boycott boycottnovell.com

okay, I'll be the first to say that the Novell-Microsoft deal was bad - way bad. and I am boycotting Novell myself. to summarize my perspective on it, I'll simply present Moglen's analysis on the subject, which I consider to be one of the top 5 extemporaneous monologues of all time:



but I also take issue with the opposite extreme that, because Microsoft has done bad things with the community, they are comprehensively unable to do any good things with the community. I know that boycottnovell.com isn't the only crier of this fallacy, but they're the ones who are recently taking pot-shots at my employer - a company that I think has always valued, and continues to value, the success of the community, or else I would not have taken a job with them.

from the inside, I can tell it plainly that Microsoft is simply a sponsor and participant in our 2008 CCA awards. technically, I also happen to know that we did nothing more than pre-load a big list of Codeplex project names into our CCA 08 database. there's no conspiracy to go thru all of our projects and attach Codeplex EULA's to them, or to use our CCA awards to scare the OSS community, as Roy Schestowitz seems to imagine.

Roy's pieces at boycottnovell.com seem to flow from his presumed indisputable inference that the motivations of not only Microsoft, but also anyone who collaborates with Microsoft, are sinister in nature. and he's repeatedly making these near-libelous statements, which boycottnovell.com is enabling, and this is the reason I'm boycotting them in addition to boycotting Novell.

as I preview this post myself, it is comical to contrast Roy's proof-by-verbosity case with Moglen's eloquent and exemplary case against a specific abuse.