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Linux Watch, always on top of things, has a piece on the Open Letter to the Community from Novell that was released yesterday in response to the growing brouhaha over the Microsoft/Novell agreement. Not wasting time, the letter states:

“Our agreement with Microsoft is in no way an acknowledgment that Linux infringes upon any Microsoft intellectual property. To claim otherwise is to further sow fear, uncertainty and doubt, and does not offer a fair basis for competition. When we entered the patent cooperation agreement with Microsoft, Novell did not agree or admit that Linux or any other Novell offering violates Microsoft patents. We strongly object to the usage of our agreement to suggest that members of the Linux community owe Microsoft any remunerations.”

It seems to me that the uproar over this agreement is less about whether or not Novell is becoming another SCO and more about opening another front in the GPL v3 holy war. It is interesting to note how much of the criticism of Novell comes from the camp that is opposed to software patents full stop, such as The Samba Group.