquiesced that Linux users can be sued (otherwise, why protecting them?), and this is going to create panic and recession in the Linux world.

Thank you, Novell. You are really a community leader. When you lost Jeremy Allison and Guenther Deschner from the Samba team, it was certainly because people adore to see how patents are used as competitive tools in the free software world.