Reuters is reporting that Eben Moglen has said that the Free Software Foundation will announce in two weeks what decision it will make regarding its response to the Novell-Microsoft deal:
The Free Software Foundation is reviewing Novell Inc.'s right to sell new versions of Linux operating system software after the open-source community criticized Novell for teaming up with Microsoft Corp."The community of people wants to do anything they can to interfere with this deal and all deals like it. They have every reason to be deeply concerned that this is the beginning of a significant patent aggression by Microsoft," Eben Moglen, the Foundation's general counsel, said on Friday....
Moglen said the board has not made a decision on the matter but that he expects it to announce a ruling within two weeks. If the foundation decides to take action, the ban would apply to new versions of Linux covered under a licensing agreement due to take effect in March.
Novell VP John Dragoon declined to comment, but he did say this:
"We'll take a look at the final determination and we'll react accordingly," he said.
However Linux-Watch quotes Moglen like this:
Eben Moglen, the Software Freedom Law Center's executive director and an FSF board member, explained: "This is a story being hyped by the Reuters guy who wrote it....The actual quote he prints is entirely accurate, but his lede destroys the context and is making unnecessary waves."
However, the news is still solid: a decision in two weeks. There is also a quote from Novell's Bruce Lowry:
As for this latest affair, Bruce Lowry, Novell's director of global public relations, said that "Novell has no comment at this time, we'll see how the issue is resolved and then react."